Inside America's Most NOTORIOUS Prison: Inmate Exposes Truth About ADX Supermax Prison

This episode is brought to you by TXU Energy. For the first time ever, Texans have an energy plan that combines free nights all year with daytime summer savings. It's called Free Nights and Cool Summer. You get free nights every night all year long, plus a 25% bonus toward your daytime use all summer. It's a first-of-its-kind plan created for how Texans actually use energy. Discover how much more you could save with Free Nights and Cool Summer. TXU Energy. Energy for everything. Visit TXU.com for more information. Rep number 10004. Hank joined BJ's Wholesale Club the day he became a father of 30. I coach football. Now, Coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices, 30 pounds of pasta, three cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks. And that's just pregame. He knows teamwork, and BJ's knows savings. This is your home, Coach. Home of the save. Join for just $20 at bjs.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months. Open soon. Limited time offer, new members only. Home of the save. Peace is over. Peace is dead. I walked down the streets of Kansas City with a backpack full of guns and cocktails. I decided to throw the Molotovs at the office. For the next five days, I just went around shooting up places. ADX is not a joke mentally. That level of isolation has a deep impact on people. They chain you like a human X on a metal bed. Just please don't let me get killed in this prison. Please. Big roided up cops don't like it when you laugh in their face. They want to hurt us. They want to hurt you. Fight for yourself. Fight to win. My guest today is Eric King, former federal inmate who survived two years inside of the infamous ADX Florence, the highest security supermax prison in the United States. Eric is a radical left-wing activist who was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for firebombing a politician's office back in 2014. And while he was down, he suffered constant abuse at the hands of the prison guards, including beatings, starvation, and torture. But Eric is no punk. He fought back and f***ed up one of the guards so bad that they sent him to ADX Florence as punishment. Eric exposes what it's really like inside of one of the most hellish, isolating prisons in the world, and what it took for him to survive. He's written an amazing book about his experience called A Clean Hell, Anarchy and Abolition Inside America's Most Notorious Dungeon. I highly recommend it. A link to that will be in the description below. Ladies and gentlemen, what a fascinating conversation. This will make you want to stay out of prison. It's Eric King, and I'll see you in the next episode of The Connect, with Johnny Mitchell. Thank you so much. Enjoy. Let's do this. When I talk, people think I'm lying. Yeah. Because, like, the government doesn't do that. You're a baby. You're a pussy. Yeah. But I have the video, dude. Like, all the videos. So it's dope. That's American privilege. No, our government would never do that. Why on earth would you think they do that? Look, I know they're not perfect. It has their problems. That's what I get heard from my mom a lot. But, however. But then you go down to Mexico, and they're like, oh, they do this. Not only do they do this, but they do this. Not only do they do this, they do most of the killing, most of the crime. It's all led by them. It's like, it's rational, because they've lived it. They're self-aware, I'd say. You go down to Bolivia, they're like, oh, no, we stand together against this enemy that is the government. So I think we'll get there. But things have to get really bad. Like, that's just, that's how, you know, an alcoholic, a drug addict, they don't change. They don't start to become aware until they're complete. There's nothing. There's nothing left. Yeah. So thanks for being here. You are not a gang member, although some people looking at you right now, watching this, would think so. Tell us about your background a little bit, and then how you came to be in the system. Yeah. So I was born in Kansas City, born to a poor single mom. And that's where I got radicalized, was in KC, watching poor people get evicted from their homes. Seeing the sheriffs come and, like, throw people. And I was like, oh, my God, I'm going to be in jail. I'm going to be in jail. affiliated with this organization, you're not helpers for destroying generations of people yeah that was the epstein files of the early 2000s i remember when that scandal hit it was huge and devastating and i remember the church like suing people like to stop the truth from coming out i was like you rotten motherfuckers like i had nothing else take accountability immediately and start offering reparation start offering something but they did the exact opposite it's like you guys you're not living you're not living what you preach literally did you do any prison time like adult prison time before this situation with the feds i did jail time so i did a couple weeks in jail because i was at a protest and i hit a cop on the head with a flagpole um tough guy i'm just so tough uh such a badass um and then i did a couple weeks in county jail because i was at a soccer game with the ultras and the cops came and tried to tell us that we had to leave for chanting and stuff ultra um the people that have like flags and streamers and smoke bombs they're called ultras okay so they're not fighting like hooligans but they're putting on a display for their club um and so i was a supporting kansas city ultra uh and so i bopped that cop on the head with a flagpole too um and so that was a couple more weeks of juvie or not juvie but jail time this dumb stuff yeah but you're a real you got a real problem with authority that's just in you yeah i do and it's just a it's just a it's not a big deal but it's not a big deal it's not a big deal it's not a big deal it's not a big deal it's not a big deal it's not a big deal it's not a big deal it's not a big deal if someone's out there raping and you fuck up a rapist fine like whatever we can have that argument later but if i i'm at a soccer game i'm waving a flag you're gonna try to tell me no no yeah you don't get to do that and it's a microcosm of how the world works like how the police state works you remind me of like a hooligan from ireland you know those guys are not afraid to fuck up a cop throw a rock at a cop throw a molotov at a cop i grew up in glasgow i spent a lot of time in glasgow east glasgow scotland yeah and so i bounced back and forth in there in ireland um because i had family and so i was like i was raised ethical that makes a lot of sense now yeah that makes a lot of sense now okay hashtag celtic let's go let's go so and hence the ink and stuff like that i assume there's a lot of celtic imagery on you i don't even support celtic as a team i just love their ethics they're the most left-wing uh the green brigade leads the path they're like saint paulie leading the way in uh ethical ultra ism or hooliganism how do you feel about violent revolution like it kind of a what the ira engaged in during the troubles sure um i think it's important when we talk about something like ireland is that that is a defensive act like what they were doing was defensive we are being occupied right now and it's been 800 years of this shit going back to like crumwell and uh william the orange those bastards so it's been generational repression so if at this point you practice a peaceful civil rights movement like bernadette dorn and all them doing the civil stuff and you still got killed you're still having the udf show up at your house and kicking your door and burn your house down so at that point you're defending yourself and i don't feel like a repressed people can ever be judged for how they defend themselves i don't feel like a repressed people can have the burden put on them for violence when state violence is being apologized for so as long as those motherfuckers are occupying your streets and shooting your kids and burning down your homes and discriminating against you if you fight back what else are you supposed to do bloody sunday was a peaceful march it was an unarmed peaceful march and they killed 14 people so peace is over peace is dead okay so we talk about ireland all day of course no it's one of the most fascinating guerrilla warfare sectarian wars in the 20th century for sure um did you feel like you wanted that to happen in the u.s or did you feel like you wanted to kick something up like that in the u.s or do you think that's possible the u.s isn't a monolith so like we're so spread out and different regions have different cultures and different levels whereas the north of ireland they're all facing the same repression like south armagh dairy uh west belfast like these places are all facing the same repression and so you can unify across the two-hour span between their cities whereas in america st louis is three hours away or four from kansas city so there's no way to do that i understood that then but i did want that community i wanted a unified community to where we could stand up for marginalized people queer people black people brown people poor people some are all four um and so my i was hoping that we could have a kansas city that thrived on equity like equality as opposed to top bottom uh we have a great we have a good we have a decent we have it as good as possible we have it bad i hate that shit so i was hoping we could chop that down and make it horizontal um it didn't well speaking of st louis ferguson that's where this journey through the feds began yeah so tell us about that um so in ferguson missouri that was about three and a half four hours away from kansas city the police murdered a young man named michael brown and some people listening will say like oh he was a thug he was an animal he reached for the gun all this bullshit and they leave out the fact that there's an 18 year old kid who got shot in the back an 18 year old kid that was getting followed by this cop darren wilson i have a great memory uh i have a great memory uh i have a great yeah he pushed over like a shelf in a convenience store yeah right he was a young man he was a young man he was a punk he was young he was angry i don't even think he robbed the place like he just kind of you know it's a bitch-ass thing to do but again he was angry 18 year old kids do not have frontal no frontal lobes no and i recognize that they can still do bad stuff but they're not bad people at that age i don't feel any of them um and so when these cops were basically hunting this young kid from the back of the car he was like oh my god he's a thug he's a thug he's a thug he's a thug he's a thug he's a thug he was definitely annoying maybe maybe a punk move even uh but when they murdered him and i saw the response of the police it wasn't you know we shouldn't have done this it's unfortunate it was he's a thug and then the media picked up on it the media once again doing the police's bidding was like this horrible piece of shit they showed the worst pictures of uh they had darren wilson's thing talking about how he's an uncontrollable animal and i just imagine what if that was me and my mom had to hear that well how would how would that make her feel uh and so i developed a lot of empathy i always had it but that broke my heart and so i went to ferguson with a couple strangers i just carpooled there and offered just try to be a help how what do you need from you need me to hold water do you need me to move water you need me to stand on the front line you need me to be in the in the way of the national guard firing these rubber bullets at us yeah so there's protests in ferguson yeah i you know it was the biggest news in the nation at the time uh and yeah they had the riot cops out there it looked like 1964 in alabama like it was really bad optics you know poor black community poor community in general not just a national guard yeah and you have the national guard just you know they cause that causes more friction and tension than than it helps yeah right like it it's not when you show up looking like a fucking storm ship trooper with all of the military equipment of the state that doesn't bring the temperature down it just raises it naturally um but it makes it but of course they at the time the media was of course spinning it in the cops favor so this is where i just want to remind people what happened in ferguson and so you show up to this yeah okay and i wasn't on some white savior shit like i'll teach you how to revolt it was ally stuff what can i do to be an asset to you and then i was like oh my god i'm not gonna do that i'm not gonna do that i'm not gonna do that and then after three days there i went back i went back to kansas city and there was no uprising there was no anger there was no marches in the street there was none of that stuff kansas city essentially didn't seem to care um and that crushed me because i lay on like the futon of whatever house i was staying in or whatever squad i was sleeping in and i wouldn't smell tear gas i and so i felt so privileged that like why do i get to experience this peace but this poor community doesn't and that's what led to this series of direct actions which led to the current this episode is brought to you by txu energy for the first time ever texans have an energy plan that combines free nights all year with daytime summer savings it's called free nights and cool summer you get free nights every night all year long plus a 25 bonus toward your daytime use all summer it's a first of its kind plan created for how texans actually use energy to discover how much more you could save with free nights and cool summer txu energy energy for everything visit txu.com for more information rep number one zero zero zero four okay tell us what happened what were those actions yeah so once again i thought it was a i thought it was david gilbert i thought it was a real revolutionary year um so it started with small vandalisms like we would take credit cards and stick them in atms and then do super glue so like these banks that are financing the ferguson police we're gonna strike a blow um we do the same thing you take a toothpick and you stick it in a lock and break it now you can't unlock your door so these companies that are exploiting poor people in my community pay to loan places uh predatory banks stuff like that i'm getting your ass uh cricket wireless i hope you hit them i don't even think cricket wireless existed then uh maybe it did fuck cricket wireless um but i'd also get the police they had an open police parking lot on 12th and locust downtown and so i'll just walk down there with a big ass machete get their cars uh the tires bust up their windshields and then just walk back um and in my mind i was doing that in solidarity with the people of ferguson when i looked back i wasn't doing anything to help them like that didn't make their pain go away it was more self-serving uh which i i hold myself accountable for that shit right um but when i saw that that wasn't doing anything i thought i need to amp it up so these people know that we care and so that's when i decided to throw the the molotovs at the office okay in kansas city yeah that was some like right-wing people always call me like call me libtard but it was a it was a democrat's office because all politicians are targets they're all law and order every one of them yeah and so yeah i walked down the streets of kansas city with a backpack full of guns and cocktails spray painted the office ferguson forever and then tried to burn it down with two molotovs it was a democrat political office a congressman's office oh okay yeah they don't like that no they hate it turns out i met a guy when i was down in the county he was getting ready to go do 20 in the feds just for shooting a bullet pow just driving by and shooting through a senator's office well that's hilarious but two that sucks like that sucks that he had to get hit with that yeah but they take it serious that's a i was my first plea it was like 75 years um obviously you don't take that but when i threw the cocktails i still didn't feel like i was doing nothing so for the next five days i just went around shooting up places the federal reserve's police station banks just trying like i was so stupid and naive thinking that that was gonna mobilize the people but it felt good it felt like righteous rage and then i got caught how'd you get caught um i wasn't wearing masks i didn't care so i'm on cameras yeah i'm an idiot like i'm a poor kid uh and so they found out where i was staying somehow i mean probably people just talking about it who slips and one day i went to the police station and i was like i'm gonna go to the