The Cost of Integrity: COL (ret) Tony Bianchi on False Accusations | S.O.S. #238

 A decorated field artillery officer and former West Point garrison commander says one strange night derailed 27 years of service—and exposed how fragile due process can be on a military post. Tony Bianchi recounts leading a week of storm recovery, an alumni dinner where a trivial carving-station moment sparked a rumor, and a late drive home later portrayed as a gate run. Hours after he went to bed, senior MPs gathered behind his house and colleagues woke him at 2:45 AM—an entry a DMV judge would later label a Fourth Amendment violation. 

 We trace the aftermath: suspension, relief, and a permanently filed GOMOR before any federal charge; no AR 15-6 despite conflicts; and video the government held that undercut its narrative. Tony describes why he refused chemical tests, what happened in the station, and how leaders leaned on “legally sufficient” while ignoring common sense. In court, a jury acquitted him of DWI and disorderly conduct, leaving only a stop-sign violation. A Grade Determination Review Board kept his O6 retirement. His FTCA claim and GOMOR appeal continue. 

 This is a candid inside view of military justice shaped by command-level turf fights, MP overreach, and leaders outsourcing judgment to legal advisors. Tony isn’t trying to burn the institution—he’s a West Point grad who loves the Army. He’s asking for better investigations, real accountability, and leaders willing to weigh facts over optics. If a garrison commander can be pulled into a federal case on such thin grounds, what protects everyone else? 

 Subscribe for more stories that push for reform with receipts, not rhetoric. If this conversation resonated, share it with a teammate and leave a review with the one change you’d make to strengthen due process on base. 

The stories and opinions shared on Stories of Service are told in each guest’s own words. They reflect personal experiences, memories, and perspectives. While every effort is made to present these stories respectfully and authentically, Stories of Service does not verify the accuracy or completeness of every statement. The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of the host, producers, or affiliates.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Tony’s Career
• 2:55 Garrison Command At West Point Explained
• 8:15 Culture Friction: USMA vs Garrison
• 14:30 MP Issues And Gate Operations
• 19:20 The Flood: Crisis Leadership And Fallout
• 24:30 Army Football Weekend And DCA Tensions
• 28:50 The Carving Station Incident
• 33:10 MPs Arrive At Ike Hall
• 37:40 Hotel Social, Gate Stop, And Drive Home
• 42:00 2:45 AM Entry And Apprehension
• 47:30 Station Ordeal And Rights Invocation
• 52:10 Suspension, Relief, And The GOMOR
• 58:00 No 15-6 And Evidence Gaps
• 1:02:40 DMV Ruling On Illegal Entry
• 1:07:00 Federal Case Strategy And Jury Trial
• 1:12:30 Verdict: Not Guilty On Major Charges
• 1:16:10 Leadership, DEI Politics, And Accountability
• 1:21:00 Grade Determination And Retirement
• 1:25:20 Aftermath, Book, And Legal Actions
• 1:30:00 Closing Thoughts And Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_04: 0:00

So you are at the top of your game. You are an 06 colonel in the United States Army. You are serving at West Point. You are the cream of the crop. You don't get to those jobs in the military without having a lot of combat experience, without being the best of the best, and without being an outstanding leader. And then all of a sudden, one day, you blow past, according to them, a stop sign, and your whole career is over. Well, we're going to get into that, and we're going to get into what really happened with Tony here. Tony, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01: 0:32

I'm doing awesome, Teresa. Thanks for having me on the show.

SPEAKER_04: 0:36

Well, thank you so much for agreeing to come on. Uh, your story is just about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Uh, beyond that, it's just sad. And it is a conversation that we're gonna continue to have on the Stories of Service podcast because our military justice system is broke. And until we do things to fix the due process system and ensure that the rights of the accused and the accuser are equally protected, we will continue to have these conversations. So, welcome to the Stories of Service Podcast. Ordinary people who do extraordinary work. I am the host of Stories of Service, Teresa Carpenter. And to get these uh podcasts started, as we always do, is an intro from my father, Charlie Pickard.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17

From the moment we're born and lock eyes with our parents, we are inspiring others. By showing up as a vessel of service, we not only help others, we help ourselves. Welcome to SOS Stories of Service, hosted by Teresa Carpenter, here from ordinary people from all walks of life who have transformed their communities by performing extraordinary work.

SPEAKER_04: 1:42

And Colonel Anthony Bianchi spent 27 years serving the Army across tactical units, academic institutions, strategic policy roles, and senior leadership at West Point. His career stretched from platoon leadership to battalion and brigade command, and eventually to some of the Academy's most complex and influential positions. He built a professional identity around discipline, fairness, mentorship, and holding himself to the standards he expected from others. And today we're going to talk about his story that he's told before, but we're going to go a little deeper, give a little more clarity, and a focus on what the fights look like since leaving the uniform. At the end of his army career, it began with a false accusation that he ran a stop sign on base while intoxicated. He explains why he believes the allegation was unfounded, how quickly the situation escalated, and why the narrative presented at the time never matched the facts. Today we're going to go through those events of that night, including the moment military police and senior personnel came to his home an entry that he believes violates his Fourth Amendment rights. He discussed the subsequent we're going to discuss a subsequent legal process where a judge found him not guilty of drunk driving and disorderly conduct, while he was fined only for the underlying stop sign violation. And today we're really also going to talk about the administrative ruling that determined the home entry, lacked proper legal basis and the lasting impact of this issue. Welcome again, Tony.

SPEAKER_01: 3:05

Thank you, Teresa. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_04: 3:07

So to start off these shows, I as I always do, where were you born and raised and what made you decide to join the Army?

SPEAKER_01: 3:14

So I was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up on the Southside suburbs of Chicago, right around the Chicago Heights, Hazelcrest homewood areas, if anyone's familiar with that. And then uh in the eighth grade, because of my mom rest in peace, my mom's work, we moved to Tampa, Florida. So I went to high school in Tampa, Florida. So I claimed Tampa as home. That's where I'm actually at right now. Um, and then never wanted to serve, never had any desire to serve in the military, not because I hated, it just wasn't a thing that went across my mind. But I was a football player in high school, highly recruited, and as the recruiting process played out, I ended up taking a uh acceptance to go to West Point to play Army football. And that's what got me hooked on serving. And through the 47-month experience that I encountered at the academy, I kind of got excited about this idea of being an officer. Uh however, I was dating my wife at the time, and I told her, don't worry, I'm gonna go do this military thing. It's five years, I'll be out after five years. Five and fly deal, they call it. And uh at a right around the six-year mark when I'm serving, we're married now. Uh, you know, 9-11 happened. Uh the army kind of changed the culture that was going on. We weren't used to these things called deployments, like we're having for like 20-something years going after we didn't know that was gonna happen. And uh I decided to leave the army because of my wife and I just I gave her a promise, I wasn't keeping to it. So I got out for so I actually I actually have a 23-month break in service. And then during that break in service, I realized what I really wanted to do. I had some goals in the army I never met. Battery command, go to grad school, teach at the academy, be a battalion commander, those kind of things. And so I volunteered, I wasn't called back, I actually volunteered to come back into the army in uh 2004 and uh stayed ever since and did 27 years and nine months.

SPEAKER_04: 5:19

So wow. So what was your jobs in the army?

SPEAKER_01: 5:22

So I'm a field artillery officer by trade. And so the early part of my career, about the first 10 to 12 years, I did predominantly your textbook, you know, artillery officer positions, platoon leader, you know, battery XO, battery commander, staff officer, you know, S3XO. But in between there, I got to teach at West Point, and I got to teach West Point twice. We can get into that later. Uh so I know I know West Point very well, but then I got picked for battalion command and I dare I did a very unique kind of battalion command where I went in the first army, where my active duty battalion was really like a consulting group where we advised National Guard units on their way out the door or in their third or fourth year of training prior to deployment. So that's what I did. And then after that, I worked in the Pentagon on the Army staff where I did a lot of talent management stuff. And then uh I got picked to go to National War College, which was an awesome place to learn about strategic stuff. And then um I popped on the brigade command list, and there I was as the West Point Garrison Commander was the slot they put me in.

SPEAKER_04: 6:23

So, for people that don't understand what a West Point Garrison Commander is, it's similar to being the Navy base commanding officer. So you're basically like the mayor of the base, correct?

SPEAKER_01: 6:36

Yeah, yeah, that that that's correct. You can use the word mayor. I I like to use the word city manager because even the garrison commanders or base commanders of any base or or army post, they all work for a senior commander. So that person to me is really like the mayor. They're the handshaker, the baby kisser, you know, the whole thing. I'm more of the guy in the background who's the city manager, making sure the safety and security is taken care of, the quality of life initiatives are being taken care of, the infrastructure and maintenance is being taken care of, the um the human resources for the entire community, not only the active duty and guard reserve, but the retirees they're taken care of, et cetera. So we're we're handling all those directorates and resources, and we're also synchronizing other entities that I don't necessarily control directly, but we need their support, like your AFEs, you know, PXs, your commissaries, your your unions, your things of that nature. So um you're just running, you're running a really a small city for the mayor.

SPEAKER_04: 7:38

Wow. And then how many uh people approximately or tenant commands would you say fell under your purview?

SPEAKER_01: 7:46

So I had at the time at West Point, I had uh authorized about right around 1,200 people, which approximately a hundred of those are uniformed service members. The rest are all DOD civilians, either appropriated or non-appropriated uh employees. Uh so I had a lot of civilians, which was a steep learning curve for me because the first time I had that under me.

SPEAKER_04: 8:07

Sure. And what year and month did you get there?

SPEAKER_01: 8:10

I got there as the garrison commander in July of 22.

SPEAKER_04: 8:15

Okay. So tell me a little bit to set the stage about what the environment and the culture was like when you initially arrived.

SPEAKER_01: 8:25

So it's funny because a year prior to me taking that job, the previous superintendent, General Williams, had brought me on to be the deputy athletic director for the United States Military Academy, which by the way was an awesome job. Pretty cool gig. I'm a sports guy, I played Army football, so I loved it. Um, but what that was what that enabled me to do was do a basically a year-long left seed, right seed with the current, at the time, garrison commander Evangelizel, who's also my classmate and a friend of mine. And so, but what I saw during that tenure, there was a lot of friction that existed between the garrison of West Point and then the Yusema side things, predominantly around food and beverage and catering operations, believe it or not. It sounds it sounds corny and petty, that's a real thing. And the the other dynamic I noticed is is there's a stick, there's a there's an invisible wall between personnel assigned to the United States Military Academy at West Point and then personnel assigned to the U.S. Army garrison. No one will ever understand that outside that bubble, but I got to live it for a couple of years. There is a because we don't we we both work for different bosses, we were different patches at the time on our left arms. So there was if if you weren't a Yusma person, then you were considered, in my opinion, beneath the herd, if that makes any sense. So when you're when you're responsible to get a job done, if a Yusma person wasn't involved in it, it didn't matter. You had to fight for that, so it caused more friction than it needed to be.

SPEAKER_04: 9:56

All right, I'm gonna be the stupid person question asker. Okay. Is there a difference between the U.S. military academy and then West Point? When I think of West Point, I think of Naval Academy uh equivalent. Is there also a US military academy?

SPEAKER_01: 10:12

Yeah, so here's here's what I tell people. So it's the United States Military Academy at West Point. That's what they always say. United States Military Academy at West Point. The at West Point part, that's the garrison, that's the installation. They get a lot of they get a lot of weight, obviously, for the right reasons. And as a garrison commander, of course, I would cater to the superintendent of West Point, you know what he wanted to do when in the execution of my duties. So that wasn't lost on me. My point is, at the end of the day, though, I ran the installation. Usma was a tenant.

SPEAKER_04: 10:56

Got it, got it. Okay, now I understand sort of the the differentiation caused a lot of tension. And and and your note about food and beverage, I by the way, have a little bit of knowledge on this from a friend of mine who was the Coronado PAO, and she told me about the fact that they have special contracts and that sometimes movie set people would want to bring their catering on, but they couldn't because they have to use MWR catering.

SPEAKER_01: 11:25

So I I am I'm aware that the real thing, and it's in West Point thinks they don't have to follow it.

unknown: 11:31

Hmm.

SPEAKER_04: 11:32

Okay. So you get there, and everything is a little bit strange with these different lines of operation. But um, how did it go for like I say, like the first several months?