police station and i was like i'm gonna go to the police station and i was like i'm gonna go to the police station and i was like i'm gonna go to the police station to go to work and me and my the friend i was staying with walked downstairs into their car they were gonna give me a ride and the police just rolled up in the big van with the guns yeah get your ass down today's episode is brought to you by hymns you guys do i go one episode without talking about my never i would not do that to you fellas listen up you suffering from erectile dysfunction i know i am let me tell you about hymns hymns connects you with a licensed health care provider online giving you safe and healthy life to legitimate ed treatment options from home no awkward appointments no pharmacy lines just complete a simple online intake and a provider will review your information to determine if treatment is right for you if prescribed if prescribed when you are prescribed your treatment ships directly to your door in discrete packaging that includes sildenafil also known as generic for viagra available through hymns at up to 95 less than the brand name version you guys they are cutting the market 95 cheaper than your doctor prescribed ed medication if that option isn't right for you there are additional treatment options available so you can find what works best for your body it's straightforward transparent and designed to make getting care feel easy to get simple online access to personalized affordable care for not only ed but hair loss weight loss and so much more visit hymns.com slash connect that's hymns.com slash c-o-n-n-e-c-t for your free online visit one more time that's hymns.com slash connect a prescription is required see website for details and important safety information sildenafil is the generic version of viagra viagra is a registered trademark of viatris specialty llc hymns is not affiliated with or endorsed by viatris did that molotov actually go off did that explode in the in the guy's office it didn't explode in the office um he had like a really tiny window and i'm a bad throw so i threw a hammer at first to break the window because i wanted the molotovs in there and it did it shattered i was like fuck yeah here we go and so i lit the first molotov and i threw it and hit the left side of the window frame and so it it caused that damage and i was like all right well i definitely got the next one so i light it i throw it it hits the right side um so and that was all i had at that point you have to you can't just stand around waiting for the cops to come and destroy you so i burned the window frame and that's it and the guy wasn't even in there no i was we made sure about that that was really important that i watched that place for hours multiple days in a row to make sure our workers there at this time because if i had hurt a worker like some poor worker i would have felt horrible i probably wouldn't have cared if it was a congressional worker honestly back then but if i had hurt the janitor that would have destroyed me so i made sure empty building it's a symbolism it's a symbolism um i don't know if you've heard of the janitor that would have destroyed me so i made sure like an act of symbolism it's not an act of violence right so you're gaffled up you're arrested did you get charged for like the shootings no okay and statute of limitations has already went so i feel comfortable talking about okay what is the charge exactly what is the federal charge for doing something like throwing a an incendiary device so i got four charges it was possession of incendiary device on the property of a business that operates with interstate commerce a federal business a federal building and then uh use of explosive on interstate commerce and then because i had two of them it was just possession and then use right causing damage with an incendiary device there was one it was stupid yeah but four charges wow maximum life right yeah it's crazy how much time they can give you for that yeah uh are you scared are you do you feel like a revolutionary you're like yeah i'm about to go down for the cause like what's going through your mind it this point so and this will sound stupid to a lot of people but all my heroes do time like that is the natural progression you are going to end up doing time if you fight against the people that control power it's going to happen so i was expecting at some day i'll end up in prison and i don't have like maybe i have too little or too many beta blockers because i don't get nervous i don't adrenaline didn't happen that's why i was good at boxing you don't get nervous so throwing the cocktails you don't get nervous all right going to prison all right um it just didn't click in my head how serious it was until they started coming with their plea deals and it's like oh shit this is real right right i thought at most i would get five years and now you're they offered you 75 yeah or 70 and then became 35 and then eventually ended up on 10 okay yeah and you signed right right away i'll sign right away but i mean when you got the 10 compared to 75 i still waited i pushed it right before trial because i wanted them to come to five um and they said no like we'll take your ass to trial and you'll get 50 or you can sign this plea they only get 10 and then i signed it okay it was hard what year did you go in i went in 2014 i signed the plea in 2016 gotcha so 2016 is when you entered the system the federal system or two yeah yeah yeah federal system okay so you got you got to do about six six and a half with time served if you get good time right if i got good time i would do eight and a half total yeah yeah so i did not get that good no you did not and what's interesting about this is that you as we're about to see you went to adx florence at the end of your stretch so this is very unusual super unusual where'd you go first first i went to a low security prison um because i was a first timer i had college education i was over the age of 26 i was white um and so i went to inglewood low which there's like eight dudes there that aren't child molesters or rats or at least eight white guys um and so i would try to hang out with them but like that prison is weird like jared fogel's there the subway guy um rob agoevich was there like there was a cia guy there a whistleblower kirikawa the guy that's all over the internet now i don't know he was a black guy uh no um so but it was just weird so i was only there for like two months and then um when i was at the low the guards were really shitty they hated my guts there and so they would do things to antagonize me and one day they uh were really shitty to my she was two at the time my daughter and so i drew her a cartoon a stick figure cartoon of me and her mom standing at a tombstone and the tombstone had like a variation of that guard's name his name's also officer ecklington i hear his guts you're a bitch um but like who threatens a child so israelis yeah guys um officer darren wilson and ferguson but they they ended up seeing that and the day that they saw it they came and dragged me from work they handcuffed me put me in the shoe in inglewood and then two hours later drove me two hours south to florence medium and they referred me to the fbi for that cartoon saying i was threatening a federal agent and so the fbi had to decide whether they were going to prosecute me or not so i spent three months in the shoe at florence medium while the for this bullshit that's when i got sent to florence medium like on the yard right so now you're in like a real prison yeah it's a like it's not the hardest prison but like it's a very serious prison right so you have to you have to segregate you're you got to sit with the whites bid with the whites. Now that must've driven you a little crazy because especially when you're, I mean, I don't know about Florence medium, but most of these high level prisons, the whites are on some Nazi shit or on some, you know, stupid right wing politics shit. How did that work for you? Yeah. How did you integrate yourself into that culture? So Florence was the first time I had like serious racial politics, like serious, eat, sleep, workout, all that with your race. But I found ways like to get around that by like gambling, playing Scrabble all day. I became so good. I'll beat anyone's ass at Scrabble. I'll play you right now. Every travel I go to, I play, I'm 17 and 0 on my travels. But so that's one of the ways I got around it. Cause you can gamble with anybody, any race. They're not going to tell you not to make money. I see. And then my job, I had a job teaching yoga and you, any race can come into your job. Right. And so also I, I wasn't really respected in that prison. I had a couple of friends, but people didn't see me as like some hard guy, but I had good paperwork. I wasn't a snitch. I wasn't a pump. So I'm staying on the yard. I'm seeing what can't see white guys. Um, and I'm doing what I have to do to survive, but there was close calls. I got a bunch of fights with some of those boys who didn't like what I said for, um, there was times where it could have got seriously dark, but it was mostly the guards. Right. So do you, do you ever feel like you were a target for violence from the inmates first? Yeah. All the time. Huh? Cause like I'm small, like I'm five, seven. These dudes are huge dudes with 1488 tattoo on their neck for serious people. Like they're not a game. Um, but you were a boxer. So did you ever have to fight? Yeah. Okay. And then like mostly, mostly I lose like cells are small. Um, and I'm small. So you lose, but like, if you, if you stand up for yourself, you stay on the yard. Like you're not, you're not checking in your house and the cops to keep you safe. So I get to stay on the yard. It would just, it was just really tense for a while. Right. So the guards were worse than the inmates always. Okay. Tell us about how you were treated at Florence medium. Yeah. So at Florence medium, that's when they started doing the domestic terrorist shit. That's when the guards started recognizing it as that. I had a CIM file, a SIM file, um, central inmate monitoring. So they could restrict your stuff more. So my mail would take at best three weeks to get out. And then three weeks later, I was in the hospital. I was in the hospital. I had three weeks to come back. My emails would take days instead of like, if you're not on monitoring, it takes two hours automatically, but mine had to be pre-read by, by a cop or a Lieutenant to make sure I'm not whatever. Yeah. Sparking the revolution. Yeah. Um, and so books would get rejected all the time. My wife would get harassed at visiting again. Um, that sort of stuff happened a lot. And then that's when it escalated. Why were you targeted or labeled a domestic terrorist because of your crime? Yeah. Okay. They, uh, any attack on a government building is going to get you that. Yeah. So I had a security threat group, an STG of domestic terrorists, anarchists. Got it. So, and that makes sense, right? Cause they, the cops somehow view that as like an assault on them too. Absolutely. So they don't like you just to begin with. Um, okay. So how did it escalate? So escalated, um, there was a Lieutenant there named Wilcox and Lieutenant Wilcox, uh, he's an early guy, like obviously on steroids, 20 year veteran of the force, but he was a bullet. Like he'd be on the yard, like talking shit, trashing people's cells, doing all that stuff. And so one day he read an email that I had sent to my wife and the email had said how a PISA had checked in by fucking up a Lieutenant. So I was laughing about it. Like, I bet that felt so good. Wish I could have seen it, bless his heart, uh, all this stuff. And the Lieutenant read it and he called me down to his office. And I was like, what's going on? And he was like, what's going on? Or he told the guard, I have King come to the office. So when I walked down there, instead of going to his office, he took me to a mop closet. Uh, and there's no cameras in there. Um, and you're not supposed to be in, you're never supposed to be alone with a, with an officer ever. Uh, and so instead of talking to me about the issue, he starts yelling at me, call me gay slurs, call me a race traitor, call me the N word, just trying to bait me into violence. Because if you say that to people in prison, you, you have to go, you call me a bitch on the yard. We have to fight. Even if it's a guard, I assume, but he was acting like a convict. Like that's how they see themselves. You know, we're, we're, we're a gang. Wow. Rabble, rabble. And so I'm just laughing in his face and big roided up cops don't like it when you laugh in their face. And he didn't know I'd box. He knew me as silly little Eric that taught. Poetry classes and yoga. And so after a while of me laughing, he shoves me and I fall against the filing cabinet and you, no one can put their hands on you. I don't care what position you have in prison. And I was so stunned. And then he threw a punch and then he threw a second punch, like two in a row. And at that point, my just shit kicks in. You can't let someone hurt you. Like you might kill me for real. And so my body's already turned. So I go, boom, boom, boom. And he is just a bloody mess. He falls into a puddle of his own blood. It is hilarious. Just from a two piece with a biscuit, four piece, four piece with a biscuit. Yeah. White meat. Yeah. I lit his ass up. Wow. Um, cause you hit him in the, you hit it, you got him in the nose, straight to the nose, straight to the chin, straight to the temple, straight to the forehead. Wow. Cause when he started going down, I'm not stopping until he's down. Yeah. So the third punch went right to his temple as hard as I can. And then the fourth punch went right to, cause he was on the way to the temple. And then the fourth punch went right to, cause he was on the way down. Um, and then I stepped back immediately because I used reasonable force to stop him. That's the law. Right. I did what he did back to me. No more, no less. Um, and then that's when they came in and beat the living fucking dog shit out of me. Tell us about that. Yeah. I still, I think about it every day. So as soon as I did that to him, uh, Lieutenant camera had come running in and he has this bitch voice. King, what did you do? Oh, fuck this bitch ass up. Yeah. The fuck does it look like? But instead I'm standing like this. I was like, self-defense, self-defense, self-defense. That's probably smart. He hit me first. Look at my black eye. He hit me first. Right. Um, and they throw me to the ground. Other officers are rushing in cause they press the panic button and they just fuck me up. They're kicking me in the temple, kicking me in the face, punching me, kneeing me in the, in the ribs and the lungs, trying to suffocate me, hyperextending my leg, punching my testicles. Cause there's like seven or eight of them taking turns. And this is all in the broom closet. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and we have the pictures, the pictures are in the book. Um, yeah. And we're going to post footage of this, too, if you don't mind, like in this section, because you were able to get that legally when you took it to trial later, we didn't get the video of them stomping me out because obviously they didn't have cameras, right. Everything before and everything after like the, the torture that came next, we got, um, but yeah, they stopped me out and then pick me up, slam me back down, pick me up, slam my face against the wall. And eventually they take me out and just put me outside the lieutenant's office and they're doing the strict, like the suffocation thing. They put their knee on your lungs and force it all your air out. Um, I think they're going to kill me. And then they put me in a striker chair, which is like this metal chair with straps around it and your handcuff land your back. So it's a stress position. That's the cover of the book. Um, and they wheel me into the shoe, carry me downstairs and take me to the four point room. This was the creepiest part about your story. I had no idea that this existed in American prisons. What is the four point room? Yeah. So in the Renaissance days, they called it quartering. Um, nowadays we call it forward pointing because they take your two ankles or two wrist, your two ankles, and they chain you like a human X on a metal bed. And it's a metal steel bed. They first, they cut and rip your clothes off. Like you're about to get raped. Oh, we have that video. Um, and then they put on their gross boxers and then they stretch you out like that. And they stretch you as far as you can go. And those handcuffs are like, I can't feel my hand the second they're in. And they because they're so tight. Same with the ankle cuffs and your body starts radiating pain instantly because that's just, you're not supposed to lay like that stretched on a hard bed ever. And so my shoulders, my hips, my arms, by my ankle, every part of my body is just radiating pain and you're laid down. So there's a fluorescent light right above your head. So you can try to turn, but it just hurts. You're in agony. Um, and so I ended up having to piss myself there. So I just covered in my own piss, which is degrading. I'm in the worst pain I've ever felt up until that point, which is just miserable. And I had to do seven and a half hours of that. There's people just stretched out like that. Yeah. I still have, I still have suffering from it. Like I still can't feel parts of my hand, none of my left shin, my hip, my neck. Sure. Like that stuff doesn't go away though. And there's people like Randy Plowder, Thomas Smith, who did that shit for like 24 to 25 hours. So I was lucky somehow that it was only seven, but it's. Is that legal? I suppose they're, if you are trying to kill yourself or you won't stop trying to kill them, they're allowed to do it until you calm down is what policy says. So I was never not calm. Um, so it was very unillegal, illegal. Um, but, and it's the same for everyone. They do that. Like at an hour, most you're subdued. You're, what can you do? And are you guys like, are you telling them, Hey, look, I'm good. Like I'm calm. I'm not, I'm not resisting. I just, he assaulted me. I'm not asking these motherfuckers for one second of mercy. You can't reason with them. Why would I? Like, why am I going to sacrifice my dignity and give you what you want? want by screaming or asking you to stop no i'm gonna take this i'm gonna remember it forever um and hopefully survive and that's on camera they have cameras in the also the torture room yeah wow yeah no food obviously no water at one point in time they came in uh with a shield a riot shield and they put it over your chest and they push on it and they do that so that you suffocate it pushes the air out of your lungs and there's no bruises um and somehow that 15 minutes of video is the only 15 that are went missing in the hour and a seven and a half hours got like the epstein uh jail footage right well at one minute just got cut out of that it's weird shocking the captain of god damn i forget his name it's an italian name i hate his little bitch ass but he came in and put his hand over my mouth at one point i don't and you're already having a hard time breathing so i thought i was going to suffocate it felt like 20 minutes there's probably only five seconds but it's terrifying they're saying like yeah we're gonna get you fucking raped we're gonna get you killed this street justice you're gonna face that street justice bitch like you guys are cops there's not this is a street justice you hoes um and yeah so after seven and a half hours they put me in rubber restraints they're called soft restraints where you're handcuffed to your waist and so i did another two hours of that and then they drove me to the penitentiary and that was a nightmare why so in the penitentiary um they're already in the penitentiary i was at the medium so the usp is the next level up i gotcha um it's like a high security or max not super max but like max security and that's also called florence usp florence oh interesting so there's adx florence usp and then medium you at florence yeah so there's camp okay medium high supermax wow so florence colorado has all the gambit all the levels of federal security it's a huge compound um they find out a mountain for it like it's wow where the mountain was already flying either way it's on top it's on top of the mountain um but so when they took me to the penitentiary they put me in a cell a holding cell in the shoe that was covered in human shit top to bottom um because a bug had been there are bugs a derogatory term for some serious mental health issues but he had fucked that room up and they had turned i guess maybe he was flooding maybe they just hated me i don't know but they had turned off the water so i could use the sink but the toilet wouldn't flush and the toilet was filled with shit it was like to the brim um and so they gave me half a mattress so i could pick either top half or bottom half to lay on uh and that's where i was for the next five days until they uh did the fbi uh the fbi interview wow that was horrible wow they really tried to break you and like i'm already my head's swollen my body's hurting like every part of me hurts and then you have to sleep on concrete yeah so did they feed you yeah yeah i got the same normal food it's just like i'm just garbage food but yeah i got my bran flakes and cake for morning for breakfast how are you gonna use the toilet um you got a shit on the shit yeah uh i shit in the shower once because you can push it through the pipes and this is a great you're not proud of this stuff you know i mean like this is humiliating i piss in the shower one time i got really mad i pissed i shit in a food tray and i left the lid off hoping that the guards would pick it up but they didn't and so really um and so i have remorse for that but it's it's ironic you wanted to be this revolutionary this reminds me of like the hunger strikes of the ira you know bobby sands days they but they were like covering the cells and shit yeah the dirty protest yeah um and that's a real thing doesn't feel so proud though i'm sure you weren't that you weren't thinking that while you were in the cell i was thinking about how this is the opposite i didn't have this option it was forced on me right and when they force the indignity on you you can't do anything about it you can't do anything about it you can't it's repression i didn't have a chance to choose this to degrade them in their prison that's what bobby sands was doing we're going to degrade what you're doing we're not going to take nothing you give us we're going to show you how filthy you are by living in that filth you're not going to give it to us we're going to do it you motherfuckers and so this was the this was the opposite where they're saying uh smell this shit and hopefully you don't touch the wall yeah in certain ways these prisons in america are worse than how the british treated the ira prisoners in some ways no like and we have to we can be honest about the ira stuff like the five reasons that they went on that hunger strike in american prisons are the normal thing like you don't get to decide who you live with you don't get to wear your own clothes you don't get to decide if you work or not um you don't get unlimited contact with your family stuff like that but for them like they were saying 800 years of repression isn't a crime we're not criminals you're not going to treat us like criminals and so in the normal prison like the normal prison prison maze prison outside the h unit they they had a good life like those dudes were living sweet for a prison yeah but in h unit that's where they destroyed them and that's a normal american prison pro football is back and so are the predictions trade yours on cal sheet america's number one prediction market platform this sunday it's denver versus los angeles with denver currently trading at 46 to win trade 100 and you could get 209 if they win download cal sheet use code win 26 to get 25 when you trade with us trade 25 a k l s h i cal sheet trade what's next 18 years plus only restrictions and eligibility requirements apply event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors cal sheet products are not available in all jurisdictions prices values and available markets may differ from those mentioned for more information see cal sheet.com regulatory people have no idea and they're and they're so callous yeah you fucking don't do the crime which is so juvenile yeah every time i hear that i want to stab somebody like are you slave do you like being a slave you fucking slave it's true that's i've tried to say faggot less oh definitely definitely definitely yeah okay but it's a fun word too but all i've replaced it with slave perfect perfect because it's so cutting it's like you don't you're not even human you're not you deserve to be a slave so my point i get angry i get viscerally like you know i didn't experience 1 20th of what you went through but i still just the indignity of being in a maximum security prison i mean there's daily humiliations and you experienced that on steroids yeah micro level or macro level yeah so the fbi comes and interviews you it's not in the fbi it's the sis officers got because they're deputized to do those interviews and so i'm gonna end that interview with a huge swollen black eye and i'm telling him like hey are you gonna clean the shit on my cell are you gonna wash my cell or draw my water and like oh yeah we'll do that in a minute but first just tell us what happened i was like i'll gladly tell you what happened because i'm in the right right is right and so i tell them he attacked me this happened this happened and every time i'm like can we fix my toilet now oh yeah yeah we'll get to it we'll get to it and then after that the next day at 4 a.m they grabbed me and drove me to leavenworth penitentiary that's an eight hour drive and they just put me in the shoe there for six months while the fbi decided if they were going to prosecute me or not wow yeah that sucked yeah six months in the shoe and you had no idea what was coming no because it's a constant thing of are you am i gonna face more time for this right and i was on a unit or on a range by myself so it's not like i'm talking to people i think i they intermittently bring one person on the opposite end of the range but it's not like i was talking to people um you're just there by yourself and that was essentially adx per appropriation you guys i'm constantly moving money around i'm sending money to employees vendors guests etc and the only money transfer app that i use is cash app cash app just released a new status program for the way people actually spend called cash app green it unlocks new ways for you to pay get rewarded and easily grow or manage your money on your terms now when you spend at least five hundred dollars a month with the cash app card or cash app pay you earn green status which i'm going to show you in a moment but before i do that i'm going to show you a little bit more about cash app cash app which unlocks benefits like up to two hundred dollars of free overdraft coverage higher borrow limits and custom personalized cash back offers every friday at places you love to shop turn everyday spending into status with cash app green download cash app today or visit cash.app slash new to learn more about this and other great features launching now for a limited time new cash app customers can earn ten dollars if they use the code cash app 10 that's cash app one zero and their profile at sign up and send five dollars to a friend within 14 days terms apply cash app is a financial services platform not a bank banking services provided by cash apps bank partners prepaid debit cards issued by sutton bank member fdic cash app green overdraft coverage borrow cash back offers and promotions provided by cash app a block inc brand visit cash.app slash legal slash podcast for full disclosures explain a range for people that aren't familiar with that term so a range in the shoe is it's essentially a big hallway and there's cell this this shoe only had cells on one side of the wall usually it's a big hallway and there's cells on one side of the wall usually it'll be cells on both sides because they're so packed but this one it was a long hallway and then had i think 14 cells in it and so the guards just walk down they open up your bean slot put the food tray in close the bean slot um and usually in a shoe there'll be people next to you like and you can bang on the walls and try to holler at them um do you still do fishing yeah yeah you can have some contact some contact yeah and these the 11 word downstairs cells are designed like adx they have the two doors because they were that was going to be the supermax when silverstein was there they were going to turn it into that but yeah it was shitty i was just a horrible six months that's when they took away my phone forever i never used the phone again wow yeah i don't know they just decided someone made a post for me on a website saying like this happened eric king um let's support him and then after that for the next six years i didn't make a phone call again i'm not sure how that's legal i mean either and it's not supposed to be like i was supposed to have one a month but they never they just said you're next week we'll give it to you next week we'll give it to you next week and after a while you just you understand what's happening right now do riding kites do legal you know legal moves have any effect no and i did it's called cop outs in there so i i do cop outs on bp8s bp9s bp10s all the grievances and they would just send it back saying per sis per policy you are on communication restrictions and so i'll just i'll just fucking hit so for six months you're the fbi sis is deciding if they want to do it or not i want to give this over to the u.s attorney yeah for prosecution uh did you have any yard time did you no so you're you're down 24 hours a day yeah okay so what happens they decide to prosecute no so they tell me king we're not prosecuting you you're good like it was a self-defense it's over so we're going to send you to usp mccreary we're going to up your custody level though okay hang on for a sec how were you able to get all that footage then if that you didn't actually go to trial because they later do prosecute me for that i'm sorry i'm so bad at this i'm burying the lead okay go ahead yeah they come back uh and so they up my custody and send me to u.s penitentiary mccreary in kentucky and that's a that is a savage savage place but they put me in a shoe there for three months to decide whether i'm going to walk or not because if they don't think it's safe for me to be there because i'm left wing like i'm openly left wing and i have left wing tattoos so they have to decide if we put eric on this yard is he going to get fucking butchered now why are you a target for being left wing um what do politics have to do with anything yeah so on prison prison politics are all far far far right like the aryan brotherhood for example aryan like they have swastikas for a reason um these white gangs are they're essentially the militias but violent they're not the proud boys gonna go fight you and have fun they're gonna fucking butcher you and those i will never talk about it about those white gangs because they're too serious you're gonna catch me we've had a lot of them on this show yeah they're they're not a gang no they do knife work yeah and mccreary's a bad prison man it's really bad did you hear about people getting stabbed and shit while you were there yes yes uh but so i was only on that yard for five days after three months they came and said king we're gonna put you on the yard are you gonna go or are you gonna stay back here are you gonna check in are you gonna pc i was like no i was on that yard for five days and on the fifth day they came to my cell at 5 a.m it's like hey king we need you at the lieutenant's office and automatically i'm triggered like oh no it's gonna happen again like i don't even know what i did uh and so i was able to email by the way so that was the last time for next five and a half years i was able to email was those five days um so they take me to the lieutenant's office they put me in a holding cell and sis comes in uh we're intercepting emails saying you're about to get fucked up today are you safe you just told me i'm not safe but if i say no i'm not protective custody and i am never gonna ask these people for help ever so um i say yeah i'm safe they're like are you sure because we have these detailed emails telling the exact time you're gonna get fucked up and i i already know like i know i'm getting set up like obviously this is about to happen and so i'm like yes i'm safe let's go like let's just do this and so three guards walk me into this like chained in area where you have to wait to go to your units and they're just sitting there watching laughing and there's a dude waiting for me in there that's from that group and so which group uh it was i'm not gonna say the gang name but it was them affiliated with missouri um i'm not going i'm not going into that the brand i assume no no no that wasn't a brand yard that was an entertaining yard okay um but you weren't in danger from from the other races were you no okay just the whites yeah got it yeah yeah um i guess i pissed someone off with my politics years before and they didn't like me so um i go into