SPEAKER_01: 11:44

So let me dip back just a little bit. So while I was working as a deputy athletic director, another another weird dynamic at West Point is the athletic association that's there for the Army Athletics for the divisional and sports programs that they put on. And they're a 501c3. People don't know that. They're a 501c3 organization, they're a nonprofit, they're basically considered like contractors in the terms of government contract relations, but they run all of our sports programs, etc. And they were in the process of currently building a new football stadium or upgrading the East Ans of the football stadium. And the athletic director at the time, Mike Buddy, he would always tell me he would like to get rid of the current status of concessions and to hire somebody who knows what they're doing and make it more commensurate with the top-tier stuff that they're building. So I was a huge advocate to carry his pal of water and to do that stuff in meetings, which really ticked off the non-appropriated, what I'll call right now, the directorate of cadet activities called D otherwise known as DCA. They're one of the non-appropriated catering groups authorized on West Point that fell under the oversight of the Commandant, uh, under the useless side, but they always bashed heads with the garrison even before I got there.

SPEAKER_06: 13:01

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 13:02

So there was tension.

SPEAKER_04: 13:06

Got it. So there was already this tension that you walked into.

SPEAKER_01: 13:11

Correct. And I witnessed it for a year. Got it. So my me my personality, and you gotta know who I am, but my personality throughout my whole career is I walk into something, I see something broken, I don't fucking pardon my language. I don't, I don't, you know, pause on that. If I see something wrong, I try to address it. I'm blatant.

SPEAKER_04: 13:31

And I'm gonna put you on full screen just so you can talk a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01: 13:34

And I'm blatant about fixing problems that see are wrong. I'm trying to recalibrate West Point to fit the army um policies on food, beverage, and catering operations. And I and I'm not against what they were already doing. My whole point was if we're gonna go against the army policies, then let's just make a change to the army policy.

SPEAKER_04: 13:56

Right, to make reality, let's do it.

SPEAKER_01: 13:58

And what people don't realize as a garrison commander at that time, I think it's still the same today. I worked for the superintendent three-star at West Point, who is my real boss because he did my evaluation reports, but I also came from the installation management command in the army, who's another three-star. And I got this side of the fence breathing down my neck about why can't you have MWR do this? Why are they losing money? What's going on? Why are they doing X? And I got this side of the fence saying, we like DCA, what they're doing, who cares that they're not following the rules, whatever. It got so bad, they actually got a third party from the academic world to do a uh study on how the athletic department, directorate of connectivities, and the garrison can all work and and and live together, all doing uh food, beverage, and catering. They did an academic study. That's how bad it got.

SPEAKER_04: 14:54

That's crazy. Oh my gosh. Wow. Well, it sounds to me like it was just a a bad C2, like like just poor, poor lines where it wasn't clear who could do what, and certain people wanted certain things, and but they weren't willing to do the work, like you said, to properly change the policy, or maybe there wasn't the momentum to change the policy to to to match what the intentions were, which is always not good. If you're intending to do something, then you should intend to finalize the policy to do so. So the next uh step in in all of this, I want to just kind of lead up to that night.

SPEAKER_01: 15:34

But can I say one more thing? But command otherwise, command was great. Okay, I thought I was doing an awesome job. My I mean it my my boss throughout the whole year uh loved me to my knowledge. I did a lot of good things. I always carried out his initiatives. I spoke my mind. I'm one of those guys, but if he told me, hey, execute this way, Roger out, I do it. Um, so so command in general for that first year, in my mind was an issue. The only issue I had was with my military police. There were things that my sergeant major and I didn't like what we saw, and I was getting hemmed up on parking things, towing initiatives, things that are petty to the average person, but I was getting my ass chewed all the time about. And when they all changed out right before this night in question, uh I thought it was a good time to start enacting some changes. And so that's kind of that's part of the friction, too. It wasn't just food, beverage, and operations, it was uh getting the MPs to do things a little different.

SPEAKER_04: 16:30

So, what can you be a little more specific? Like what were the MPs doing before? And then what did you want them to do later?

SPEAKER_01: 16:37

So there's a couple things. So numerous times uh they would tow cars with no rhyme or reason, causing a bunch of angst, and I would get phone calls from the superintendent. For example, there was a guy who came to West Point his first time since graduating, like 40 years ago, parked his car in a parking lot that at the time he parked it was good to park, but he stayed at a dinner overnight or later than the time the parking lot changed. Because when there's football games at West Point, you got to vacate certain parking lots for tailgators.

SPEAKER_05: 17:10

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01: 17:11

His car was parked in a no parking lot after the time, but he parked it before. Comes out of the hotel fair after dinner, and his car's gone. And they're here, him and his wife, they're 40, they're like almost in their, I think they're in their 70s at the time. Wow. Can't find his car, he hasn't been back for 40 something years. He pays like, you know, a couple thousand dollars to get his car out of towing. He has to take an Uber to get the car. He missed the entire football game the next day to do all this. And I get a letter from that guy from the soup, and that tells me to fix it. That's just one extreme example. But there were a lot of those going on. There's also issues with manning at the gates, meaning like, you know, man hours to man all three of the main entries. And when you turn one of those entries off, it pisses off a lot of the community. So I always tried to keep it open as long as I could, and I would call BS on the MP's arguments. But when I took command, you know, they're number one, I went around to all my directors asking them how what I can do for them. And the MP unit's biggest complaint when I took command was they're overworked, which they actually are. I'll give them that. They're very overworked because in addition to doing their law enforcement operations and manning the gates and doing football game security and all this other stuff, they're also doing full honors funerals for anybody who graduated West Point. So people don't know this. You can serve one year, no years, 50 years. If you graduate at West Point, you get full honors at the West Point Cemetery. And so those MPs do that, which causes a lot of work. So they're complaining to me about being overworked. But throughout the year, I noticed that they're doing all this rogue stuff without telling me my start major in our training meetings off post, you know, nothing bad, nothing malicious, but going to parades, you know, showing up at football games, uh, baseball games, pro games. And this all comes to play later. I'll talk about in a minute for that night, but it all comes to play later. They're doing all these things without us knowing about it. So I told them I can't go lobby on your behalf if you're doing all this rogue stuff.

SPEAKER_04: 19:10

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 19:10

I can't, I can't look stupid doing that because you're not making a good argument. If you if you have time to do this stuff, you can do the other stuff.

SPEAKER_04: 19:17

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 19:17

And that was my argument. So so all that was going on uh throughout my tenure there. Okay.

SPEAKER_04: 19:25

All right. So take me back then to the night in question. Yep. And I believe it starts with you going to a dinner or a formal event.

SPEAKER_01: 19:34

Yes. So I'm wearing this shirt right now, Army football, that's that played. And so every year they have what's called a Army Football Club um weekend at West Point. Um, an Army Football Club is just a subsidiary of the alumni groups. It's one of the alumni groups that's tied to Army Football. So it's not a it's not actually affiliated with Yustama, it's an alumni association. And we get together every year, and it usually consists of on Friday, there's like a business meeting, and then there's an informal social that night, and then on Saturday, there's a golf outing, and then now they added you can go to the pistol range and shoot that as well if you want to, if you don't want to golf. And then that Saturday night, it's I'd say it's a more formal dinner, but you're not dressed formally. You're wearing your golf attire from the earlier that day, or whatever you did that day, and you go to the dinner and there's guest speakers, um, etc., and the handout awards and all this other stuff. They talk about new things. They they we honor the guys who have passed away who are football players since the last meeting. And then the weekend's over, and then people go on their Merry Way Sunday. So prior to that golf weekend, about two weeks prior, New York, the Hudson Valley area was hit with what the media termed the 100-year storm or the storm of the century. And it was a flash flood in July where it just annihilated Orange County in New York. And West Point was not protected from it. We had road washouts, both soldier barracks were destroyed. Pretty much the majority of the air conditioning units and all the big buildings were destroyed. My garrison headquarters was one of the heaviest hit. Um, we had to relocate for a bunch of weeks because of that. Um, every single house was hit with some form of damage. Some houses were hit with major damage, like mine. My basement flooded out, my third floor crashed in, one of the bedrooms, the flooding broke the roof and hit the third floor. Um, it was a really bad, I mean, I'm talking really bad storm where last time I was counting as the Garrison Commander, we were about 350 million deep in damage just with our base alone. And one of the residents were outside the gates in Montgomery, uh Fort Montgomery, right outside the gates, one of the residents, she she lost her life walking her dog. That's how bad the storm was. Just a flash flood. And so, as you can imagine, the garrison in that scenario, we become the center of gravity of support. So our firemen, our military police, our DPW, Department of Public Works, we're we're just nonstop helping people in the on the installation, and our fire department's helping off post. So for two weeks, we're working 18, 19 hour days, seven days a week. I'm briefing my three-star commander at MCOM Installation Management Command every night, trying to get more money, trying to fix things. I mean, not to sound cocky. I was a rock star because of my unit during this time of need.

unknown: 22:37

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 22:37

That's what was going on for two weeks.

SPEAKER_04: 22:39

Sure. You were just like the the man and the w and your team were the people of the moment to deal with this issue. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 22:46

So so to put it to you this way, I did a I did a news media shot with government, uh, Governor Hokel. She came down to visit. I'm went there doing a media shot, and then that Monday, prior to the weekend in question, I'm flying around in a helicopter with my superintendent, uh, Senator Schumer and Senator Gillibrand. So that's how big it was. And I'm just showing all the damage. And so I say all that because I did not participate in a lot of the events of that normal weekend that I normally would have, other than the dinner. Because that Saturday morning, instead of golfing, I was still on the phone, my director of the Department of Public Works, making sure the golf course is open. Even the superintendent earlier in that week was bugging me. Are we gonna be ready to play golf? Because the golf course was damaged. So I was trying to make sure, and then where they were having the dinner that night, the AC was still broken as of Saturday morning. So it's July in New York, which is pretty hot. So guys come off the golf course are gonna be pretty hot. So I was trying to make sure the AC was working. So I never golfed that day. So the first event I did of any type of social activity was that dinner.

SPEAKER_04: 23:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 23:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 23:54

All right. So you are busy, busy, busy, working, working very hard, trying to get everything situated because of this natural event, and then you show up to the dinner and you're by yourself.

SPEAKER_01: 24:12

I'm with I'm so I'm with a college roommate slash teammate.

SPEAKER_04: 24:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 24:16

Who flew in for the weekend? He was my only classmate to attend that year. So he stayed at my house. And because and because he knew I was busy, he opted not to golf either. So he just drove around me all day, right? Doing all my busy work and just hung out with me, and then we went to the dinner together.

SPEAKER_04: 24:33

Gotcha. So you show up at the dinner, and how how does the dinner uh start to unfold?

SPEAKER_01: 24:39

So the agenda was, I believe it was from six to seven, was like a cocktail hour. I didn't get there till right before seven. I didn't get there until even probably right at seven. I I can't remember exactly, but I didn't go to the cocktail hour. And we show up to dinner, several folks thank me for the job. I deal with the storm and they high-five me and whatever. And I go into the main ballroom of what's called Eisenhower Hall. I call for short, four-floor ballroom, where the dinner's at. I go in there and I talk for like five minutes with folks, and the formal agenda of the night's about to start, which begins with the superintendent giving remarks.

SPEAKER_03: 25:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 25:23

So me and my buddies we got there right when that was happening. We sat down in the back of the room and we're just kind of just hanging out, listening. And uh the superintendent's talking. And through his speech, all he's doing is acknowledging me. Tony being like, you this former army full player, my garrison commander, doing a great job. Tony, stand up. Let us acknowledge you. They clap for me. Like, I ain't gonna lie to you, Teresa. I feel pretty good about myself. This is pretty good. This is like, I mean, okay. I'm not, I'm I'm loving life. Right. I'm tired, but I'm loving life.

SPEAKER_04: 25:58

Right. You're doing the mission. I mean, you're you're doing the real work of the military. You're doing the military's business. That's how I see it. When I'm called to do like the real work of the military, it's like a great feeling because you realize that you're doing something important. So everything's good.

SPEAKER_01: 26:13

You can acknowledge everything's good. There's about 140 people there in attendance, just for the record, that comes into play later. Um, and then remarks are over, and they start releasing all the tables to go through a buffet line that's catered by DCA. So the ballroom's set up in a way where everything's kind of next to each other. So, like if you're at the buffet line, you're not that far from the tables, etc., you're not that far from the podium. You can hear things going on everywhere. Um, so I'm going through the buffet line, there's two lines, and both lines culminate at a meat carving station. But as I'm going through the lines, I run into Lieutenant General retired Bob Kaslin, the 59th superintendent of West Point. Great American, good guy. He's a former football player, and so we're talking. He's asking me about the storm damage, we're having a good time. And the reason why this is important is we're going through the line together in the parallel lines, and we both end up at the meat carving station at the same time. And this is where the first act of whatever they allege I did happens. The meat carving guy, and this is gonna sound really dumb, Teresa, so bear with me. As I'm waiting in line, there was kind of a stall in the queue getting to his station. I would watch that guy cut a lot of feet off of fat off his meat and put it to the side. I never really paid attention to that operation. So I'm thinking to myself, wow, that's pretty neat. The guy takes care of everybody, takes the fat off. And when it's my turn to get my slice of uh meat, he takes the fat he cut off and puts it on my plate in a very deliberate manner. Oh, wow. And so, and so because of that friction I told you about earlier, right? I was kind of pissed off. I was pissed. I never denied that, but I all I said to him was like, Hey man, why'd you give me the shit meat? Why can't you give me some of the good stuff? Yeah, and I said it in a really joking way because there's a bunch of dudes there. He'd be like, ha ha ha. I'm sorry about that, sir. Here you go. He got real lippy with me, and he said something like, I'll give you whatever the hell I want. Oh my god. So I said, and this is where it gets conflated. This is where everybody started to conflate the story. I said to him, because of that friction, Did you do this on purpose because of who I am, or do you just not know who I am? I just need to know. And he goes, I don't care who you are, I serve everybody the same way, I'll give you what I want. Something to that effect, he said. And so all I said after that was, is your manager here? And he points to her, the lady who was there who I knew, and I said, Great. And I walked away. That that was the entirety of my interaction with this guy.

SPEAKER_04: 29:04

Wow. And so you never did you even talk to her? The the lady?

SPEAKER_01: 29:07

Oh, I did. So I go back to my table, I put my plate down, I wave her over. She knows me. She comes over, I tell her my what happened, and unbeknownst to me, she goes, Oh, sir, I'm really sorry. I'll take care of this. She brings me a new plate. I didn't even ask her for a new plate. She brought me a plate. Okay. But I, but Teresa, I already forgot about it. I purged it. It wasn't a thing for me. There was no issue. What I did know, I found this out later, is she pulled the guy out of his meat carving station and told him to go sit in the office on the second floor and that she would deal with him after the event was over. I didn't know that happened because it wasn't a thing for me. So this happened, this whole interaction happens at 7 30 p.m. 7 30. Right around 7 30. So I get back to my seat, I have my my meal, my buddy's sitting there, people are still talking to me. The rest of the agenda goes on. On. So now it's around 9, 9:15 at night. Things over. Everyone's kind of loitering around, finishing whatever drinks they have. They're under the little clicks. I'm standing with the superintendent, my buddies with me, and about three or four other alumni from various years, all just kind of small talking, whatever's going on. I get invited to go to a social impromptu at the hotel there, which is a hotel and base later. I'll get to that in a second. But we're all talking, and my phone rings. My cell phone rings. And I look at it, it's my deputy. So I answer the phone. I say, hey, what's up, Eric? And he uh he says, Hey sir, can you meet me downstairs? I'm about to walk in. I call. I said, Really? I said, what for? Now, right before he called me, I forgot one part. Right before he called me, I saw two MPs walking around the ballroom, which technically is not uncommon. When they're on patrol and there's an event going on post, they'll probably pop in and check, ask the manager, is there anything going on we need to be worried about? Nothing. They're doing their checks. So that's what I thought they were doing. So I didn't really think too much about it. But I could tell the superintendent was looking at the MPs walking around, but he didn't ask me anything, but I could tell by his look that he was kind of curious. So once Eric called me and said, meet him downstairs, I hung up with him and I told the superintendent who's actually standing right next to me, uh, hey sir, I'm gonna go downstairs. Eric just called me. I'm gonna find out why the NP's are here. He he said he was called here to do something. I'll come back and debrief you when I when I find out what's going on.

SPEAKER_04: 31:33

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 31:34

So he didn't seem too concerned at the time. And the reason why I bring that up is if anybody wants to know the status of my demeanor at that time of night, it's my three-star boss who charged me later. Standing right next to me. So let's just let's just call a spade a spade. He was standing there right next to me, talking to me with no issues. So he knows I didn't do anything wrong. I go downstairs, I meet Eric, my deputy, and he uh I say, Hey man, what why are you here? He's small, I forgot exactly what I said, but basically why you're here. And he says, quote, I'm here tonight because the MPs received a call about a disturbance at Eisenhower Hall involving me being drunk and belligerent and threatening a man's life. That was the that was what he told me, and I remember thinking to myself, are you fucking kidding me? Like, I didn't say it. Like, I'm like, what? And I was half like pissed off, but halfway.

SPEAKER_04: 32:37

But were you also thinking, I mean, weaponization culture is alive and real? And so were you thinking in your mind, like, oh, this is the way that this is okay, because this is beverage people trying to honestly not yet.

SPEAKER_01: 32:50

Not yet, because remember, the MPs worked for me. I'm like, these guys know me. Like, I'm like, whatever, like this is fine. Like, okay, that's not what so once one about two minutes talking, I realized what they're there for was the interaction with the meat car because I didn't even know what the interaction was about.

SPEAKER_05: 33:03

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01: 33:04

So when I told them, I'm like, uh, this is what I so I tell them the whole story, like I told you, and then the MP started to piss me off a little bit because they wouldn't let me talk. They kept saying, like, sir, we got this, it's our job, you know, we'll figure I said, guys, before you go on a rat uh uh a rabbit hole, let me tell you what I know from me, and then you can go do and finally Eric, my deputy said, Hey, let him talk. I talk, I told him what's going on. And by that time, the senior MP showed up, the director of emergency services, who's a lieutenant colonel who I rate, okay, and the superintendent senior rates. That's important here. So I rate this guy, and he's rated senior rated by the superintendent, lieutenant colonel, and he tells me, sir, this seems like it's blown out of proportion. Since we're here, we're gonna go talk to a few people, maybe get a statement, go enjoy the rest of your evening. Okay, so I leave at that moment, I go back upstairs, and I'm thinking common sense finally prevailed, but it's I'm I'm pissed off about it because like that's that's BS what they said. Because I know how the process works, it's gonna be on the blotter report. So I'm gonna go so I go, I go back to the superintendent, I tell him exactly what transpired. Of course, and he did not seem concerned at all because he knew I didn't like he was with me. He's like, Yeah, don't worry about it, whatever. We continue mingling. Teresa, I stayed there for like another 40 minutes at that location, talking to folks, whatever. Nobody questioned me, nobody detained me, nobody arrested me, nobody said go home, nobody said I'll take you home. Like there was no inkling of any threatening behavior. I'm a danger, nothing. Nothing happened. The MPs walked around, talked to people, I talked to my friends, and then I finally left to go to the hotel there because I got invited there. Nothing happened. This all happens now. Remember, 7:30, I had the interaction. This is around 9.15-ish, 9.30-ish. I stayed there until about 10:15. I go to the hotel fair, and this is all on the same post. So going from one location is like five minutes, you know. So I go outside with my buddy, get in my government vehicle, which I've been driving all day to go visit all the damaged sites. So that plays a role in this later, by the way. I go to the hotel fair, park in my garrison commander parking spot, and I go upstairs to the to the rooftop bar they have there. It's on post. But it's a hotel that's on West Point, but it's just outside the gate for ease of patronage for folks who don't need to go through the security. Sure. But it's on post. And the reason why I have a parking spot there is because MWR has a contractual relationship with that hotel. So they get a percentage of the thing. So a lot of dynamics there, but they know me there. I go there. So I go to Tabor and meet my buddies, have a good time, nothing crazy. Um, if I tell you a slow night, you're gonna laugh at me. Everybody who golfed was tired. So we're just kind of hanging out on the couches, they got up there, having a few beers, talking about football, whatever. I ran to a few DPW employees talking to them. And uh, I'm there for like two hours. And what's funny about the hotel fair time frame is the hotel fair time frame was not in the decision-making space of the MPs for what they did later that night. They didn't even know I was there until after I got arrested. We'll talk about that in a minute. So I hang out there, everyone's starting to go back to their rooms because they're all catching flights early in the morning. So I tell my buddy, let's get out of here. So we leave at 12:30. Get back in my government car, I now have to go through the main access gate, fair gate, to then get back on the main post, like the cotonment area. And I've gone through any gate or access control point on West Point, in and West Point, for the better part of 13 months. Where after about the first month in command, I was literally told by multiple MPs and DA security guards, Department of the Army security guards, sir, put your ID away. We know it's you. Put it away. When I'm in my government vehicle with a placard in the window, so I go through the gate. I actually stop short of the actual gate, about a car length, because I see the MPs dealing with another vehicle in the right lane uh with two civilians standing next to their car and they're doing something. And what's cool about this is every time I see my MPs at the gate, I always want to stop and talk to them because, quite frankly, they never usually work the gates. The DA security guards do. But being that I'm an army guy and a leader, I always take the time to see my uniformed soldiers. I just want to talk to them for a minute or two, it doesn't matter. So I pulled, I stopped the car, I rolled the passenger side window down. I yelled over to the MPs, one of them came over. This is all on video, by the way. I know you saw Sad Khan's podcast. It's all on the video. Uh he leans into the window. I tell him the conversation was like this how are you guys doing? What's going on at that vehicle? Do you need any do you need any support? The guy comes back with, sir, we're good to go. The vehicle, we think had an open container, so we're doing our our tech our normal search. Stay safe tonight, have a good night. And then he taps and he's talking to me through the window. He taps the roof of my car, which any common sense human being interprets that as good to go. He taps the roof of my car. I then proceed, literally, a car laying forward to where the stop sign's at, the one I allegedly ran. It's in front of me, but I'm already stopped. And the gate guard pops out of the shack, he makes a hands gesture, I think he waves me through like he always does, and I drive home. I drive the five to seven minute ride home to my house on West Point because it's not that big. And there's no car chase, there's no accident, there's no stopping me at the gate, telling me to get on my vehicle, there's no activation of the vehicle barrier, there's nothing. I just a simple drive home, like always, park my car behind my house, walk my dog, no issues. This happens at 12:39 at night. I go through that gate at 12:39. So a little backtrack. 7:30, me Carver, nine o'clock ish, MPs come to I call. 12:39, I go through the gate. So now I'm at home with my buddy. My wife and kids are out of town. I'm at home in my house and I go to bed. 2:45 in the morning, I hear a knock on my door. And it's not my back door, and it's not my front door. It is literally the master bedroom door on the second floor of my house. I got a three-story house plus a basement, seven bedrooms. My buddy's sleeping in the guest room on the third floor. I'm in the master bedroom on the second floor. I open the door, and standing there is my deputy and my command sergeant major. And my first thought that goes through my head was, oh shit, my wife and two daughters got in a wreck or something because they were taking my middle daughter back to college that night.

SPEAKER_04: 40:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 40:44

And they were driving. So I left that morning, that's Saturday morning, and I hadn't heard from them. And I was like, oh my God, something happened. Sure. But as soon as my starter major started talking, I realized that wasn't the case. So that two, three second fear went away. And I'm and by the way, I'm standing there in my underwear. Because I'm in my bed asleep.

SPEAKER_04: 41:06

Well it's the middle of the night. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 41:07

Yeah. And uh my starter major's like, uh, hey sir, you know, we tried calling you, you didn't answer. I go, yeah, it's almost three in the morning, and my phones are on silent at this time of night. And I I guess I didn't hear you. And uh they go, I said, what's going on? And I'm totally thinking normal operations, storm issue, something. And then they said, Hey sir, the MPs are outside and they want to talk to you. And I'm like, okay, what about? And they said, they said you ran the gate tonight. And I'm like, ran the gate. I'm like, I remember having this thought of like, I didn't run the gate. Like, run the gate. Running the gate in my world is somebody unidentified blows through the checkpoint, sure, doesn't show their ID, doesn't stop, takes off, they're a threat to the insulation, and you give chase and activate the barrier. That's running the gate. Yep. Like, I didn't run the gate. I stopped and talked to an MP. I remember testing. I stopped and talked to an MP. So after about a minute back and forth of me and her talking, the deputy steps in and says, I just think it's best if we all go outside and clear this up. And I say, Yeah, you're right. And I'm still not thinking anything negative. I'm really not. I'm like, whatever. I'll go outside. I figured I'll go outside, spend five minutes talking to these guys. I'll come back in and go to bed. So I walk outside my back door, and the way my house is situated, there's only a road behind my house, and there's literally two cop cars, two MP vehicles sitting there, and there's MPs on both sides. There must have been seven or eight MPs there. And three of them are the most senior MPs on the installation: the director of emergency services, the provost marshal, and the sergeant major of the emergency services. The three most senior MPs are standing literally right outside my house orchestrating the illegal break-in to my home without a warrant. Because as soon as I came out, some staff sergeant walks up to me and says, Hey, sir, we need to talk to you down at the station. And that was the first time the Spidey Sense went off and said, Oh my God, something's not right. And I said, Okay, I didn't have my wallet or keys because I thought I was gonna go back to bed. So I said, Hey, I'll meet you down there. I'll ride the sergeant major, my sergeant major. And he said, Absolutely not, you have to go in the police car.