that area dude's waiting there and i already know what's about to happen so he starts like he introduced himself so do i and he's looking at him he's looking at my tattoos like is this him and then he just started circling me and i'm so stupid i'm like if i wait for him to fight first it'll be self-defense and i won't get a write-up because i want to go back to a medium i don't want to be in the penitentiaries i'm not built like that uh and so he takes off on me predictably and starts punching doing all the fighting i'm covering up just returning punches when i can and eventually after i'd say probably a minute uh we tumble to the ground and then the guards finally rush in just beat the spear tackle us on a concrete rub our faces into the dirt and then put me back in the shoe and then set me up to get fights back there and you had fights in the shoe too they intentionally kept putting people in there to jump me they did it twice within a week how do they get at you if you're all isolated in your cell how so you have to have this in the mccreary shoe you have to have a celly and so they come up and say like king cuff up you're getting a celly and i know that we're not supposed to be cellies like i'm not done but they put the dude in there and then he'd go he'd do what he had to do and then they'd pepper spray us take him out uh the second time they put a mexican dude in there but he said he was white because you're not allowed to live with other races even in the shoe um you're playing with your life so they're like king cuff up you got a celly and i look at him i was like are you white dude he's like of course i'm white like what do you think of course like oh no they're setting me up again so you have to let them in because if you don't you're pc you're asking them to come in the guards to protect you so i let him in and then the next day he takes off his shirt he's got the big fucking aztec tattoo on his back um and he we get into like a 15 minute fight it's the longest fight i've ever had in my life covering blood both of us um they pepper spray us i end up puking like six times because i'm so exhausted of course uh i've never been in a fight where people kicked before so like he kicked me in the nuts once and i was like what um well you weren't worried about getting stabbed at all uh i had i had a piece in the cell so i knew it was gonna be like we're either gonna fight one-on-one or i know where this is right uh my friend taught me how to do it melting a deodorant a deodorant piece oh talk to us about that i've heard this yeah so you would take out the inside of the deodorant what do you call it a container yeah um you take out the deodorant part and you smush the plastic and then you make a donut and you spark it you i don't fire toilet paper you roll toilet paper in a circle sit on the edge of the toilet seat so the air can still get to it and you use your batteries and you make a spark and it sparks the donut and so then you hold the plastic over it wait for it to get melty stomp on it stomp on it flip it over hold it over there until it gets melty put on the ground step on as hard as you can bend it over and you do that by 20 minutes until you cannot do it again and then you can only concrete floor and you sharpen that motherfucker you rip up a pair of your boxers tied around so it has a handle and you've got yourself a little banger yeah you can you books books somebody pretty nice with that yeah you test it by on your mattress if it'll go through your mattress it'll go through a belly and mine went right through that mattress so if shit if it got to the point i'll lose a fight one-on-one but if you start going for a weapon i will also go for that weapon and hope that hope that i'm good enough and god i never came to that yeah thank god i would have been in trouble okay so this is a form of torture obviously they're trying to break you break you what's interesting is that most people don't want to go to pc because they don't want to be around they either don't want to be seen as a punk oh yeah and they don't want to be around sex offenders yeah both of which i understand you see it as a protest you see it as like i don't want help from this oppressor that's interesting yeah i hate those people too like i hate snitches with all my heart i hate child molesters all my heart but my i'm not gonna let the prison system tell me who my enemy is i'm not gonna go out of my way to hurt these people because i'm supposed to i know who my real enemy is and while they're around they are a back thought i want to fight the person who locks the door not someone who's in the room next door did you try to bring any of these revolutionary politics to the other inmates yes and how did was that received the black inmates love it like they're they understand this they're reading uh fred hampton they're reading uh kawazi balagoon like they are hip to shit yeah and so like whenever we do protests in the shoe it was always me and the black dudes um the white dudes are not trying to hear none of that shit right they don't want to hear they're calling every time they talk it's something homophobic or racist all they talk about is gay shit and black shit and so so what kind of protests were you guys doing um at that prison i didn't you know i got shipped next week right so i got shipped to usp lee in virginia another great southern prison yeah um and so while there the food workers i don't know why they did this such a bitch move like they're prisoners cut our portions in half so it's already the worst food you've ever had in your life like literally that you were worse and then like our hamburgers would be this big we'd get like this big of a scoop of food and the bro the brothers went to staff like they talked to staff when they did their rounds and they're like this has got to stop like we can't control this we can't fix this you gotta fix this and they wouldn't and so we did a protest of uh holding our trays and hunger striking so if we hold our trays you have to come in with the riot squad you have to and so now we get to run the team all of us and i'd ran that team probably 13 times at that point i was i i went like that's the one place where i was serious what does run the team mean oh yeah um so run the team is where guards have to be able to see you every time they walk by they have to and so if you block the little window they tell you take it down and then you say no or you ignore and so after about an hour of that they're threatening you like can you know what's about to happen we're gonna beat your ass you're a punk you're not gonna we know you're gonna cuff up cuffing up like a they consider like a bitch move and so do some prisoners i don't but after about an hour two hours psychology comes they're like okay eric we understand you're upset but there's other ways to handle this and at every single place i'd done that i tried every single other way you say fuck you bitch you're right give me some give me a full hamburger i i say um come on that's all i say is come get it i i don't need to call her misogynist slurs um i'm a little less evolved than you know what you're you're a gorilla i'm shocked you've been able to tie your shoes um but so i just say come get it like come on i know what's gonna happen like let's go and then they start with the pepper spray they have the big container they spray in your room they do three 10 second bursts so they're like oh my god i'm gonna get it i'm gonna so first 10 seconds cuff up cuff up now come get it that's a lot of pepper spray and so you'll cover up with your blanket or whatever you have um and then they do the gun it's the pepper ball gun so they're shooting you they're shooting the walls by you and they do three i don't know if it's 10 or 15 bullets so about 30 pepper bullets and then next i've had this happen twice they do the stun grenade and they do the stun grenade and they do the stun grenade and they do the stun grenade and that's where they have this little grenade and they toss it in your cell they have to make sure the range is entirely clear they move all the other shoe inmates to other ranges um and they throw that in the the blast whatever you want to call it and go and the old dude's telling me plug your ears open your mouth that way you don't keep it in you and so it goes off and it rattles your brain and like you're like spaghetti um and then they open that door they rush in all seven of them they they're all wearing like the star star trooper shit and they're like oh my god i'm gonna get it i'm gonna get it i'm gonna get it i'm gonna get it and they slam your face on the ground they rub pepper spray in your ear they twist your ankle they're always go for your balls like these dudes are really homoerotic uh like just fuck a guy already like get it over with um but and then they they put you in a hot cell which is just a cell with nothing in it it's an empty cell and you just stay there for a month and then just live your life and you did this 13 times about yeah it might have been 10 it might have been 15 but i did it i did it way too many times and this is in protest for just bad conditions yeah so like one time they took away our hygiene at a shoot all of our deodorant and shampoo they took it away and body wash all that stuff and we said nope so me and my friend smiles he's also adx now ran the team we did our barricades uh they took away media at one point no books radios magazines newspapers run the team and how many people do this usually one or two okay so it's like you're it's my turn to go it's your turn to go supposed to be at the same time so they just whoever sell they hit first and it's there's been times where it's like it's been a unified race thing where it's like whites blacks indians and they'll 10 15 people will go but that's a that's a serious rarity and those are the realest people those are like the sack members and native warriors like real people um but another time they uh they denied us holiday meal it was like thanksgiving or the super bowl and they gave us a normal tray not a holiday tray with a special food on it come on come on like you're not giving them an inch no and that i have never been to knee on my fingers tattooed because i've never been to neither of them and that's bobby sands that's the day he died uh because i remember that shit i kept it in my heart that's the day he died his birthday was last week may 5th um and then this was march yeah march 1st 1981 that's the day he died so that's gangster dog yeah i'm so tough respect but so i kept that in my heart the entire time i i do not have to let you take something from me and you're not gonna lose good time necessarily for doing this oh you do you will you lose good time for running the team yeah it's not gonna write that's what they call it so i got it's a 20 it's either a 200 shot or 202 whatever they label them in the feds um and i get that disorderly conduct refusing an order so it's three shots in one and that along with the other stuff like throwing chicken cops faces or uh you did that yeah yeah and you can catch another charge for that no when you're this is when i was pre-trial for the for the second case okay and so there was times it's the last resort like a cop you go to recreation your dog kennel and you come back and there's piss all over your floor and your family's pictures are ripped up okay you're gonna do this to me i'm not gonna take your dignity i can't fight you you won't open the door because you're a hoe so when you walk by i want shit in this bowl mixed with rotten milk and when you hand me my food tray you're getting that in your face same thing with you when you're gonna piss piss in a cup wait for him to come by come on oh you got my food thank you wow piss at my cell again like let's go obviously they can all fuck you know they're all big guys like they can do what they want if they if they had enough sand in them but it's always cowardly shit tearing a picture of your picture of your families it's like why dude or i'm giving you a letter and like it's eight pages but three pages are missing come on you're not gonna do that to me and your all of these tickets for fucking with cops yeah it precedes me in a bad way yeah um every time i'm transferred i'm in the shoe of course for for the assault and stuff um everywhere i go the guards know that i have at that point any different point in time anywhere between 5 and 50 just my write-ups all involving right um trying to disrupt the prison right so um so you spent most of your time leading up to this second charge this is the trial for the second charge you spent more time in the shoe than on the main line it sounds like yeah i did seven and a half years of seg time total out of nine and a half and none of that was pc um so i was in usp lee for two weeks and that's when they brought me back to inglewood to say they were going to prosecute me they surprised me with it so they changed their mind or maybe they had that the whole time they were planning on doing it who knows why what we think is i had a disciplinary hearing a dh show meeting for the fight and they said do you have any statements and my statement was he doesn't have a right to hit me no one gets to put their hands on you and they're like so you're claiming self-defense i was like yes they're like are you planning on a lawsuit or something i was like maybe and then they decided we're gonna prosecute them this episode is brought to you by txu energy for the first time ever texans have an energy plan that combines free nights all year with daytime summer savings it's called free nights and cool summer you get free nights every night all year long plus a 25 bonus toward your daytime use all summer it's a first of its kind plan created for how texans actually use energy discover how much more you could save with free nights and cool summer txu energy energy for everything visit txu.com for more information rep number one zero zero zero four so you think it's because you said yeah i mean i might sue exact time so i have to right how long after you got shipped to inglewood did you go to try trial two and a half years wow yeah i was i was pre-trying it's all in the shoe inglewood's got the prison and the camp and then they got a detention center for uh pre-trial people and that's they have a shoe there and it's all the custody levels so i was in that shoe a six by eight shoe probably the smallest cell i've ever been in um for two and a half years trying to fight this case where they're trying to give me 20 years for assaulting an officer causing serious bodily injury wow you got a lawyer i i did so i had a movement lawyer um and then they got pregnant or were pregnant they had to step away from the case and then i had a lawyer another one a movement lawyer that i was friends with at the time and then she or they they ended up getting lyme disease i know so random right so they had to drop off the case and then kovat happened and when kovat happened they canceled everything um and then when kovid was finally over that's when it was like let's go so you had a paid lawyer or you you went with a fed no it was always a public defender it was always a lawyer supportive of equal causes like similar causes i see okay so wow so now you're going to trial there was a war zone back there by the way in that pre-trial how so it was a war zone because that's where like you took our radio writing you took our food or cover food writing uh and then you took our food i got 70 shots there 70 disciplinary shots um i borderline lost my mind like my wife eventually had to get a hold of me and be like do you want to come home because if not tell me like i'll stay i'll stay with you but the way you're acting is that you do not want to come home because you're pre-trial and you caught four assaulting staff shots like use your head um yeah at a certain point you got to think of long term right but i my brain went i was in constant fight or flight because all this shit happening and at that point they take in phone calls visits email and then they took my letters for two years so i didn't have any communication except for with my lawyer and that that fucks up your head and all the time they'd be like king today we're gonna let you have a phone call and i get so excited like here we go and they bring the phone and when it works they go oh sorry i must have not worked just cruel shit and so i trashed the range i'd do all that stuff but um after after about a year and a half of that i finally my wife got a hold of me and i calmed down and then um went to trial did you feel like you had a good case did you feel like even though you knew we all know the 98 conviction rate in federal trial but did you feel like yeah i am in the right it was