SPEAKER_06: 43:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 43:32

So they did not handcuff me, but they put me in the back of the car, and a judge later defined that was the moment I was apprehended.

SPEAKER_04: 43:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 43:42

So they never ridden my ride to that point, never told me why. Never told me why. The three-minute ride to the station, I asked the two guys in the front seat, they wouldn't tell me why.

SPEAKER_04: 43:51

You had to be completely blindsided about what this Teresa, I am exhausted.

SPEAKER_01: 44:00

I'm just been woken up. I had a few drinks with my buddy in the house before I went to bed. I've I mean, I'm like totally in shock of like what I don't even know what they think I did or didn't do. Nobody would tell me. And so I yes, and so that's what what that does to a guy like me is I get angry.

SPEAKER_04: 44:20

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 44:21

So now I'm getting angry. Like, what's going on? This is BA, like, you know, nobody would tell me what's going on. So I get to the station and uh they put me in this this room and they sit me there for like 20 minutes. Like no one's in there, just me. So I'm sitting there thinking, like, I'm like, what the like, what did they think I did? I did. And uh in walks in this little midget-looking sergeant major who I don't like. Um, I'm his senior raider, by the way. He's the sergeant major of the emergency services. Little little tangential conversation here. He filled in for my sergeant major about six to eight weeks prior to this night. He served as my sergeant major for like a week because she had to go TDY on a work trip for whatever she had to do. And uh during this time he was working with me, I was trying to get to know him because I senior rate him. I don't see him all the time. And so I forgot why it happened, but we're in my office kind of BSing, and believe it or not, we're talking about leadership because I'm a I'm a nerd about that stuff. I talk about leadership, and uh I said to him, and some I'm I'm paraphrasing, I don't remember exactly what I said, but I said something like I'm very enamored with the MP Corps because I've never worked with MPs under my direct command or with me directly. I never had that. I'm a field artillery guy. And I say it takes a really special person with a special set of confidence to be an MP. And I said, the example I gave was you're a PFC who pulls over a colonel for go figure, rolling a stop sign, that PFC is in charge of that scenario, regardless of rank. It takes us, it takes a very confident special person to stay professional, but yet be in charge of that scenario. Sure. So I'm I'm talking to him about that stuff, and in the context of that conversation, I I simply said to him, I go, You're an MP, you've been around Garrus's a lot, right? You like, yes, sir. He goes, How am I doing as Garrett? How am I doing as Garrison Grant? You've been here about eight months, how am I doing? And uh to my shock, which I wasn't pissed off about it, but I was shocked. He's like, You're doing terrible. I'm like, okay, well, can you tell me why? Like, and his whole reason why I was doing terrible was because I re I I invig I reinvigorated the social fabric of my brigade, my my garrison. I instituted a monthly stable call, which is happy hour for your listeners, at the West Point Club, a club that my MWR team ran at the last Friday of every month. And then the last Friday of every month, quarterly, that same stable call would work as a de facto informal handlin for a while for folks coming into the garrison, folks leaving. And so I did that for two reasons. I wanted to build camaraderie and get folks talking to each other because everything's in the stove plate. And two, I wanted to try to drive some revenue for the club. I figured folks would come, they'd buy a drink, they may buy a meal or an appetizer or whatever. And so it was really gaining really good momentum. First couple were small attendance, it started getting bigger and bigger and bigger. We did a hell of a wheel, it got bigger. People would love them. And I used to tell my directors, bring whoever you want. I don't care if you bring the janitor or your deputy director, bring them to the thing, whatever you want. And my thing was is my deputy and I had a thing where we'll buy your first drink. Doesn't have to be alcohol. I said this, I used to say this you could be a diet cook, it could be water, it could be whatever. We'll get your first drink. Just stop by on your way home and say hi and mingle. Well, this guy didn't like it. He said, I was glamorizing alcohol, I'm taking the wrong turn as a leader, I'm prioritizing the wrong stuff, all these things. And he was adamant about it, like really went into me. And then in that context, he says to me, I've been a part of relieving 206 commanders in the past.

SPEAKER_04: 48:28

It's crazy.

SPEAKER_01: 48:30

So yeah, like six day weeks before. So that's who I was.

SPEAKER_04: 48:32

I mean, you had already kind of known too that the MPs were disgruntled. Well, they or they just didn't feel like they were getting the support that they needed, but then they weren't meeting you guys halfway by being transparent about all the other things that they were working on. So there was already, in my mind, some friction points there. And so when he comes to go work for you, he's just kind of, in my opinion, blowing off steam. He's there, he's venting about what his what is he you gave him an in and he took it, and so he started venting about some of his grievances. So now there's this meat carver incident, and it's almost like a perfect storm, where there were these underlying forces at play that were there long before you came in. Then you came in and they simmered and simmered. And I honestly think they just it just got to a point where all it took was an opportunity to capitalize on oh, what can we do to fix this situation and get things back to where or get these get things to where we want them to be. And this was that opportunity.

SPEAKER_01: 49:51

Yes, 100%. And and here's the worst part of the story, Teresa. You're exactly right with everything you said. I really trusted and felt that my command would hear, would know the facts and be like, oh my God. Because my point is this, regardless of what any of your viewers or anybody thinks I did or didn't do that night, which I'm not gonna readjudicate because I've been found not guilty, is when is it ever okay to go into somebody's private residence two and a half hours after they last seen driving a vehicle on the basis of a DUI and go in without a warrant? It's it's unconstitutional. And the fact that my leadership tolerated that, two three-star generals tolerated that. No one's been held accountable, no one investigated it, nobody wants to talk about it because it happened and they don't want to talk about it. And it drives me crazy. That's why I'm on your show today. People need to know that if you're gonna work and live at West Point, this could happen to you. The MPs are out of control and no one's gonna hold them accountable.

SPEAKER_04: 51:00

Well, this could happen in other contexts all over the United States military because we have no due process protections. And that's why I keep doing these shows and hearing these stories, is because my goal is if the military isn't going to fix itself, then the public, from a grassroots perspective, is going to start going public with enough of these stories to build enough of a momentum to fix their legal system. Right. Because that's what that's the root cause of all of these stories, is a legal system that is allowed to operate however it chooses to do so with no regard to protecting the rights of the accused.

SPEAKER_01: 51:44

So let's talk about that legal system. But before I do, I want to clarify for your audience. I go, let's make no mistake, the MPs violated my Fourth Amendment right. And here's why I say this they didn't physically go into my house, they stood behind my house and literally orchestrated two federal employees who were my trusted colleagues under a false narrative, which came out in court later in pretrial hearings. They fed them a line of BS that said there was an exigent circumstance that never existed. Because if any exigent circumstance existed, they could have arrested me at Ike Hall, they could have arrested me at the gate. Why did it take two and a half hours after I drove through the gate to go to my house only to have two of my trusted people go in? Because they told them on their own affidavits, they admit to this, they were told a hill of beans about what happened. I was never car chased, I never ran into the house, refused to come out, none of that. I was asleep in my bed, and that's what they that's what they told everybody on the on the onset. It all came out in the in the in the in the clear and during court that that was a bunch of BS. And so they deliberately lied and nobody cared.

SPEAKER_04: 52:50

But to get to that point after that night, you're at their station. What let's go back to the story now. We'll just we gotta well, I want to finish up the story and get through to where you were cleared. What happened after that point?

SPEAKER_01: 53:05

So I get, you know, at the station, the guys yell at me. They said I was there. This was their logic. They said I was there because I didn't follow proper gate procedures because I didn't stop and show my ID at the gate or at the at the guard shack. And they felt like I didn't do that because I was driving intoxicated. And the reason why they felt like I was driving intoxicated was that five hours earlier that I was part of this disturbance called Eisenhower Hall, where I was drunk and belligerent, threatening somebody.

SPEAKER_04: 53:32

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01: 53:33

That was their logic, and I jumped all over that. And so after after about an hour of arguing with the sword major, then they decide to read me my rights. So they read me my rights, and to your audience, nothing happens like TV. So all that shit that I said beforehand was still able to be used, which it didn't hurt me, but my lawyers are like, well, he shouldn't be using anything. He was rights were read. And the way they interpret it is if you're not being interrogated or directly questioning, it doesn't matter. So once they decide to actually question me, they read me my rights, and that's when I refused to talk, whatever, do anything, wanted a lawyer, and it wouldn't give me an opportunity to call a lawyer. Um, and then they came in with the breathalyzer stuff and I said, I'm not doing a breathalyzer, and they said, Why not? And I said, Because two reasons. One, it's not a lawful order. I've been home for over two and a half hours.

unknown: 54:24

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 54:24

It doesn't make any sense. I wasn't pulled over in a car, I was in my bed asleep. And I said, and by the way, I don't trust what you're gonna do with any specimen the way you're treating me tonight. And so that was my big no to that. Um, which is funny because when the superintendent came to the police station to get me out of there, uh, he actually he actually said, Great job invoking your rights. I would have done the same thing, which is kind of funny.

SPEAKER_04: 54:48

But uh especially in light of what transpired later with the superintendent.

SPEAKER_01: 54:54

Yeah, 100%. But that feeds into the trust the process, right? That feeds into that whole narrative. Just trust me. So I'm there for a few hours. I decide on my own decision making. You can hindsight's 2020, maybe it was the wrong decision. I said, you know what? I want to tell the boss from my own mouth what happened before somebody else tells him. Sure. So I call him using my sergeant major's phone from the police station. I get, I kind of give him the 30-second summary of it, and he's like, I'll be right there. So he shows up to the police station that morning, Sunday, early Sunday morning. I can hear the room come to attention outside, three stars walking in. And there's about a 10 to 20 minute, I don't know exact time that passed. I can hear them talking, but I don't know what they're saying. So I don't know what they told him, but my theory is they told me the same bullshit story they told everybody else.

SPEAKER_04: 55:49

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 55:50

And so from him, all he all he has to go off of is what the MPs told him. So he thinks I blew through the gate drunk and they arrested me. That's what that's what he's thinking. And then he sees me. I'm I'm hair's not combed, face is a mess. I mean, I'm tired, I'm pissed off. I'm I have every emotion known to man showing on my face. And all I remember telling him was something to the effect of, sir, whatever they told you, I can guarantee you I didn't do it. That's all I remember saying it. I said, but I know this looks bad, but you gotta trust me. And uh he's like, Oh, don't worry about it, don't worry about it. He's like, you know, I'm glad you invoked your right, that's the right thing to do, blah, blah, blah. And then he got real Jedi on me. He's like, How are you feeling? You know, where's your wife and kids? You know, do you have any weapons at the house? I'm like, Oh, God. Is this guy thinking when I kill myself? Like, I'm like, sir, I'm fine. I just got awoken out of my bed at three in the morning, and this is what you go to. He's doing his, he's just checking the block of what he has to do, you know. And so they released me. I go home, and I came back later at night and finished my processing where they fingerprinted me, all that bullshit like a criminal. And then uh, and then everyone, and then he tells me, he says, Tony, all I ask you to do is be cooperative as we investigate, be cooperative with the process. I trusted that.

SPEAKER_04: 57:12

Trust the process. That's what they always tell people.

SPEAKER_01: 57:15

Trust the process. No problem. I'm not gonna talk to anybody, I'm just gonna sit back.

unknown: 57:20

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 57:21

So later on, later on that Sunday, he comes to he comes to my house physically with his sergeant major. That's another, that's another guy we should talk about. He sits down on my couch and he says, Hey, I'm suspending you. And I told him I was expecting it. Because I was, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 57:36

At this point, you just know you that this is this is going to play itself out, and it's okay.

SPEAKER_01: 57:42

But I was I was just I was expecting it on a positive thing, like you'll hear the truth, and if you still want to fire me, so be it, but you're gonna know what happened. And uh, because nothing happened, and uh all I ask is you cooperate, you know, whatever. And then my my civilian lawyer who I hired, his philosophy was you need to cooperate regardless if you agree with what they're asking you, because you don't want to come off as an asshole because that's what they're trying to paint you as, as an asshole. And so I was like, okay, I just so so here's another caveat. The MP company commander was a captain. She's a captain. I'm her senior raider, I'm her commander. She's not even there that weekend. And when I'm in the police station, they bring a cell phone into the room. She's on the cell phone, and she tries to give me what her mind was a lawful order to go give blood at the hospital for my blood alcohol. And I said, Name's Molly. I said, Molly, I'm not doing that. She's like, Why not? I said, it's not a lawful order. And she's like, failure to do so resulting in you know, violation of Uniform Code of Military Dressers, whatever code, I think it's 91 or whatever, 92, and uh failure to follow a lawful order. I go, it's not a lawful order. I'm your boss. If you want to do that, I told her you need to get the superintendent to to direct me, and then I'll do it. And she just kept going, shut your mouth, quit talking about it.

SPEAKER_04: 59:14

Can they require you to even take a blood test when there's no like you said, that you you weren't the suspicion of drug driving, you weren't drunk driving.

SPEAKER_01: 59:25

But that was their charge, even though I was in bed in my house.

SPEAKER_04: 59:28

But that's what I'm saying, and then they got you several hours later.

SPEAKER_01: 59:31

It wasn't like two and a half, to be exact.

SPEAKER_04: 59:33

Yeah, so exactly, and and really she as a oh three is not in your chain of command, she can't, or she's under me.

SPEAKER_01: 59:45

She's under you, but I actually tried to help her out, but she also didn't hate me. I found out later during Discovery and trial, she would tell the the prosecutor that I was a uh drunk all the time, that she hated working for me. That one time she called me at my house and I was drunk at my house, and that she doesn't like this, and I'm a toxic leader. And it was like, are you guys like, where's this even coming from? She was she was also new. She took over about a month and a half before this night. And she, me and her had a fallout because one of her patrolmen lost a bullet around on duty. And when she called me about what happened, she made it sound like it's my problem now. And I'm an 06 commander. I'm like, I've been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. I said, Hey, you're the company commander. I said, What are you doing about it? Like, what are you doing about it?

unknown: 1:00:35

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:36

She told me that's part of it. I got it. Have you brought everybody back in? Have you re-looked at everything?

unknown: 1:00:41

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:41

Have you done a new inspection? Have you questioned the guy? Like, she got pissed about that. So she went around telling all her leadership that I'm a drunk, I'm a drunk commander all day, and she's tired of telling me.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:52

And this is like I mentioned this earlier in a podcast that I was on. The problem with holding people accountable in our day and age of the military, and until this whole walking on eggshells thing actually really is actualized and becomes a thing, is that you can't really hold certain people accountable anymore because they will weaponize the fact that you held them accountable and they will find someone to go around and trash talk you, or they will go around you and they will build a coalition of people around you to now make you the make you the bad guy because you were the one that held them accountable. I learned that when I was on uh um my carrier, and I took that lesson to NATO, and I realized that all I was going to be able to ever have from that point forward is volunteers because and I could inspire them, and there were people that I could, and and people that could see that I was working just as hard as they were, and I was just as motivated as they were, but I had to kind of give up on certain people, and so what you're sharing with me is is very relatable. It's when you try to hold someone accountable, they don't want to be held accountable, and they know there's an out. Yes, they know there's other people they can go to to trash talk you or to weaponize the fact that you held them accountable.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:09

Correct. She hated me for that. The sergeant major hated me for his thing, she hated me for that, and then one more thing I didn't mention, and then the other the other lieutenant colonel who was a DES director and some of the MPs, they had this thing going on where they did this celebrity softball tournament with the New York Mets for the last couple years, prior to me getting there. So I'm I'm sitting there in my makeshift office because of the storm because I can't go to my real office because it's flooded. And I'm sitting in this in this makeshift office at the emergency operations center, and I got an email, and you'll appreciate this being a public affairs officer. I get an email from the Army Public Affairs Office, big Army Public Affairs Office, directly to me.

SPEAKER_04: 1:02:52

Oh, yeah, that's right. I remember.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:55

How is that even logical in the Army? Big Army talking to a company, right? So it says like, hey, get your rosters ready. You know, whoever it was, I said, hey, appreciate the note. Next time, please go through either MCOM PAO or USMA PAO channels if you want this to happen with my military police company and don't go direct to them. I would like to put this in proper planning channels in the G3 lane so we can properly task and account for these things. Thank you. Sure. And so what that caused was a couple days later, that lieutenant colonel, one of the platoon sergeants in the MP company and a first sergeant came to see me open door the Thursday before the Saturday in question about my email back, and they were so butthurt that I wouldn't budge on it. That it just find it very ironic that it happened two days before, and this is what happens to me on Saturday.

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:00

Well, I'm gonna I mean, tell you the truth, Tony. Like this is this is what we're suffering from. This is the leadership crisis that's taking place across the Department of War right now. It is exactly why I wrote the open letter that I did to the PAO community today. It is everything that is wrong with leadership and discipline and good order and discipline is the fact that if someone doesn't like an order, they can just decide that they can get around it. It's why what I mean, I'm to take this real big picture. It's why what those senators said in that video is so dangerous. Because it's giving people carte blanche to say, well, I don't think that order's legal. I no, that that that's not how the military works. If you are the person in charge of something and it's your responsibility to fix the problem, you fix the problem. You don't go crying to somebody else because you don't like what someone's had to say to you, or you don't want to do whatever it was they wanted you to do. That that's not that's not how we lead, and and that's not how we build discipline. So take me back to what happens after you get relieved. Is there an invent there's the investigation starts to play out?

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:22

And then so he comes and tells you I'm suspended, told you that part, and I'm literally suspended for 30 days exactly. Like I'm suspended for exactly 30 days, okay. And one note to follow here is no 15.6 was ever conducted to this day, none. And I know for a fact that in the day or two after the night in question, they were gonna do one because two oh six colleagues of mine came forward and told me that they were approached to be the investigating officer of my case. And they recused themselves, but then like a couple days later, I heard nothing about it. So when I asked my use of my chief of staff what's going on with the 15.6, she said, Yeah, we looked at everything, we're not doing well, we're good to go. All they went off of was the law enforcement report created by the same MPs who went into my house.

SPEAKER_04: 1:06:22

That's insane, Tony. You didn't even get an investigation. So for my audience who don't know, which I think most people know by now because it's mostly a military audience, but the 15.6 is the investigation. And so if you are going to bring up charges against somebody or even non-MC US CMJ charges, you have to have an investigation. You have to have an investigating officer, you have to do a finding of facts, you have to do this whole report where you interview witnesses. It's it's really not a very great process because you can choose who the witnesses are. There's no discovery, there's there's all these problems with it, but it's something. And so you're telling me they didn't even do that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:01

They didn't do any of that, and I got it. There's flaws with the 15.6, but I welcome the 15.6 because any common sense person would be hard to hide the facts that they found. And the MPs fabricated and manipulated the their own law enforcement report to fit their narrative to hide the fact that it went into my house illegally. So they did that. And here's and here's why I tell you this that dinner that night, there's 140 attendees, attendees. 140. One of them was a former three-star superintendent who later testified on my behalf in court. Guess how many people they interviewed that attended there? Zero. Big zero. They interviewed five DCA employees, only two of which I interacted with, and then they had the MPs, and that was it. And my deputy and somebody else. That was it. So fabricated story. Crazy, crazy.

SPEAKER_04: 1:08:02

So they went, they went, they so from court, they didn't have a 15-6, they just had the um the statements. They just they just had the MP paperwork.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:13

The MP law enforcement report. They had the MP's report, okay, and a and a and a the like the the MPs, the DA guard, my deputy, my sergeant major, um, and then and then a couple DCA employees that just fabric like nothing fit, everything fit their narrative, nothing was the truth. Grossly mischaracterized or made up.

SPEAKER_04: 1:08:38

But this wasn't a court martial, was it? What was this? This was here's the funny part.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:42

I didn't go, I didn't go under UCMJ. So here's the other thing. This is where the SGA, we haven't talked about the SGA yet because their incompetence is ridiculous at West Point. It's ridiculous, their incompetence, and probably their deliberate whatever vindictiveness. But they charged me because DWI is a traffic citation, believe it or not, and most installations now cater to the state you're in. So you handle all those things off post in the in the local whatever. So if you get a parking ticket at West Point, you go to the Southern District of New York and do your thing. You get a speeding ticket, parking ticket, you know, accident, whatever. Um DWI is no different. You got to go to so I went to White Plains, New York, and I didn't, I and I had to go to federal, I was charged in federal court. And so, long story short, I got suspended, and then I got relieved the 30 days to the day after. And here's how I got relieved. This is another part of the story I didn't tell on the thing on the Slad Khan's thing. My wife's got cancer. I don't want to I don't want to sound pouty or break break any bad things here on the thing, but she's got stage four cancer, and so she's been going to treatment all the time. So on this particular day, I'm at her treatment appointment at her Memorial Sloan Kettering satellite office in White Plains, New York, close to White Plains. And uh I get a phone call at about one o'clock or 11 o'clock in the morning, excuse me, and it's the superintendent's executive officer, and she's like, Hey, can you come in this afternoon at like three? The superintendent wants to talk to you. And I said, I can't. She's like, Well, why not? Like she like she's mad at me, like, why not? I'm like, because I'm at a medical appointment for my wife, and he didn't tell me ahead of time, so I can't do it. I will not, I will not make it back by three o'clock. So these they read, they decide to schedule it at like two days later, like on a Wednesday. I forgot what it was, but I went later, like the next day or the day after. And I hung up with her and I was curious as to what's this about? Oh, because all she told me was, I don't know what it's about. Because I asked her, but he wants to talk to you along with the MCOM commander, installation management commander. They both want to talk to you. I said, okay, that's weird. But I'm like, okay. And again, I'm still on this facade of like things are gonna work out, like, sort of. Um, because the 30 days leading up to this, I would run into the superintendent on post, just doing my normal thing, smoking cigar, walking my dog. He would stop and talk to me, joke with me. How's life? How's everything going? Like, how's your wife? Like, like I thought, like, nothing of it. Total, total sham. Total sham. So I uh, and it's Sergeant Major saying these buddy check texts, which were so stupid. They say, Oh, buddy check, how you doing, buddy check.

SPEAKER_04: 1:11:30

But anyway, um, these are all just like ways to placate you, and these are all like very insulting ways to looking back on it, they're just covering their ass. Covering their butts, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:42

So, so I uh I call my raider, who's a civilian two-star SCS, senior executive service official. He's out of Fort Houston, Virginia. He was my raider at the time. So I call him and say, Hey, I call him and he's like, Hey, I'm in a briefing. I got about two minutes because I got to brief next. What do you got? I said, Hey, sir, I just got to call to meet the superintendent and the MCOM commander tomorrow. Do you know what it's about? And in true leadership, army fashion, the guy says to me, quote, yeah, you're probably getting relieved. I gotta go. It's my turn to brief. It hangs up on me. Last time I talked to my raider ever, that in that point. That's how I found out. That's exactly how I found out. You know, sitting in a hospital, my wife's getting treatment, and this guy just tells me you're probably getting relieved tomorrow. And nobody talked to me after that. So then I go to the superintendent's office the next day, and this is how stupid it was. I had to freaking report to a computer screen like I'm doing to you right now, because the MCON commander's out of San Antonio. He's on a he's on a uh platform like this, like Microsoft Teams, I believe it was. And I had to report to him on the computer screen in the soup's office, and it took him about two minutes to relieve me. He just said, I read the police report, and I've lost the faith in confidence I have a new to to uh lead the uh garrison at West Point. Any questions, give it to my legal advisor. He's online.

SPEAKER_04: 1:13:12

And you know what? None of these people want you to tell them what happened. They're they're nobody asks you. At this point, no one asks you. Nope, everyone's in cover your ass mode, and nobody wants to just hear what what the actual story is of what happened.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:25

So then here's the best part. So then I sit down. So now this is over, screens off. I'm in the superintendent's office, and I told myself going in, I'm not gonna show any emotion, I'm not gonna cry, I'm not gonna get pissed off, I'm just gonna say yes, sir, and that's it. Like, no, there's gonna be no argument at this juncture. It's just it's just to me, it wasn't pertinent. I'm just gonna, whatever you give me, I got it, and I'll collect my thoughts later. So I sit down on the couch in his office. He has a couch. So I'm on the couch, he's across from his chair, he has his lawyer with him, the SJA, and she's a she's a whole nother topic that we could talk about because she's not competent at all. She's sitting right there, and uh he's like, three times he says to me, I'm gonna give you a Gomar. Again, I'm the one giving you Gomar. General so-and-so gave you, he relieved you, I'm gonna give you like you want to make it known it was his prerogative that he's giving me this Gomar. So then the lawyer says, Well, sir, I think Tony should step outside because you know, I need to go over a few things. And he's like, No, he's already here, give me the thing, which tells me in my head, he hasn't seen that thing or read it yet. So he reads it to me the first time, to me, and in a very monotone, you know, whatever voice he has, he reads it to me. And uh when he and it and Ray Gomar's written, you probably know this. They're written like you're the worst thing that ever walked the earth based on what you say you allegedly did. And it makes you sound like a thug, like whatever, like whatever. He reads this to me, and I'm like horrified by it, but I'm like, I'm trying not to show any emotion. And then when he's done with that, he goes into this diatribe of like, I talked to General So-and-so, we both agree you don't have to retire. I have a few jobs here I think you'll be good at. Go home and talk to your wife. If you want to stay here for a couple years, I got a job for you. But if you really don't want to, I understand, I could try to find you a landing spot somewhere else if you want to stay in. But don't make a decision now, let me know. And by the way, make sure you rebut this. He's like, really rebut this. I'll give you extra time right now. Really rebut this. So I'm thinking, here's what I'm thinking at this time. Because you it's hard. I know the viewers won't agree with me on this, but I gotta say this. Up until this point, I liked working for this guy, right? I did everything for this guy. I didn't think I had a bad bone with him at all. Nothing.