self-defense so did you feel like you had a good shot i don't know i felt i believe in myself like i'll always bet on myself every single time even when i'm wrong uh but i knew i was right i would not give them i'm not gonna take another plea deal not this time i'm not gonna take i'm not gonna risk 20 years because you attacked me i'm not doing it and my wife bless her heart was supportive she's like i trust you i don't care if it's uh less than one percent of federal cases when at trial i don't care i believe in you i trust you and so 20 was the plea offer the plea offer they didn't offer they said you can go to trial and or you can sign this plea and the judge will decide within your guidelines what it will be and i'm not going to go to trial i'm not going to go to trial i'm not going to go to trial i'm not going to go to trial i'm not going to go to trial i'm not going to go to trial and i had a previous terrorism case and now assaulting a federal agent and 50 shots it was 20 like they were asking for 20. yeah and if they had offered me a video like one i probably would have taken like realistically i know myself um but i'm not going to sit at the mercy of a judge and hope that he doesn't crush me judges are are enemies they're not good people so i decided fight fight for yourself fight to win okay so and is this a jury trial yeah okay yeah wow who'd you pick for the jury um we bunch of anarchists no um our jury selection ended up being pretty positive uh it was just a bunch of like just a bunch of workers um all of them were white there was two women which is almost good for a jury selection to get something that isn't just all white men um but we ended up getting a philosophy teacher i think as the foreman so good as soon as i heard him answer the question they're like do you feel that justice needs to be served and his answer was like it depends on the meaning of justice we want him that guy we want a reader yes and so uh yeah that was scary that was a scary boring time totally um can i tell you what happened during trial definitely because this is documented too it's so weird uh my first day of trial i come back and they had taken all my property so i didn't have nothing they took all my legal work my radio my books and so the next day at trial my lawyers complained about this and the judge is like you guys don't get to do this talk to the feds you don't get to do this give this man his stuff and so i come back that day and i had my stuff but i was now on a range by myself upstairs and so they'd remove me from people okay you're gonna be so we tell the judge he's like i don't that's their choice so then the next day i come back from trial and uh my room was flooded all my paperwork was destroyed all of it someone had i had a cup of coffee someone had knocked it over onto my legal work um the entire all my books my letters from my wife destroyed and they said that a bird had flown into my cell and knocked over a thing of toy paper that had started the sink and the judge we have the transcripts of this people wouldn't believe me the judge was like are you guys trying to get sued like you're telling me that a bird caused this man's cell to flood they're like absolutely so the judge said bring the video and i never brought it he he's not gonna he didn't push the line and so um yeah i did a five day a five day jury trial did you get to tell the jury how they were fucking with you so this was a big big thing people in the feds will never believe you if you don't tell the jury how they were fucking with you so this was a big big thing people in the feds will never believe you if you don't tell the jury how they were some of the white gangs considered snitching somehow i never i don't understand that shit but people won't do it because if you testify on your own behalf it opens the door for them now to question your character and your past so if you say i didn't stab that guy on the stand they're like well did you stab this other guy and now you're fucked they could open the door but i felt so confident so they had nine officers testify against me the ones who would beat your ass yeah yeah yeah and then they had another one a guard at inglewood who had cracked my head open when i was handcuffed behind my back i didn't tell you that story but he had cracked my head open really he picked me up and slammed me on my head i almost died uh had a concussion puked for a month they had him testify against me saying i was a threat to him he was six foot four three hundred pounds um and so at the end of all them i get to sit there and i get to tell the jury why we hate cops i got to tell them the politics in prison how boring it was and i got to tell them why we hate cops i got to tell them the politics in prison how boring it is how grisly it is how shitty we are treated where this anger comes from and then i got to explain why he didn't have a right to touch me in prison if someone touches you blank in prison if someone says this blank i have to live by the rules that are established in this community i can't change them um and so i got to tell that jury that i testified for two days so i was being cross-examined by little pencil dick title bomb um this is the ausa yeah the prosecutor the assistant district attorney whatever and so he's trying to get me hot he's trying to get me upset and he's saying stuff he's not allowed to say like the judging the judging them all decide like what's allowed you're not allowed to call me a terrorist because that will influence the jury um and he snuck it in and like objection and the judge called him up and reprimanded him um and the first day first day i did get upset like i was starting to sound angry but the judge this judge kind of had my back honestly he ended the that day a little early he's like well we can just cut it now and so i got to go back to the cell and practice like repractice keeping composure and the second day i just smashed him like he just set me up all these great opportunities to make them look stupid he spent like 10 minutes where he'd show me a picture of the mop closet and try to argue that it was an office she was like look at the filing cabinets like they don't have filing cabinets they don't have filing cabinets they don't have filing cabinets and mop closets i was like look at all the mops and the buckets how about who cares i'm i'm in custody you're not allowed to assault me i mean you have all the power so did it come down to that though like you can talk all of this you could describe the conditions but at the end of the day it's about what's legal and what's not so did you guys did your lawyer narrow that down to he was assaulted he's supposed to be in the care of the government and the government assaulted him he's the vulnerable one like that's what it should come down to that's what it came down to in the closing statements okay yeah that's the law you broke the law and so the law in the feds is you can defend yourself even if you're not attacked and so the jury had two questions and one of the questions was what if eric thought he was going to get hit by the lieutenant is that still a self-defense and it is yeah that's fascinating say that again because it sounds so good if you have a reasonable belief that this person is going to hurt you it has to be reasonable then you have a right to use reasonable force to stop them i couldn't have shot him right but i hit him until he fell down and that is reasonable because now he can't hurt me right um and and does that also include guards or staff yeah that includes everybody wow and so that juror was sitting on the fence and so with like one minute left on friday before the weekend they came back with their verdict and my guilt i cried yeah i cried hard yeah yeah do you that's incredible and thrilling if you're an attorney by the way if you're a defense attorney they were i hate them you didn't like your defense attorney i liked one of them but the way they treated my wife during trial was so despicable i won't give them credit ever well will you give the judge a little bit of credit judge martinez like he he also did taylor swift civil trial where like that dude grabbed her ass um so i mean he did me well he was a pervert towards my lawyers and kind of a misogynist but i appreciate you doing the bare minimum to help me because he still shut us down a lot um he there was lots of times where we were right and he said no but we only need just give us a few inches and we can win this thing so and obviously the the footage was able to be played the video the video tape of you being in the torture room and not all of it because it didn't have anything thing to do with the assault right okay this all happened whether that happened or not right but you were able to play like you being walked into the closet by the lieutenant and we were able to play me walking into the building that has the closet there was no camera in there so they showed me walking on the yard they showed me standing in front of the door getting told to come in and then that's the last camera they have oh so there's no cameras in the building that's wild right how do they justify that no idea wow um but so i was able to convince a jury that nine federal agents were lying and that even though you don't have tape i'm telling the truth you never got to see it it's his word versus my word but i promise you he's lying that's incredible because that's that would scare me a little bit not being able to use most of the footage hashtag no beta yeah no that's that's tight that's tight as fuck um not to skip ahead but do you have any kind of lawsuit pending against them we did and it was a good one but some of my lawyers wanted to keep expanding expanding to the point it became so complicated and then we missed the tort deadline oh no and so i was gonna sue for that officer cracking my skull open that's an open shut case handcuff behind my back and you lift me up and slam my head down that's the deadline yeah they're trying to get too much money probably right they were trying to bite off more than they could chew they definitely bit off more than they could chew and bless their hearts like they're not they're not bad but i i could have been rich now how how is that not criminal you being assaulted like that handcuffed good question i not only is it not criminal i got ran a disciplinary report for assaulting him uh i ended up winning that disciplinary report the disciplinary officer said that this stupidest thing i've ever seen no um but you would think if someone breaks the law they break the law but they have qualified immunity so it never says in the guidebook not to slam someone on their head while they're handcuffed behind their back in the shoe in that exact language so they can reasonably believe that they're that's not against the a law they can do it that's what qualified immunity is the stupidest shit on earth yeah yeah so he got away with it he had led to someone getting killed in his previous prison too they just move them along yeah just like the priest it's gonna say just like the catholic church um just like the epstein files right the powerful very rarely investigate and prosecute themselves yeah that's not in their interest at all but man you won the case huge so you think okay now i'm just gonna finish out the rest of my time you only had a couple of years left i truly believe and this is so naive and i don't know why i did this but i truly believe that i won this case like your whole thing against me was this case i just won like i will be now vindicated and sent back to a medium or a low i had medium points uh custody points so i could have been at a medium or a low again and i was like i'm gonna do the rest of my bid and just chill yeah uh put in work if i have to but otherwise just relax and instead they sent me back to usp lee um and so it's back to that horrible prison in the summer it's back to have an ant's bite all over you and crawling your food and all this oh yeah tell us about that you have an tattooed on yeah so i usually it's an old prison built into the mountains and they don't answer nobody that's like a self-governing fascist state they don't answer a region international um and so while there you'd wake up and there'd be like ants crawling on you there'd be ants in your groin there'd be ants in your food and stuff and you're sweating so much and that's what they eat that salt and that sugar and so when i got free my dog was like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be daughter saw me stomp out an anthill and it made her so sad because they didn't do nothing to me they're just little critters and you can't tell a child like here's why i'm killing these motherfuckers they bit the shit out of me and i hate them and they represent everything bad you just have to be like you're right fair enough so i did immersion therapy and this was the immersion therapy okay like i'm already tattooed like people can say it's stupid as shit i don't care um it helped me exist with my daughter better it made her feel safer too right i still kill ants but not around her right so it's incredible uh that a place like that can exist like that in you know the most advanced country on earth maybe we're not the most advanced how's that um so you got shit back to the fucking penitentiary yeah so that's all bad but how did it go from that to adx florence so i got placed in the shoe immediately and i didn't know why i didn't know are you guys sitting here on holdover status like elevenworth you're gonna do something with me are you sending me back to a medium but i had to return here because this is where i came from before the trial like you guys i was at lee you took me to trial so i have to go back to lee um but the next day psychology shows up and they knock on the door and they're like king we i found out what we're going to do with you i was like great send me to a medium he's like no actually we're going to do your uh evaluation for adx right now i was like what because that seems like a joke um i am not qualified for adx at all and we can get into that later if you want but i don't match i don't fit that bill and so i thought it was bullshit and then he took me out of the cell like obviously you're handcuffed behind your back rabble rabble and i go to the lieutenant's office and they have me do like when you hear the word son what does it remind you of what is the synonym of happy where do these blocks go line up these blocks in order of size like this weird test to see if you're essentially like can comprehend fifth grade level uh information and if you can you move on to the next phase of adx referral and so that one is they have to put together a packet of you and it's a packet that has every single write-up every single report every single document that they did and you never saw um and then they have to type up the exact reason why do we think this and so they submit that to region and then after about three weeks i get a document saying okay region approved you now have to have an interview and so i have to have an interview with some dude from region where he says here's the charges against you how do you feel do you wish to recant and you already know if you get to that stage you're going everyone knows that and so i didn't i was like fuck you guys i'm i'm super happy i hate the government go to hell eat shit um and they they like paraphrase they made it weird like i'm so happy to resist like what are you i never said that um but so then you get a piece of paper and it says um here's all this stuff all the reasons and i regional so and so either approve or don't approve and he marked approved so then it goes to the regional director who at that time i think was andre matavusian just cold bitch it looks like a thumb um and he now gets the final say he's got the report he's got the psych review and he's got the recommendation from region and so about a week after getting the uh the i recommend from region the i get a piece of paper under my door and it says it just has a box and it says regional director and it says approve or disapprove and they just mark the approved box and so that process once you get that it's just a i sat back in that shoe for another week before it was travel day and on travel day they do covid swaps because if you have covid you don't get to go um and they skip my cell that's usually how you know who's transferring like they'll covid them and they didn't covid me so i was like well god damn um and then at midnight they come and they grab everyone out of their cells transfer time get up boys get up wake the fuck up pack up pack up back up your shit and they skip my cell so i'm and then at 3 a.m pack up now you're going okay so they go and they put you on a bus and they