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:00

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:01

I actually thought, I actually felt bad that he was put in a position based on the optics and the woke environment. We'll talk about that later. That he was kind of caught in this like quagmire where he had to do something. And since I had already gotten relieved and I knew that wasn't gonna get back, he could at least take care of me on the Gomar. Maybe he's gonna give it to me and follow it locally, kind of thing, you know?

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:23

And uh he could say face or whatever he wanted to do. That's what I'm thinking at this time, based on his language, he's telling me. And so I said, Roger out, you know, I sign off on the acknowledgement, I leave, and I go home, and I'm pissed off at the world. And uh I'm not even charged with anything yet. So here's the kicker: I'm not charged in federal court yet. This is now September. The incident happened in July. I get my Gomar in September, and I'm not even charged with anything yet. Why that's important? Because when I write my rebuttal, I write it from the vantage point of a guy playing the game. Because every lawyer I talk to says, you gotta show some remorse. I go by trust the process, but I didn't do anything.

SPEAKER_04: 1:17:11

That was exactly my guess last night, by the way. Like exactly what his lawyers told him to do. They said, just show remorse, act like you're sorry. And I understand that strategy. That's the strategy of just trying to de-escalate the situation and and figure out what you can do to just make it through where it where the situation is. Because if you start fighting back harder, then they start fighting back harder, and then it just goes like this. And so you were trying to I understand that advice, but you're not dealing with rational players. That that's the problem.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:48

I didn't realize that. But you didn't know that.

SPEAKER_04: 1:17:49

Do you think you're just to back up, do you think that the guy who wrote you the Gomar was trying to play both sides in that moment? Like he was trying to act like he was the good guy to not escalate the situation.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:59

I think looking back on now, the guy's a narcissistic person and he wanted to hammer me no matter what and show that he had power.

SPEAKER_04: 1:18:06

But why would he even play nice with you? He could have just been a jerk out of the because he's so narcissistic.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:11

So I go to therapy, so my therapist tells me this, and yeah, so uh I've had this conversation, and he's so narcissistic that he wants everyone to like him, even though he's screwing him.

SPEAKER_04: 1:18:22

Oh god, yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:25

I got I can give you, I can give you another story later about how I know this is real. We'll get to that next time. I'm okay with talking about it now because I'm retired, but but uh so I so I I do the Gomar, and and my advice to any of your listeners if you're ever in a situation where you're being investigated and you're actually being charged with something, I would never write a rebuttal. I just wouldn't do it. Because the one sentence in my rebuttal, and I have it memorized, I said, quote, although I don't admit guilt to any of the allegations in this Gomar, I do acknowledge poor decision making on my part with alcohol consumption, government vehicle usage, and dealing with employees.

SPEAKER_04: 1:19:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:14

That was my playing the game sentence.

SPEAKER_04: 1:19:16

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:17

All my lawyers' words myth. Of course, put it in, but then but then but then the other three pages of the Gomorra totally counter exactly what they're allegating, uh, the allegations they're giving me. They're just good, you know, go through it. So I would and the the judge later in court, she used that to not drop the charges that sentence.

unknown: 1:19:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:40

We asked for charges to be dropped, and and she said, Your client willingly expressed he did something in his own words, and he willingly came out of his house despite the quote unquote your alleged illegal entry, and so because I wasn't carried out of my house and I walked out, she made it fair game for everybody. So that was a whole nother thing.

SPEAKER_04: 1:20:07

But a DMV judge then ruled in my favor that the the the entry was illegal, so but so I'm trying to understand the two cases because I'm trying to remember from Assad's uh podcast because he was the first person who brought your story out. So you're saying the judge did not drop the charges, but is that the judge at the federal court or the judge at the D is there two courts here that DMZ court?

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:32

So so so just so I do the Gomar, he files it permanently.

SPEAKER_05: 1:20:37

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:38

Everybody files it permanently. And how I found out about the permanent filing was a three to four o'clock p.m. Friday afternoon email from a paralegal from West Point. Here's your decision, filing decision. Have a good weekend, Colonel Bianchi.

SPEAKER_03: 1:20:53

Of course.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:54

The attachment is we decided to file it permanently, right?

SPEAKER_04: 1:20:57

Which is obviously ruins your leadership 101 again.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:00

You know, no one directs talks to me directly, it's just an email from a paralegal on a Friday afternoon.

SPEAKER_04: 1:21:05

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:06

So now it's filed permanently. So now I'm pissed off because that's now a taint of my legacy more because it's in my file, which I'm pissed off about. I'm Italian, so that matters to me. So, you know, now I have to go through this legal process, and I'm not charging it. I don't get formally charged in the federal court system till October of 2023. I got arrested July 23rd, I don't get charged till October. Think about that. And when I get charged, it actually started off as five charges. Then one got dropped because the MPs are idiots, because there's no there's no such thing as that charge. And then the last four charges were improper use of a vehicle in the third degree, disorderly conduct, DWI, and roll on a stop sign. Failure to obey a uh traffic sign is what it was. And uh the third degree in the here's the funny part: the third degree in the government vehicle basically says I stole the vehicle, I took it without permission, which it's my assigned vehicle with my keys. I have access to it 24-7. It's like my vehicle, anyway. Sure. And then as we get to court, that charge gets dropped. And I know why it gets dropped because I was gonna open up Pandora's box on all the things West Point does wrong with government vehicles, to include the boat rides on the superintendent boats, golf carts, TNP cars and vans, etc. I know all the skeletons that go on that don't follow Army policy, and it's funny when my case happened, certain things got changed post my arrest. Right, because they actually even moved the stop sign at the gate to where I actually stopped just to cover their ass. So it's kind of funny. I know, I know, and I'm probably gonna get shot or killed because I'm telling all the dirty laundry about this place, but I know enough about it. Um point is though, I didn't get charged till October, and then my lawyers filed a motion to have because of the illegal entry, they said this is a no-brainer. We'll file a motion. Hey, legal entry, everything collected on the illegal entry, and after that should be dropped to include my arrest because I was legally seized. Okay, and uh the judge, this is where it gets kind of law, kind of PhD puzzle magic here. The law the judge did not make a ruling in federal court on my illegal entry for or against it. She wouldn't rule on it, period. She simply said there's enough probable cause based on your alleged actions at Eisenhower Hall earlier that night that made you free game to be arrested anytime after, and that you willingly came out of your house on your own accord, according to your own words. Total BS logic, but whatever. The good news about that statement was my lawyer told us she left the door open in case I lost in court, I can appeal the illegal entry because she never ruled on it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:24:23

Good.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:24

So she was kind of doing us a favor. And my lawyer kept telling me the whole time, because he's had this judge before. He's like, I think she likes your case, but she's not going to be the X factor that determines the outcome. She either wants a plea deal to happen, government drop the charges, or you go to court, let the merits play out.

SPEAKER_04: 1:24:41

Okay. So then what happens?

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:43

So that's what happened. And uh, and to your question earlier, so I had the federal court process going on. Simultaneous to that, because I refused the breathalyzer, I had to do the judge. It doesn't matter what happened, it doesn't matter. If you refuse, you take it to court. It's your right to go argue what happens. And you go to DMV court in the state of New York, and the judge is gonna rule whether or not he or she is gonna take your driving privileges away for a year in the state of New York. Got it. And so I go there in December, I plead my case, or that uh the government pleads their case. It was so long, she had to make another appointment in January to finish it. That's when I played my case, and she ruled in my favor saying cases dropped, no one's he's not losing his driving privileges, and she stated on the record. He's like the defendant was uh coaxed out of his house by his friends who were who were uh taken out of his house by his friends who were coaxed by the MPs in violation of his four amendment fourth amendment rights over two hours after an event at West Point.

SPEAKER_04: 1:25:56

Sure. Wow, so basically she went against what the other judge said, really correct, correct.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:02

But this is before you went to court. This is even before I went to court. This had we had this before I went to court, before you went to the federal judge said got it, that's DMV court. We're federal court. I'm not looking at that, right?

SPEAKER_04: 1:26:14

Right, which shows you the subjective nature of this whole process, so and here's another part that I learned through this process.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:21

Trial court, it's so shady because every lawyer I would talk to at cocktail parties or whatever throughout my ordeal, I met a bunch of lawyers at reaching out to me, and uh their their whole thing was like, you could win this at appeal. I'm like, how about we fucking win this in trial? Well, you're all working, they're all working for appeal court, they're already thinking the next level. Okay, how about we win this right now?

SPEAKER_04: 1:26:52

Well, because I mean, honestly, this is a business. This is this is something that keeps them. I mean, no love attorneys, don't get me wrong, and and love the law, law, you know, and I'm not saying there aren't good attorneys out there, but the people that get really hurt over by this are the people who have to keep paying the attorneys. Because unfortunately, they know the law and they know these maneuvers and they know these motions, they know all these games. We don't know these games, and that's why I have these shows too. Because it's just crazy.

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:28

It's a shame that I even had to go to court because the biggest ordeal with this thing, besides the leadership tolerating the little entry into my home and letting this all happen, was all the evidence that I had that I used to exonerate myself with my my my defense team, the prosecution had it all along. They gave it to us.

SPEAKER_04: 1:27:48

Right, they could have dropped this. They it could have it. I know, and it could have been dropped, and it wouldn't have gotten this far, and you'd still be in post.

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:58

I mean, there's a video that shows literally the opposite of what they said, right? So that's the part that that uh it bothers me more than that than anything. So anyway, I I I go through I'm I'm I'm fighting the the uh DMV court process, win that. I'm in the federal court process, and then oh, by the way, there's this thing called the administrative process, which you know about in the army, that when they file the Gomar, I gotta go through an Army Grade Determination Review Board, you know, and so you have like three legal processes all kind of playing out at the same time. Yeah, but the but that but here's the here's the cool part the Army Grade Determination Review Board actually agreed with my lawyers that they would not hear my case until my court case played out. That's good, okay, because they were shocked that no 15.6 was done, right? They told my lawyer that they're like, there's no 15.6. I'm like, no 156.

SPEAKER_04: 1:28:52

Well, your grade determination review board, I believe, is the similar board to like the Navy's uh board of inquiry. I believe I could be wrong.

SPEAKER_01: 1:28:59

They were gonna determine whether I retired as a colonel or not.

SPEAKER_04: 1:29:02

Yeah, yeah. So someone in the audience can correct me, but I'm pretty sure that it's a navy, it's the same as the Navy's board of inquiry, and so you that's what you were going through, is a grade review determination board. Okay, so let's let's go back to what so in federal court, you've you lose that case, uh, because the judge or she dropped.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29:20

Oh so so anyway, so I I win DMV court, I lose all my pretrial motions.

SPEAKER_04: 1:29:26

Oh, I see.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29:27

Okay, well now it's time to go to court, and so I elect to use a jury, yep, which frickin' blew a wad with the JAG attorney because they're not used to that. And so we literally in front of me, I hear the senior paralegal tell the captain jag attorney, who's an idiot, um, you can't handle this. We got to bring this up to the state to the Southern District of New York, they gotta take this case. U.S. attorney's gonna take this case. And so my lawyer and I was like, that's a good thing because. Now it's outside the army and it's outside of West Point. Somebody with common sense is gonna look at this case and go, it's a third case. And so we're all fired up, like this is awesome. And then like two weeks later, we find out the U.S. attorney not only wants the case, they went harder after me. Harder. Like they were like trying to really hammer me in federal. So here's the funny part: I would come home at night from a motion hearing with the U.S. attorney or a trial during the week of the trial, because the trial was five days, and I would turn on my TV at my house and I would see Trump in the same court that I'm in, Southern District of New York.

SPEAKER_04: 1:30:38

That's just bizarre.