drive you from fucking virginia to atlanta it's like a six-hour bus ride you're all shackled yeah that's painful and exhausting exhausting i got the black box and you can't like turn your wrist yeah um and then you spend a week in that shoe in the atlanta shoe and you're on adx status now so you have the big sign in your door all the guards have to walk you walk up to you with three different guards you get your food with three guards they're handing it to you um if i went to recreation two guards a lieutenant with a baton and then i got flown to oklahoma city transfer center and that's just another transfer center but same thing in the shoe three man hold all this wild shit and then a week after that king pack up you're going we hop on another plane from oklahoma city to colorado and we land in denver and then i have that two-hour drive to uh adx and you think this was kind of an obvious reprisal this was a kind of an obvious collusion amongst the authorities to get payback yeah 110 um to get qualified for adx there's like big things that you need to qualify for did you murder someone that will get you there in prison in the system already right they don't care what you did in the free world right um so did you murder someone inside yes you're going did you murder someone inside did you have multiple multiple stabbings that cause serious injury like four or five of them you're going potentially did you like stuff like that um are you a serious gang leader like the leader of the ACs, the leader of SAC, GDs, like all the gangs, the IMA, the Mafia, New East Road Familia, those leaders are there. So they, to justify it, they gave me leadership status of the left wing. They said I was a left wing leader. So I guess you were kind of taking the lead in these protests. You have an outside influence on the community. Your leadership status has an outside impact. Oh, interesting. So it doesn't apply necessarily to just prison and running like a prison gang. It can, but it didn't online. It's two different things. And so people a year before or two years before when I was fighting that case in the shoe at Englewood had done a protest for me outside. I didn't know about it. I didn't, I had no communication with anyone in the world and they did it. I never asked for it, but they did it. And the captain, they live streamed it. So regional was watching. The captain was watching. They're getting humiliated by this protest for me. And this is when Trump had started like bashing the left calling anarchist terrorists, calling Antifa terrorists, all this bullshit. And so they labeled me a leader of the left, anarchist leader, Antifa leader, which is just the stupidest dog shit I've ever heard. It's just the stupidest dog shit I've ever heard in my life. But that was the reason. Yeah. And I have a document saying it's crazy. Just inventing it. Yeah. Are you a member of Antifa? Antifa is not a group that you've not have members. Right. That's a hard note. Okay. Which I guess you wouldn't tell me even if you were. It's a secret organization. Fair enough. But Trump has our membership. So does Kash Patel. They have the list. So we'll see. Stupid motherfuckers. So you're going, man. I'm going. You're like the least criminal guy to ever be. You're going to be at ADX Florence. There was like a couple of sex offenders who everywhere they went had attacked people or attacked staff to check in. And after a while, they literally run out of prisons. So we have to put you somewhere. There's like three or four of those dudes. They're really weird. Well, again, I said you're the least criminal. Those guys are criminals. Oh, yeah. Fair enough. But so, yeah. And I only had two years left. And that is unheard of. People didn't believe me. They were like, no, they're just going to send you to the penitentiary. There's a program in the penitentiary, a step down program. They're just going to send you to that. And I could have got killed there because that's the leader of all these gangs. And if they didn't like what I stood for, they would fuck me up. Yeah. And so even on the bus to ADX, there's this native dude. He's going to the mental health ADX. It's a it's a different unit in Florence penitentiary. It's for people that deeply, deeply try to kill themselves like over and over. So it's like a mental. It's a I mean, I just had a mental health ADX. And so he's sitting on the bus with me. It's me and a white G.D. from the state prison, South Carolina State. He had killed someone in that prison and there was like running the prison was like stolen cell phones. And so the prison there was just like, no, we can't we can't handle this kid. So it was me and him and the native bro. And the chief kept like getting in my ear like, you're not going, you know, you're not going. They're going to send you to the dropout. Trust me. Who knows what those boys will do there? You never know. They might set you up to get killed. And so I'm nervous. This is the first time I've ever felt nervous in my life. Feels like my heart's going to explode, feel like my arms are all cold because I'm thinking I'll never have a chance to tell my wife. She won't know what happened. She will get a phone call saying your husband's been killed. Pick up his body. You got 24 hours. And I never got to talk to her. I never got to say goodbye, say I love her. So I'm just praying to my goddesses, all the energy in the world, like, just please don't let me get killed in this prison, please. Because at that point, that overtook the fear of ADX. Like, are you guys going to get me butchered? TXU Energy. Rep number 10004. What is, how is that even possible in a prison where everybody, there's literally zero contact, zero physical contact? And that unit in the penitentiary, because it's a step-down unit, those dudes have contact. Okay, so explain that for people. Because there's a lot of misconceptions, I had them myself, about ADX. There actually is a wing. It's not just like. It's one wing. One unit, yeah. Right, it's one unit, but there's different sections of it. There's different security levels, even at ADX. So, it's important for people to know that the entire prison, no matter what unit you're in, is 24-hour lockdown. Always. You get your 30 minutes or an hour for recreation, but you are, whether you're an elderly prisoner or a step-down prisoner, you're 24-hour lockdown. But there, if you've been there for a couple years, and they think you're no longer a threat, you go to the step-down unit. And that's J-unit. And while you're there, you get rec time with your group. And your group is, it's just a room, so whoever's on this side of the room is your group. And it's usually two or three other people. And that's supposed to acclimize you to being around people, being around these two or three. And if you don't fuck up there, they send you to the USP. You have to do six months there. They send you to the USP step-down program. And so, you're still locked in your cells. And for three or four months of that, you get group time. So, now you're out with people. And if you coexist with those people, you get to go to another penitentiary. Okay. So, you were worried that they would send you to like a step-down program where you actually do have physical contact. Yeah. And then they would send in a plant or it could be a gang leader that would take care of you. Yeah. And that's not a crazy thing to think. Like, after what I've been through. Of course not. Yeah. That is a rational thought. Yeah. Like, I'm getting set up to get killed. I'm getting killed by these dudes. And so, we roll up to the penitentiary in that bus. And they start opening the door. And then they close it and back out. And drive like they're going to ADX again. And then back up and drive back to the penitentiary. So, there's USP prisoners on the front of the bus and the ADX ones in the back of the bus. And when they come to the penitentiary, like when they finally pull up there, they start reading off names. And I am terrified they're going to say King. They're going in alphabetical order. Last names. So, it's like, Burnett, Donald, Francisco, Lamar. And they skip K. I'm like, oh, fuck. Like, did I just make it? Like, am I going to survive? And then they close the door and start leaving. And they pull back up again. Like, these motherfuckers. And then they just close the door and back up and start driving to ADX. So, you wanted to go to ADX over the USP? Over the fear. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to go until it became, you might get killed. All right. So, and then it went back to like, oh, shit. Like, we're about to see what this place really is. Right. Because ADX has a, like, a mythical status amongst prisoners. Not many people have ever been there. It only holds 400 at most or 450. It's never filled. So, it's always like 300 people. Right. And everyone that's big in the feds has been there. The Unibar, El Chapo, the brand leaders, rabble, rabble. So, it's a surreal place. And there's crazy rumors that, like, they wheel the shower up to your cell and, like, crazy shit like that. It moves underground. It rotates. Yeah. It's like the greatest engineering feat of all time. Right. Yeah. I thought all of those things. Right. And we're not given information to tell us otherwise. They want this misinformation out there. So, we pull up to it and it's just got the fences and fences of razor wire. Like, big fences. People come out and open the fences. The bus moves forward. They do the standard, like, they have a mirror and they're looking for bombs underneath the bus. And then there's two people in the front, two people outside the bus, and then two people behind the bus and they got their big guns. And so, the bus is just driving slowly and they're walking beside it. And keep in mind that this is a prison within a massive compound that you cannot get into. So, it's all fake. It's all for show. No one's going to get that bus. Of course not. Yeah. It's literally impossible. But they do it for show. And then you get a bus. And you drive around. And ADX is like this tiny red building. Like, red bricks. It's just a tiny thing. And you pull into this massive garage. Like, a big-ass garage where the bus pulls in. And then they have you come off and you start that process. Yeah. Yeah. So, it really is just like a small prison. It's like one-fourth the size of, like, a big USP. And so, yeah. And then you just go in, tell us about what it's like. Yeah, sure. Sure. So. They walk you off the bus. And you go into R&D, which is like receiving and discharge. And they put you in a holding cell. And then they come and have you strip out. Show us your dick. Show us your asshole. All that stuff. And then different people from different, like, medical comes. Dental comes. Psychology comes. The unit team comes. And they're all, like, doing a little small intake interview with you. You have to sign for your TV. Because we get little lapis. Laptop-sized TVs. By law. Like, we have to do it. And after that, they. give you your prison clothes they handcuff you behind your back and two guards grab you one has the baton one has your arms and they start walking you to your unit and i'm still thinking this isn't real like that is a different adx they're taking me to like there's that misconception too people like think that there's different adx's within adx even um but i don't know i'm just my head's spinning and they walk you down this long ass checkered tile floor because the prison's not underground but it's built into the ground so the bus is up here we're walking down this slope and the units are on the left so i got a unit i'm walking past and then commissary room where the campers do your commissary and then b unit which is a control unit that's where you have a set amount of time um and then finally c unit which is the discipline unit used to be the chute and , the guards walk me down or walk me up to the bubble gates open gates close walk me down four or five steps that gate open that gate closes and it's just one one range and it's got eight cells in it might have ten it's got a very small amount of cells and i go into a1 a1 lower that's my first cell um c a lower and that's my that's my house wow and uh okay so it's but the misconception is like the yeah the shower swings around none of that none of that is true no you got a metal ass shower stainless steel in your cell yeah and you press a bind and it blows either super hot or super cold water for a minute and then turns off yeah and you have to press the button again it's just a real pain in the ass i mean how did it compare to like being in the shoe yeah so one of the big comparisons was the sound the noise because there's not noise and the shoe everything's metal so you can bang on the wall you can you can rap with each other um adx is concrete so you're hitting the wall um there's two doors so if you want to talk to someone you have to yell through the two doors and that's just a pain in the ass um and so you're you're alone you're you're alone in a way where like you know it's not gonna it can't get worse like like psychologically um no one's gonna come help you no one's gonna hear you no one gives a if you die no one gives a if you have a bad day or if you're sad or if you're suicidal no one can hear you um and you're gonna have your one phone call a month um maybe people get three now i don't know when i was there i was one a month and but that only applies to certain inmates right because i don't think chopo guys like that who are the the highest level of security i don't think he's ever had a phone call yes he's an h unit sam's unit that's special administrative measures that's for people where they feel like any communication is too dangerous um so like ramsey yusuf was there all the jihadis were there right some of the brand dudes like barry mills was in that range right um but that's where chapo is and he can make one phone call a month there has to be an fbi agent listening the entire time and it has to be pre-approved blood family member from the fbi so like let's say your daughter they think she was affiliated with the cartel you're not calling her so he's been able to make phone calls and he gets legal visits um we gotta remember chapo's just a prisoner there like he's not they don't he's not important uh because there's so many big big name people there so well i think right now he's the biggest name he is he's still in the news but he's still treated like you're just a paisa now yeah you're a cartel guy right uh and there's a lot of cartel guys there so they're not those in the prison stops they're not impressed they might like want to get clout by telling their family like yeah i talked to chapo today yeah that's stupid but yeah how did you know because you don't have other contact with the inmates how do you know what people are even in there for so there's two ways where you can have contact okay and one of them is there's an inmate orderly he's an orderly for the range so twice a week they electronically open his two doors he comes out on the range the guards would have already set a bucket there with like a mop and so he gets them off the range for an hour and so if you want to send a kite down to another cell you try to slide the envelope under two doors and then he'll lock it to the other cell um and so you get to chat with that with that dude and so i got to talk to like three or four just super interesting people yeah very dangerous like they're all dangerous as right but um so that's how i got to talk to people and you can also like i yelled like sometimes you just yell down the range right yeah you hope everyone else is quiet johnny what are you watching or i got five stamps on the chiefs like that like for the super bowl i won five steps um the eagles so uh that's how you communicate and then when i was in the pre-release unit that's the same as a step down so i came out with my group so i got to talk to my group three people i see okay so first of all that orderly job must be pretty coveted i think i think so you get 15 dollars a month too so that's 15 extra there's no other jobs that you can have like right there's no way to make money in adx like a normal prisons right so that 15 is two bags of coffee some deodorant and toothpaste and you gotta they're gonna starve you you gotta have canteen you're gonna be hungry all the time yeah adx used to have the best food in the prison too like the prison system when they still had the local menus um um because they were so scared of those dudes like it was that's when silverstein was there that's when it was just the height of prison violence right and but when they switched to the national menu where every prison gets the same food on the same day just the quality so and i