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:40

Two different scales, two different scales, but like the similarities are there. And I'm like, are you freaking kidding me? And I to this day, I don't know why they took the case. Our only theory is either the superintendent or the Jag of the Army or somebody influential called over to the said, Hey, you need to hammer this guy. You got to prosecute this guy. And uh, because there's there was no there was no evidence, there's nothing. Yeah, there's nothing. And they prosecuted me. And the sad part is I win the case, I'm found not guilty on DWI, I'm found not guilty on disorder conduct. I get charged with disobeying a stop sign, and I have to pay a$150 fine, like that happens to most Americans, and then uh they dropped the misuse of the vehicle charge prior to court, so I never get never get tried on that. And uh it's funny because all this stuff happens to me, and the federal court is like a 99% winning percentage. Why would you take this case? Like, why would you take this case?

SPEAKER_04: 1:31:48

Because every time 99% of people that go to federal court win.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:52

No, no, no. I'm saying the the the Southern District of New York doesn't lose a case, they don't take cases they can't try.

SPEAKER_04: 1:31:58

I see 99% of the time the prosecution wins.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:02

Yeah, they don't they don't waste their time or resources. Why me?

SPEAKER_04: 1:32:06

So the the part that also doesn't make sense to me is that you had a good relationship with the superintendent. I did. What the heck happened? Do you have any idea?

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:16

So I have two thoughts. I have two thoughts. Number one, everything's about team him. Uh, so if anything infringes upon his perception of who he is or how he runs his organization, doesn't matter who he who he had a relationship with, he's gonna burn you because he wants to protect himself. That's my first opinion.

SPEAKER_06: 1:32:36

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:37

Second opinion, which is gonna get a little political. I know this, and some of your listeners may get pissed off of me, but I don't care. Um, I never bought into the whole woke thing fully. I never bought into that. I I mean, I I never to be fair, be to be very fair, I never really personally saw it in my in my interactions. I've heard about it, I can understand the logic behind it, but I never really saw it in action. So I was like, yeah, whatever. So one of my friends would talk about it, I would just kind of blow it off. Right. But one of my lawyers, uh friend of yours told me this too, um, Bill Brown, you know, and a couple other guys, and uh they told me here's the scenario you have a female MP company commander, you have a Hispanic DES director, Lieutenant Colonel, you have an Hispanic DES sergeant major, you have a Asian female chief of staff at USMA, you know, you have a African American three-star installation management commander, right? And now and all these folks are anti-me in this scenario, right? And you have a female SJA, by the way, as well. All these folks are anti-me. And then you got a white male three-star superintendent at West Point. Who's to say he was chicken shit to go up against the woke lineup arrayed against him? Yeah, that's how my lord is.

SPEAKER_04: 1:34:09

It's it's it's sad that that can play a role, but we know based on the politicization of the military, and what I think. In fact, I will be having a person who is very skilled on DEI issues come on my show soon to talk about how this issue has permeated not only the military, this isn't just a military issue, this is a academia issue, this is a corporate America issue, this is a why Trump won issue. I mean, the DEI issue is something that has impacted and touched so many people, and so many people think it's something that it isn't, in my opinion. And I'm okay saying that. I'm okay saying that what people thought it was, which was inclusivity and diversity of teams, which was a good thing, in my view, turned into a very damaging and bad thing because it overfocused on identity. It made it so that identity was the number one consideration versus teamwork, unity, merit, work and it creates unfair advantages for whatever class is the chosen class of the moment, whether that's transgender, whether that's women, whether that's Hispanic, whether that's black, doesn't matter. It it creates an unfair divide. And so I can understand why that could have played a factor. That wasn't the only factor in your case, Tony. There are so many dynamics that were going on in your case. It was like the perfect storm of just all these factors.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:50

I challenged my lawyer on that that that thought he had, and he all he said to me was tell me it couldn't happen. Prove to me why that couldn't happen. I couldn't.

SPEAKER_06: 1:36:00

No.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:01

And I and I've served with a lot of, trust me, I've served a lot of awesome female officers. The my majority I've ever served were great, deserved to be where they deserve to be. Sure, minorities, etc. Yeah. I'm not saying so please don't take this as they don't deserve. My point is, you don't know if one of those people deserved to be there because of their merit, or were they there because of whatever color they were or gender they were. Right. I'll give you a case in point. The SJ is a female. The only reason why she was there, she wasn't picked there because of her law proudness, her law understanding. She was picked there because she's married to one of the department heads at West Point, who's permanent faculty until 65. Yeah, so they put her in that position.

SPEAKER_04: 1:36:49

Well, and I believe that I mean back in the day, you know, before it was called woke or DEI, it was called affirmative action. And I remember even as a child, I would, you know, because I've always been somewhat of a debater and somebody that liked to have thoughtful conversations and could stand up for my beliefs and wouldn't get personally attacked for it. And I always felt that affirmative action actually hurts the people that it's supposed to be protecting. And the reason it hurts them is because now they're getting pushed to the front of the line or they're getting, you know, having a lower standard of a score that they can have to get in. And it's just putting them on a level on a playing field now with people that are far surpassing them in competence or strength or whatever the test is. And it ultimately just hurts them because now everybody around them sees that they're not as competent, sees that they they aren't as as capable. And I don't want to be in that position. I don't want to be in the position where I got a combat arms job because I needed they needed women in that combat arms job. No, I want to have the strongest and the toughest people in that position. And if that's only going to be men, because that's what the enemy is going to bring to the table, are the strongest and toughest men. Well, then so fucking sorry, I don't mean to cuss, but so be it.

SPEAKER_06: 1:38:17

I curse all country sound apologies.

SPEAKER_04: 1:38:19

I mean, I'm just saying that that's the conversation that we need to have, and that's the conversation that everyone is scared to have, and we still haven't seen that kind of conversation across DOW. At some point, I would love to see more of that conversation, but back to your story. Sorry, don't mean to go into that too.

SPEAKER_01: 1:38:37

No, no, that's great. So, so anyway, the thing gets filed permanently.

unknown: 1:38:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:38:43

Um, here's the part that I haven't told a lot of people about, but I'll tell you on your show. So I requested an open door with the superintendent once my stuff got filed. I texted him on that Friday. He wrote back on a Sunday and I said, Sir, I need to see you. And I basically said I gotta get some things off my chest. So he he to his credit, he acknowledged it and accommodated me. And I saw him that following Monday in his office, me and him. That was it. Nobody's in there. So I preface everything I'm gonna say by saying, whatever I say, it's my version of events, and I guarantee you he can counter it because no one else could say who's right or who's wrong. But I'm just gonna tell you what he told me. So I go into his office, we spend about an hour in his office, I go in there, and I start I thank him for his time. I'm trying to be courteous and professional. And as I start to dive into what I want to talk about, he abruptly stops me, and I'll never forget it because he goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Which is kind of awkward to me to say that on this set here, but that's what he did. He's like, I watched the video of you going through the fair gate, and I think you did nothing wrong driving your vehicle. And I literally, I don't remember if I cursed or not, so I'm not gonna say I did. I could have, but I remember jumping off my seat going, then why in the heck am I being charged with a DWI by you? And instead of answering that, he says, quote, but you did do something wrong at Eisenhower Hall. And I remember saying, sir, that's funny you say that. Let's talk about it. I did not because you were there, and we laid out all the issues, and at the end I had him basically saying to me, I guess you're right. I need to be smarter on the friction between DCA and the garrison. I need to do a better job looking into that.

SPEAKER_04: 1:40:41

Oh, I'm so mad listening to this.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40:44

He tells me this, and then he says, however, you did drive in a government vehicle with your buddy to the hotel there. And I said, Sir, you know what? You're right. I did. And I wasn't even gonna argue that. But if that's where you want to, you know, hit me up with, then why don't you make the entire ordeal about me driving the government vehicle while this other stuff? You know, and we went on this tirade about why I thought it wasn't that big a deal and blah, blah, blah. But I said, the end of the day, make it about the car. Why all this other stuff? Just say, hey, I relieved them because they drove a car.

SPEAKER_04: 1:41:22

You're just dealing with really crappy leaders. That at the end of the day, that's what this is.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41:26

This is just and he didn't he didn't answer that. He didn't answer it. I forgot what he did, he didn't do anything. So then I said to him, Are you telling me that you're okay with people going into my house illegally without a warrant at three in the morning? And he said, Hey, he's like, he's like, I really thought I had a, you know, Tony had a good case here. I talked to my legal team, and my legal team said to him, quote, no, what they did was legally sufficient. And when I asked him about legally sufficient what that meant, he says, I cannot tell you that because you have charges coming. So I can't get into that. I'm like, Really? Legally sufficient? Okay, so you're okay with that. So then I said, Sir, I got two more questions and I'll leave you alone. He's like, What are they? And I said to him, I said, uh, you already told me you're not okay with you're you're legally sufficient going to my house. I go, Were you okay with you or the other three-star general not doing a 15-6 on me? Like not doing a 15-6. And he goes, What do you mean? And I said, Sir, I'm the garrison commander or charge of the military police who wrote the police. He says, I have a police report. Why should I do one? I say, sir, because I I'm in charge of those police who wrote the police report. I said, You don't see a conflict of interest, I rate and senior rate those military police, and they are potentially vindictive towards me for things I've been holding accountable for, and you don't see a conflict of interest to mitigate. And his exact quote as a three-star general in the United States Army was like a private.

SPEAKER_02: 1:43:17

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01: 1:43:18

That's what he said to me. I didn't think of it that way.

SPEAKER_02: 1:43:20

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01: 1:43:22

Are you comfortable saying the last thing I asked him was after all this, how could you find it in your conscience to file my gomar permanently? And he's again goes to the whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I read all the paperwork, all the reports, I watched all the videos, and I saw nothing based on your rank and position that you deserved a local filing. And I said, We just spent 45 minutes debating things you said I didn't do wrong. How does that and and he's like didn't answer? And I said something like, Sir, you know I'm not gonna stop. I'm gonna fight you in court. And he left me with this one sentence. I hope you have a good lawyer.

SPEAKER_04: 1:44:09

Well, you know what? I hope one day you name who this person is, and I hope one day he's held accountable. That's all I'll say.

SPEAKER_01: 1:44:18

Yeah, we'll just leave it there. He's the current superintendent of West Point right now. People can figure that out.

SPEAKER_04: 1:44:24

Right. I I'm I'm just absolutely disgusted at the story you're sharing with me.

SPEAKER_01: 1:44:29

He's not a good leader.

SPEAKER_04: 1:44:30

No, I mean that's the bottom line. But but he is indicative of so many of these good of these quote unquote good leaders. And the problem is that we're seeing all these people get relieved, and people are wondering why. Well, anyone needs to look no further than to listen to the story that you're telling me here, and you can see why so many people are getting relieved. And it's really unfortunate. And I all I can say is that thank you so much for having the courage to share this story. Because by you sharing this story, more people will speak up and they'll say, Wait a minute, that's my story too.

SPEAKER_01: 1:45:08

I hope so.

SPEAKER_04: 1:45:09

I hope so too. No, they will. The guy yesterday shared, he wrote a whole book about it. It's a very similar story to yours.

SPEAKER_01: 1:45:16

So it's it's funny you say a book. I'm I'm in the finishing touches of my book. It's titled Duty Honor Country Betrayal. And uh it's a it's it's gonna be a case study in you know what happened to me and how leadership fails, and you know, the outcome-based approach, you know, the processes of the punishment, undue command influence, you know, jagoffs being Jagoffs, you know, the whole it's all in there. Um, and it's uh I think it's gonna be a good book for folks to read, and I really hope that it actually gets taken up that seriously that I think leaders should read it as a warning. Because my fear is what happened to me, and this is a real thing I think about, I think it's a national security issue. Here's why. There are a lot of guys and gals who do a really good job in the army or whatever service they're in, and they rise to the level, they aspire to be battalion, brigade, squadron, whatever, wing commanders, brigade commanders. And uh the question is, why would you command? Like, why? Why put yourself? You already made colonel, why command? You could be a staff weenie doing whatever. Why would you command? You put yourself at risk with all these landfalls. I agree.

SPEAKER_04: 1:46:27

You do.

SPEAKER_01: 1:46:28

And my point is there's got to be a thing called command, you know, commander's discretion, leader discretion, where folks can look at things and say, okay, he or she made a mistake, it's not that bad, or they didn't do it at all and just make the call. Yeah, instead, they allow the advisors, the JAG officers to be now the deciders, and they just acquiesce to them. Yes, they do and and and to me that's sad because it actually weakens our force.

SPEAKER_04: 1:46:57

Well, and they investigate everything, they in everything is an investigation, everything, and nobody wants to be the one to say this is bullshit. Let's drop this. This isn't a real case.

SPEAKER_01: 1:47:09

It is bullshit. The army I joined in 1997 is not the army of 2025.