was on the no meat tray i was just getting black beans and three bean salad and wet tofu every day of my life so i needed that i needed that commissary bad yeah and i was restricted the first month i could only spend 15 dollars the first month and i have to write my wife so it was just i just bought stamps i didn't get the extra food until brutal it sucked it's brutal now you get out of your cell i believe you were saying they do have like a workout area it's like a dog kennel right yeah so inside wreck is just another it's just a cell it's just so with a push-up bar or a dip bar in it right and you're by yourself the entire time of course and the inside wreck that those two inside wreck cages are right across from the unit so you can see into them so people that are good at sign language like let's say one of your homies is in that he can stand at his window and you're at yours behind the bars and you're signaling like through like telling each other stuff so that's good and then depending on what unit you're in outdoor wreck you'll be in a dog kennel in a bigger cage and so it'll be like three or four dog kennels and so then you can chat to people on your unit that way right because just on the other side of the fence yeah any other kennel is somebody is another inmate in c unit you don't have that your outside wreck is just a big ass concrete box so how do they determine what unit the inmate is in um if you up in the prison you go to c unit this winter unit i don't know why i was there uh if there's something called gp people think that means you're not locked down but if you're just in adx for a normal reason you are on your range or unit so like let's say there's seven uh brand dudes in that prison they're probably all going to be in that same unit and they're probably going to be with people that they associate with like mexican mafia and then you wait for familiar guys will be with like the abts and i don't know if it's entirely that way but i know it they definitely try to make that happen they keep people together and they can listen through the intercoms in your room and so they want to hear you gossiping they want to hear you yelling to collect intel right so yeah that you were saying that like the fbi wants inmates to communicate they want you to write letters please right please um because that's doing that's doing their job for them yeah and when you're the biggest dudes in prison still controlling empires like they want that they want that yeah that's crazy that those guys are still calling shots from behind that much isolation like realistically they aren't like there might be someone leaving like out in j unit that they can get word to like hey tell people something like larry hoover the leader of the gds are founder of it he's been in adx for 20 years he's not he's just trying to live he's just trying to live he's just trying to live live um so like that they it's not like the old days where the brand was like riding with their piss and like sending out letters that way right they're not doing that anymore yeah uh because now they watch for it yeah so i don't i don't know if people are still running the running the gangs from there i don't want to say yes or no but they're not doing it much they probably just exist as figureheads right they can talk about on the yards like hey you know so and so's still alive he's our guy he's our it's like idolatry like that's the idol that we look up to and if they're good at talking code like they can tell their visitors like hey tell my wife that uh i won't be home for christmas and then that's tell joey that stab the out of this guy right some crazy like that yeah um but yeah there's not it's not happening how many people are actually in adx that have outdates like you that actually have dates i say the majority really well let me rephrase i'd say the majority of people there um don't have official life in prison so they potentially have out days one of my friends sliced the out of an officer smiles so he's at adx and he'll probably be there for the next 11 years but he'll leave that prison with 15 years ADX time and so he's gonna come to the free world parole right out of ADX probation but yeah Wow and so like I was in the pre-release unit for the last three months I was in that prison and there you get I got one phone call a month and they had to live monitor it but people were making one phone call a week um you get a certain amount of email as a week when you're in that unit for your when you come out for your one hour a day you can do that and so at any point in time there was eight to ten people in that unit and that's eight to ten people going to the free world and some of them have been in that prison for 10 15 20 years that's shocking see I think people would have no idea I think they would assume once you will go in there you don't come out unless it's in a body bag but that's not the case so then why why send these people ADX and that's the that's a great question and it's a conundrum um let's say you're a big gang leader and they want to isolate you they could make a unit in any prison to where you're even ADX but have it be open right and that way you can still associate with people even if you're on restrictive communication you're still around people but they do this stupid ass shit where they're like we don't like you you did whatever and so we're gonna bury you for two decades and then good luck good luck in the free world all people talk shit to me on the internet being like you weren't actually there no one leaves as a motherfucker I wrote a book about it I mean this is pretty documented guys you can look this up I'm pictures from there of me oh have you heard of Google sir just one time please Google but yeah people don't realize that there is a continuation of folks going to other prisons and then also going home and that's scary that's unbelievable people are going home from ADX Florence yeah so it's punitive it's strictly punitive meaning just we are punishing you for the sake of doing it yeah it's the most evil form of human cruelty I'm doing this because I can no more they say it's for the safety and security of the institution but like we know that's bullshit people are getting butchered every day in prison it's not these ones aren't preventing safety from happening and you could put them all together on their own like I said like oh let's say all the jihadis all the terrorists you could put them in a unit with just themselves they all have life they none of them are getting out and that would be at least they could be around people same with like the big gang leaders right with their gangs together yeah you can associate yeah but they want to hurt us they want to hurt you and so they do and ADX is not a joke mentally like it is a very serious prison that level of isolation has a deep impact on people and motherfuckers lose their minds yeah and it's serious not a sarcastic way in a very serious way people break yeah okay and you tell us about that like you would hear people screaming and yeah so you'll go out to rec or medical and you'll walk by someone's cell and you'll see them just sitting staring at the wall they don't get up for food often they don't bathe themselves or they're just sitting staring at their TV that TV becomes their entire world because they've given up um and so you'll just see them drooling or just laying in bed 24/7 and no one's gonna come help you no one cares if you're sad uh there are people that will that will bug out and start smearing the walls with shit start cutting themselves cutting out their testicles stuff like that um because their brain loses hope like there's nothing there's no way out so I have to feel something mm-hmm um and it's tragic they used to have an entire mental health wing but they the government or someone said you can't do that anymore so they just moved it to a different person they just moved it to USP Florence you can't help these people anymore I don't get is that the government said you can't isolate them like this it's making them too crazy so get them out of ADX and so then they just put them in another prison 24-hour lockdown right and then no one is allowed to leave officially from that prison so what they do is when you're about to leave when you got like a week or a month left they ship you to whatever town you're gonna release from and put you in that shoe so like let's say you're leaving your home or going to LA they will ship you from ADX to some LA prison or California prison and then release you from there I got you so like the day before I got released they drove me to the penitentiary in Florence just USP Florence right back in that shoe again and I stayed the night one night and then they let me go so they have to officially no one gets released from ADX it's too dangerous yeah yeah like what a load of yeah well it's got to be based around money too right because and you saw this firsthand you said something really interesting on an interview I watched with you you said um like the administration you know the wardens they would be real money makers yeah and and that's how they got to climb the ladder you know the bureaucratic ladder explain what you mean by that yeah sure so firstly the goal of every president is to get more money from Congress and the more dangerous your prison is the more you can say like we need more guards we need more weapons it's we need more safety and now Congress is giving you that extra money and that extra money is supposed to be resources to buy food and programming and stuff like that but instead you get the money and administrators get bonuses so let's say recreation has a budget of a hundred dollars but they only spend 40 though that administrator gets that money the 60 yeah that he saved yeah so the reason food is so bad now because that food administrator has a three hundred thousand dollar quarterly budget if he only spends fifty thousand of it he's pocketing that cash this episode is brought to you by TXU energy for the first time ever Texans have an energy plan that combines free nights all year with daytime summer savings it's called free nights and cool summer you get free nights every night all year long plus a 25% bonus toward your daytime use all summer it's a first-of-its-kind plan created for how Texans actually use energy discover how much more you could save with free nights and cool summer TXU energy energy for everything visit txu.com for more information rep number one zero zero zero four imagine that incentive system yeah that's so barbaric yeah it's literally theft you're setting you're setting the warden up or the administrator up to steal from the taxpayer bingo like if you if you don't care about the cruelty to human beings the inmates just care at least that your tax dollars are being stolen plus a million other ways people like I'll read shit online I'll hear it makes me really frustrated people like my tax dollar I don't want to support this scum my tax dollars are already being used to prison them my dog your tax dollars being used to found the pockets of these uh these administrators yeah we're not getting that shit it's not like a privilege to get this shitty food and sleep in the worst yeah bed of all time that's not we're not taking that from you the prison system is right oh right they're not rehabilitating us so that we can go back and be good people and benefits of the community they are taking your money putting it in their pockets and so yeah I think about that all the time every time I had bad food it's like you motherfuckers every time like when they overpriced commissary they get those kickbacks they overpriced the commissary yeah like they buy a bag of coffee from the Kifi company for a dollar sell dust for four dollars who gets that three who's gonna that three the CEO of Kifi they'll get their kick back and then the administrators yeah it's a money-making operation and then you have to go back and do it again and that's probably why they need to send people like you to ADX because they also have a quota they have a quota they have like a minimum so they have a quota of what groups they need in there so they need a certain amount of white gang leaders they need a certain amount of black gang leaders they need a certain amount of Mexican gang leaders and so I was the left-wing quota because it had gone from like Tom Manning to Dr matulusha core to Ray Luke to Oscar Lopez on and on and on and then they counted Ted the Unabomber Ted kaczynski and when he died or got transferred to the medical facility before he died they need a left-wing prisoner so they already hate me they already want to isolate me they already have the restrictions fill that quota so it's almost like a DEI we need as much diversity as we can that's insane because there's people there that are gang members have never done in prison like they're just gang members and they get put in there for leadership status because they need more of that game you should have like failed that first test it doesn't matter there are people that literally answered your ass is going they're not giving they're not wasting their time just to have you like trick your way out right no one's no one's escaping that right yeah it was really interesting hearing you like talk about how you had that you couldn't let the TV overtake you yeah it's very serious um because that TV is a chain anything that they give you that helps you that they can take away is a weapon right it's a threat to you because what they're saying is we're giving this to you but if you up we're taking it um and so if you didn't program like if you're someone that needed programming and you weren't watching the programming channels and doing the packets they would threaten you um and then take the TV until you did it right um or if you got a disciplinary write-up they'll take the TV so if you're if you start letting your world revolve around programs and then you lose those programs you will crumble you it's just like losing mental health medicine so I made sure to have a very disciplined routine with TV I'm gonna watch it from this time to this time this time to this time and I'm not gonna sit down and stare I'm gonna walk around while I'm watching it I'm gonna do squats I'm gonna do abs um I mean obviously sometimes I would sit and just watch TV but but it's a metaphor for our society now everybody's lost in the screen for real and i thought about that too and i think about that now when i'm when i'm free like when someone took some people's phones they have no other source of dopamine totally and i i recognize that in prison to where you can break me right now if you take this because i went 14 days with nothing without it and i felt how hard that was 14 days no books magazine newspapers letters yeah talking or tv well that's why you have to read because you need to keep your mind you're reading literally they show that brain scans like it strengthens the neurons the neural pathways so you have to do that in a place where you're already you're already being tortured just by isolation your brain is already being attacked i would do i would do exercises like naming all the countries in the world name them in order all the a's all the b's austria azerbaijan armenia yeah and then going backwards wow so it's like or i'd make up psalms in my head to the rhythm because you can't remember psalm lyrics so like let's say i love this song by defiance ohio i would know the rhythm so i would make up songs to it that way i could feel like some sort of dopamine some sort of accomplishment yeah and then that's when i created this star system because that helped a lot what was that so the star system i did this thing where i would give value to the days so a five-star day would be chief swan i got a letter from rochelle um i didn't get in trouble with staff the food was edible i cleaned blah and the goal was get as many five-star days as possible and if you got a one-star day what could you do tomorrow to fix it so every night i would count in my head all the things i was grateful for all the things i accomplished it was perfect and then at night time or at morning time i will list every single thing i wanted to accomplish that day and then when you're accomplishing things even as cleaning your toilet dopamine that's right purpose yeah if i walk 2 000 laps i get that dopamine and then i accomplish something more dopamine so that's what i did and then i did it again and then i did it again and then i did it again and so the whole thing is giving your life meaning and finding happiness even if it's in the small things because that shit they can't take away totally so it's building your own world which i also think would help people out here has that helped you now that