SPEAKER_04: 1:47:14

No, I'm in the same position you are, Tony. It's not the same Navy that I joined in 1996.

SPEAKER_01: 1:47:22

And the sad part is every mentor I talked to, who are predominantly all retired three-stars or general officers of some rank, none of them were surprised that happened to me.

SPEAKER_04: 1:47:33

I know.

SPEAKER_01: 1:47:34

And it's like it's what happens. Like, why is that?

SPEAKER_04: 1:47:39

Well, it's because not enough people are speaking up who are still on active duty. And I and I really do believe that that's where this is this comes from, is that people are being silenced into speaking up. That was what my open letter is about. It's about the fact that our own communities are silencing each other into speaking up. And there is a way to speak up and speak out and to still have your First Amendment protections, and you have to be 100% transparent with what you're doing. And that's what I did. That's the reason I retired as an 05 with all of my benefits intact. But I also knew that they were going to keep harassing me and trying to retaliate against me because of the fact that I had a podcast. Because I was a public affairs officer with a podcast. And at some point I had to make the decision that this isn't the Navy.

SPEAKER_01: 1:48:28

You were threatening them.

SPEAKER_04: 1:48:29

I was. You were a threat. I was. And it's unfortunate because behind closed doors and in private settings, I would have had the same conversation with them that I'm having with you right now. And I always compare it to my two years at NATO. Now, don't get me wrong, NATO didn't make any of the great grand sweeping changes or make NATO better or anything, but they always listened. Jay Jansen, the strategic community comms guy, uh Richard Hyde, the PAO, they were just good people and they would listen.

unknown: 1:49:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_04: 1:49:02

All right. And that's all I ever wanted from my own community was just to listen. If you don't want to make the changes, if you want to keep things the same, if you don't want to innovate, fine, whatever. But at least hear people out and be willing to have the conversation. And they weren't. They, in fact, if they saw that you were bringing up issues, they would find ways to subtly retaliate against you. And I I talk about that in in a recent podcast that I did and also in an open letter. And I'm just talking about the PAO community, but it's happening everywhere. It's happening across I had people contact me from all sorts of designators, the nurse corps, uh, people outside the military. I mean, this is a leadership issue that that is very persuasive, pervasive. So tell me about what happened with your grade review determination board.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49:49

So I was found satisfactory serving as a colonel, and I was able to retain my rank and retire honorably. And uh it's funny, every time things left the army outside of the U.S. attorney's office, the DMV court, a federal jury, and the Army Grant Turner Board, everybody ruled in my favor. Everyone thought it was ridiculous.

SPEAKER_02: 1:50:12

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50:12

It just shows you the the conspiracy within the the bubble that goes on.

SPEAKER_04: 1:50:20

Around at the top.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50:22

It's terrible. It's it's actually terrible.

SPEAKER_04: 1:50:24

I mean, you've I'm sure you've heard the case with Captain Bradley Geary. His book's coming out, the last books, I think, is publishing his story soon. He was also on the Sean Ryan show. His his I mean, his situation and what they put him through is a carbon copy of what they put you through. I mean, it's just honestly, it's like a it's like a playbook. It really is at this point.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50:42

And what I didn't talk about, I'll leave it at this, is when this all happened, once while while I was in purgatory, I call it purgatory. While I was in purgatory waiting for court to play out, they started just doing all kinds of 15-6s on me as a leader for different things that all came up unfounded. They were just trying to find anything on me to add to the picture of who I was as a person.

SPEAKER_04: 1:51:05

What do you mean? They were trying to do 15-6s, like they're trying to start it, start other.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:09

Oh, so the FP Company commander launched a 15-6 on me after I was arrested on um fraudulent abuse of between me and my previous start major, allowing him to work outside while he's in the army and give me kickbacks.

unknown: 1:51:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:25

While not on proper leave during the transitional timeline. And then there was another 15-6 and launched on me, I believe, from the USMA uh chief of staff about my civilian deputy who was using tobacco in federal buildings. He used to chew a cigar stub at meetings, but never lit it up, just chewed on it. And he was doing it before I got there. He did it when I was deputy athletic director. I watched him at meetings. Every swinging person who's an 06 and above watched him do it and nobody corrected him. But all of a sudden, now I'm the guilty animal because I'm a bad leader, because he's my deputy. But at the dean, the comm, the soup, every 06 all saw this guy chewing a cigar in his mouth. And then the other one they launched to me was uh I wasn't following following proper telework policies per Usuma policy. But what the investigating officer didn't realize when she interviewed me was at the time as Garrison Commander, I didn't fall under Yusuma, I fell under uh installation management command, and their policy was different. And she goes, Oh, this is done.

SPEAKER_04: 1:52:27

Yeah, they were just they were just trying to look trying to search for the colour.

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:31

Right. Anything.

SPEAKER_04: 1:52:34

So okay, now let's fast forward because I'm gonna try to wrap this call up a little bit. Uh where are we where are we at now? So you've you're out of the army, uh, you uh got your rank as an 06, and you're working on a book. Um, you're settled down in Florida. How are things now?

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:56

Things are great. I'm down here in Florida where I'm from. I'm living by my dad and my brother, and my wife's, you know, her whole family's down here, so life's good. We just bought a house and uh we got our household goods delivered actions past Friday, believe it or not, which is crazy. What you don't see here, there's boxes everywhere. So I got pictures behind me just to make it look like I'm official, but I'm not. Um but uh I substitute teach right now at a private high school here, and I coach football. I'm an assistant coach on a football team here. I coach the inside linebackers, having a great time. We just lost in the playoffs last Friday. And I got a couple job opportunities in the works right now with an energy company and uh and uh another another company that I can't name right now, but uh we're working on some things. But uh life is good, life is really good. I actually filmed a commercial that's gonna come out, which is kind of funny. Uh, you'll see that later. It's it's for USAA, which I think is funny. Um and uh and uh life's good. I mean, good. I'm only doing this, and I want to make this very clear. I have a lot of friends who my friends are are in two camps. One camp's like keep talking, do what you gotta do, hold people accountable. One camp's like, get over yourself, stop talking about it, move on with your life. And I get both sides. I do get both sides. Me too. I'm doing this because number one, I love the army. I did. I would not have served 27 years and nine months if I didn't. The army has given my family and I so much opportunity. It's unbelievable. And I can't, I can't reiterate enough. And anyone who won who's even remotely interested in joining, I will talk 100% positively about it and have them join. Number two, I love my alma mater. I'm a West Point graduate. I love West Point. I love the the mission of the academy. I love my time there. I love what they're trying to do. And the actual process of training and indoctrinating the cadets to do what they got to do to be good officers, that process is not a problem. That process is great. My problems with the big army and these weaponization of the of the judicial system for things that aren't even a thing. Right because they want to have a metric that they're in power and they can never take the idea that whatever was alleged maybe didn't happen. Like I told my boss in that open door conversation, I even said to him, just because the police were called to the scene of something doesn't mean something happened.

SPEAKER_04: 1:55:26

They were just common sense.

SPEAKER_01: 1:55:29

Right? And he was standing, but well, the police were called, the MPs were called. I go, yeah, but I didn't do anything. Right. And so my point is, I'm doing this to hopefully I'm only one voice, and I got it, the system's way bigger than me. But here's the deal I had a violation of my constitutional rights violated, and every time I got promoted, I took an oath to support and defend that constitution, and so did every senior officer who promoted me. And I know that superintendent did, I know the inflation management commander did, and they are they're hypocritical because they allow it to happen. They could have done something in my case, and they did not, and they need to answer for that.

SPEAKER_04: 1:56:09

I would agree with you, they need to answer for it, period. And that's that's why I do my show. In fact, I had another troll on LinkedIn that I had to block today who said, You seem to be very angry for somebody who's gotten so much and is retired as an 06 and had all your benefits, blah, blah. And I was just like, number one, I am not gonna this is somebody who had been repeatedly harassing me. Once you've shown me who you are with a pattern of harassment, I I'm not gonna even engage you in conversation. I'm just now going to block you because you don't deserve real estate on my page. But number two, like you, I freaking love the Navy. I could do five, 10, 20, 50 podcasts about all the amazing experiences I've had in the Navy. But guess what? Life is not black and white. I mean, there are going to be days that I'm gonna talk about the things that we need to fix. There's going to be days that I'm gonna talk about how great things were, and there's gonna be days that I'm gonna talk about things that have nothing to do with one way or the other. I'll be talking about somebody's service dog or something else because that's life. And I think that what you're doing takes a lot of bravery. I'm of the camp, don't stop. I'm also of the camp, tell all the good too. And and and and that's part of the story. The story is also a story of service, a story of doing great things for the army, a story of being proud of your army service. And I believe both things can exist at once. You can want to fix the things that are bad, but then you can also love serving. And that's what we need. We need people who are not afraid to speak up, say how much they love it, but then at the same time say what they need to fix. And just like Bill Brown here said, not enough people are speaking up. Oh, it's so true. I see that so true, or maybe I just said that, but that's the point, is that we need to have people that are not afraid to say, I love the service, but I also love to see us fix it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:58:04

Yep. And the lastly answer, I fully answer your question. So I'm doing a lot of stuff in Florida now, but simultaneously for the situation, you know, I have I have retained an attorney and I filed a federal tort claims act against my Fourth Amendment rights being violated. So that's in the process right now. We expect some answer back from the Army sometime, I think January is their deadline. And then uh um I've actually appealed my Gomar. And the funny thing is, this past week I got an email back from the Army Board of Corrections, Army Board of Records, correct whatever the whatever it's called, uh Corrections.

SPEAKER_04: 1:58:42

I don't know what you're gonna call it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:58:44

Yeah, some terrible acronyms, but anyway, that that board. Uh I appealed my Gomar a long time ago, and uh I finally got an email back saying that my status of my appeal was sent to the congressional liaison inquiries office. So when I asked about that, I go, I'm not, I didn't file a congressional, I filed a complaint with the army, and she won't answer that. She goes, because I asked her first, what does the CLI do for me? And they go, they handle complaints by constituents. And I go, but I didn't file with them, I filed with the army, so why is it there? And so that's in the play right now. So that's that's what I'm doing as far as this goes, besides writing my book. Um, and and then we'll hope for the best. I mean, I know there's a gray area with the the Ferris things and and and the whole you know Federal Tort Claims Act, but my lawyer thinks we have a case because I don't think it's because you serve you give them your right to privacy. Yeah. I mean, we can't even go into a soldier's room without that. So think about that.

SPEAKER_04: 1:59:44

Right. No, I agree with you. I agree with you. Well, I want to you guys to you to you guys to stay focused on this case, like all of our cases. And I always update people when I hear new information on the cases. So, Tony, let's keep in touch and you let me know. Oh, we're definitely. As definitely. As the months as please do. And I really appreciate the fact that you took the time to come on the Story as a Service podcast. Is there anything else that you want to say to the audience as we're wrapping up the call?

SPEAKER_01: 2:00:14

I'll just reiterate. I love the army. I love an alma mater. This is not an attack on the army or my or West Point. It's not. I know Asad Khan gave me, kind of poked me a little bit saying, don't care about that. I care about that because they gave me the life I have today. And this is me trying to make the process better, the system's better. And if this can happen to me as the Garrison Commander at West Point, mind you, it'll happen to anybody. And people need to know this is what happens. And what I've learned through my ordeal is a lot of folks just don't want to admit that the institution or the process that they've stood behind for decades could do something like they did to me. They don't want to believe it. They just don't want to believe it.

SPEAKER_03: 2:01:07

I know.

SPEAKER_01: 2:01:07

And I tell you right now, it's live and real. It's alive and real. It's a real thing. You know, your senior leaders are paralyzed by politics, by their own rice bowls protection, etc. And the fact that it did this to me, you need you need to you need to be aware of it. That's all I'm saying. We need to fix this. We need to fix this. Commanders that hope walk in on eggshells things by Higgsith, it's a real thing. It's a real thing. We need to fix it.

SPEAKER_04: 2:01:34

And there was a bunch of people who did make comments throughout the call. Uh fact from all platforms. I see people here from uh YouTube. There's people from LinkedIn. Uh so just want to say thank you. Sorry I didn't bring in a lot of these comments during the call, but I know you guys understand. I'm gonna go full screen, say goodbye to everyone. I'll meet you backstage, Tony, but thank you again for coming on the Stories of Service podcast. All right, guys, that's a wrap. Two shows this week. Uh, Thanksgiving week. So no shows later this week. I will be back next week with a couple new shows. Thank you so much for staying with me. I know this was another long one, but uh these kinds of cases they deserve a little bit more time. So, as I always close out these calls, please take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and enjoy the rest of your evening. Bye bye now.