you're in the free world those skills that discipline and that gratitude that you learned while you were in there intentional gratitude is something i still do today i still every night list off all the beautiful things that happen that day i thank my religious people um my goddesses and it does it makes me like i'm kinder and i'm more grateful and i'm more grateful and i'm more grateful and i'm more i'm more loving i'm more empathetic and it's a big thing like i never want to be watching tv and go like i'm bored because i've seen boredom like i've seen real boredom and you do seven and a half years sitting on a box by yourself that's boredom uh so i i'm very mindful to be grateful the small things i have a pillow i'm sick i get to turn on and off my light i got air condition yeah so that sort of shit it helps a lot and i recommend it yeah don't lose that man no with the passage of time obviously you forget certain things but you've been through such trauma gratitude's a habit like freedom's a habit you can relearn it and you can lose it um and so i practice the habit of freedom all the time and that includes the gratitude yeah they're not gonna beat like you're not gonna beat me outside of prison like i survived you inside you're not gonna get this fucking victory out here two and a half years later yeah no i won so you're only two and a half years out i'm two years and four months out wow yeah wow and so that's been that's been some little roller coaster for sure how how has that been so when you're first released from prison people might not always know this you don't go home you go to a halfway house which is another prison they could decide where you work you're allowed to call uh what church you go to so like me and my wife had to fake go into a catholic church just to see each other because you have the ankle monitor and they monitor like why did you stop at a gas station you didn't tell us um stuff like that and so it's a micro prison and then once you do go home you're still on house arrest so if i want to go to work hi this eric king i'm going to work when i get to work hi this eric king i'm at work hi this eric king i'm driving home from work hi this eric king i'm back in the halfway house is a and if you fuck up they can put you back in prison if you're gonna fight at the halfway house they put you back in prison how how long is your parole your tail um i'm off great so how did you get off early or okay i got off early because i have a job i have a house i have a car i have a family and i had no bad uh urine test okay so i'm doing everything i did everything they needed yep um and now i just chew people and do fennel every day hell off fuck dude that's what that's what we do it for that's true freedom that's what you want that's what this is all about wow but freedom besides that like it's scary like it was it took me a long time to be able to have my kids sit next to me because of all that time alone it took me a hard time to like learn to do it and i'm like i'm not gonna do it i'm not gonna do it i'm gonna learn electronic stuff even the stuff that was available when i was free after 10 years you don't you don't know it so like qr codes uh self-checkout lanes um type on your phone and it goes on your tv bluetooth these are things i didn't know how to do uh downloading apps i never downloaded an app in my life so you have to relearn those things and you have to relearn the way society works people will be rude to you out here people are not nice people will cut you off they'll say that's wild they will bump into you in the grocery store they'll do all this crazy shit and you cannot react the way that you've been conditioned to react you can't do it no you will go back to prison and fuck up everything and also you have to work on your mental health otherwise you are going to give your prison to your family you're going to be their warden you have to get up at 5 30 a.m you're going to clean the toilet every day you got to make sure this is and this is done when you're shitting you got to flush as soon as it crowns yeah do that your daughter's like i'm seven yeah also why are you listening to me shit uh you better hit that water never thought about that yeah put some water on them yeah i had like time limits when people were allowed to shower when they when they couldn't because i didn't want them to fuck with the water uh really yeah it's just and that last that was the last song like my wife is so patient and she worked with me it's like how is this coming from you and how is it coming from the prison because if it's coming from the prison we need to work that out if it's coming from you i need to understand why so that we can grow as a family um and then i i got like i get tons of mental health care i'm on medicine i see a psychiatrist or it's like whatever um i have support systems sorry i've got a better than 99 prisoners i still struggle yeah uh i still have the physical pain from the forepoint i still have the emotional pain the mental pain um because it's hard it's hard to take off the mental chains as easy as it is to walk out um it's real easy to walk out that door and be like everything's perfect but you're lying to yourself see i think it's easier to walk out and be like fuck everybody this is what they did to me you know i'm you're gonna make me worse watch you're like dude you're just hurting yourself i think that's equally i think that's equally reasonable almost and also stupid um when i got when i was about to get released everyone's doing the what's your what's the first thing you're gonna eat how much you gotta fuck uh all this stuff and big mac a lot yeah big mac none at all because i don't want her touching me wow is that keep your fucking hands off me okay i was gonna ask you that so like physical touch i remember like no homo but i remember just how much even like the basketball court when i was in prison like you you would see way more like and these are like super masculine dudes black dudes touching them touching each other and i interpreted that as like we need we need to touch each other like as human beings we need literally physical contact what did that feel like for you well first of all everywhere you go in adx you have guards touching you did you at least appreciate the touch of a human being or were these guys like monsters like it doesn't sound like you felt like that no have you lost your mind no i don't want i don't want these motherfuckers touching me every time they're touching me it's by force right so but even your wife okay you explain that so and i like i was i was being hyperbolic entirely it's wife stuff but like sitting next to her and she's like i don't want you to touch me i don't want you to touch me and her her sometimes was like really scary and it burned my skin uh holding hands that was that's what made me feel safe it's like okay we're holding on to each other we're connected without it being uh like threatening seven and a half years in seg like obviously people have done drastically longer but that's a quarter of my life at that point right uh now it's one-fifth my life and you grow accustomed to being alone especially when anytime you're not in that cell you're getting attacked so physical contact your brain associates it with violence now and you have to uncondition yourself that that makes sense um so it's oatmeal cream pie cup of coffee holding hands and kiss wow i was also in the halfway house for a month so you're not where am i gonna yeah we can't leave yeah okay we're not gonna be intimate at a church as much as it'd be cool yeah i'd be rock and roll dude but like you have a time limit also mass is from seven to eight you're gonna be back by 8 30 leaving at 6 30. plus you know the catholic church the gay sex only yeah with an underage boy old child rape only yeah and even if you said no homo earlier but even if it was homo good feel intimacy feel close to somebody like don't let the prison break you like feel that closeness and love if you're able um there's no good or bad consensual touching so what do you yeah i'm just from the streets bro this is just how we talk - Oh, hell yeah, dog. - What do you think you could have done differently Like looking back, you know, what do you, what do you regret or let's not talk about regrets, but because your path is your path, but, and clearly like you've, you've this, you've grown from this situation, like you're a success, right? But what could you have done differently? And maybe how have your beliefs on rebellion? And yeah, I think rebellion is the word. How has that changed? So things that would have been differently is like the fight to win motto. I would have been more conscious. Am I hurting them or myself? Because no matter what I do to a guard, they're going home. I'm still in here. So am I making things worse for myself? Cause I'm angry. Cause if so, that's impulse. That's not even rebellion. That's acting on impulse. That's reactionary stuff. And I did that a lot and I would have changed that. I would have changed a lot of that because I got attacked by that Lieutenant for nothing, but I made things worse for myself immediately after I gave them a free target to do what they wanted. I made it so easy for them and I would have changed that probably. What would you have changed on the streets before you went in, you know, after Ferguson? Cause they could have used you, you know, the struggle could have used you on the streets. You're really no good when you're locked up like that. At that point, I don't, I don't think I was very useful. Everything was destruction. Like let's tear down this building. Let's tear down these cops. As, as opposed to let's grow this community. Cause I was even doing cool shit like free daycare for single moms. So they go to work, stuff like that. But everything was centered around pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, like breaking stuff. And I understand that you have to tear down the old system to build up a new one, but you can also build up the new one and make the old one obsolete. And nothing I was doing was helping my community. Nothing I was doing was helping Ferguson. I wasn't helping nobody. It was almost all egotism. And I can see that now. I reflect back on younger Eric. And so now my politics, like the way I view the world is with more empathy. And you, some people you present, it's the opposite. Like you said, for me, it's like, I have seen how much bitterness there is in the world. I don't want to pass that on. Um, and I was given so much love from friends and supporters. I felt that kindness. So what can I do now to help? Um, that's the, that's Eric right now. My anarchism is open arms instead of like. Close fingers. There you go. Creation. Yeah. It's easy to destroy, but to create is, you know, that's the reality of it. And that's why when I was younger, I did it. And I think that's why I do still believe in direct action. Don't get me wrong. Like I think revolutionary action is still important, but I'm at a stage to where consequence awareness and how my brain views the world where it's just not for me. Um, it's not like if someone did something to some ICE detention center or some, whatever. Some crazy shit, but cool, but I'm not, I'm not going to do it. And I don't see the value of me doing it and becoming another strain on society and destroying my family. I'd rather build up a safe place for them because they deserve it. Yeah, they deserve it. Like, you're not going to be with someone for 10 years, but been together 12 years now. Um, my wife doesn't have to do nothing. She doesn't have to work. If she doesn't want to, she doesn't have to do shit. Every dollar I make goes towards making her life. As easy as possible. I work two jobs. I got two full-time jobs just so she can have that peace of mind that the water will always be on the, the car will always be available. The bills will always be paid. You don't have to do anything. That's my love language to her. My love letter to her because she kept me alive. That's kind of where you start. You want to change the world, start with yourself and your family. It's very easy and love and kindness and understanding and gratitude. Intentional gratitude. People leave prison sometimes and immediately start exploiting people because that's the, they learn that that's the only way to get something. They've been taught that as kids or as adults, but I, I understood that I was giving that out of love and sacrifice. My wife's on disability. Like she was working hard to keep afloat, two kids and me. That's hard. And that's a sacrifice. And we should never forget the families that put in all that work and are also tortured by the prison system. She's having to drive four hours round trip to see me. For an hour. That's torture on her. And compared to some people, it's nothing like you were telling, uh, the last video I watched of you, people have flown from like the middle East to come see their jihadi loved ones and they would just get denied to even go see him. Oh my God. The saddest thing I ever saw was this woman or her son's from Canada and he got entrapped. He was like a mentally, mentally ill kid. He had no friends. The FBI meets him on a message board, like a Muslim message board, acts like they're his best friend, buys him clothes, sends him money. Like we're best friends. And then eventually like radicalize, radicalize and talk him into carrying a bomb in a time square or some shit. He was 17. So now he's an ADX as his big time terrorist. His mom tries flying down from Canada to see him like once a month. And I'd say half of those, half of those times she gets turned away and says, they just say, no, no reason. Um, but it's just Florence, Colorado is in the middle of nowhere also. So that is a hard, expensive. Yeah. And you see that. That happens all the time from New York to Denver or wherever people, people's families are getting extorted because of their love for, for anyone. Yeah. Yeah. It's heartbreaking, but I'm glad you are speaking about it. I'm glad you came on. Super glad. I mean, this was killer. Uh, I like you. You're a good dude. And you wrote a book. I did. So plug away, please. Yeah. So I was really blessed that PM press, uh, said like, you've got a story. That can be beneficial to people. We like to put it out. No one wins a trial. No one goes to ADX, especially no one does both. So it could have happened to anyone. It just happened to happen to me. And so I need to tell that story to let people know that here's the, here's this world you might not be aware of. So PM press gave me that opportunity and the book came out. It's called a clean hell, anarchy and abolition and America's most notorious dungeon. There's no books out about ADX. You're not going to find one that's like mass published. Yeah. Um, so I want people to know the reality. I want them to know about the different ways they can hurt us. Commissary medical. I want people to know who's in there. The reality of who's in there, what the units are like, what the day to day is like, what we do to survive, how we resist, how we get hurt. I need people to know this so that they can humanize the people inside there, not see them as the worst of the worst. See them as someone that did something that you might find heinous, but they are still a human being. They still have hopes, dreams, loves, passions, just like you. They just made a mistake. They just made a mistake according to the government or the world or whatever. So this book is beautiful. Like that's not just me talking, hyping myself up, like sucking my own ass or nothing. Um, and what it has that other prison books don't have are pictures. They have pictures of the mop closet of the Lieutenant after we fought the forepointing, the striker chair, the email I sent my wife, we got it. The communication restriction forms that says you are no longer. No longer allowed to send mail. We got it in there. Pictures of me being released pictures on the halfway house. You don't see that shit in books. No, um, and especially not in something that fortress like that secretive, that draconian, that oppressive me from ADX in there. Cause we're all to take pictures of recreation. Once I was going to ask you how you got those, they put you in an Al Gore rep cage and they, the recreation officer stands with the lens against one of the chain links and you can take a picture. And then SIS has to approve it. Right. And then if they approve it. It goes out to your family. Okay. So we have pictures of me inside this prison. People don't see that shit over my left shoulder. And one of the pictures is Richard Reed's cell, the Richard Reeve, the shoe bomber shoe bomber. Yeah. So I got to be yelled at him sometimes, um, Richard, I know my British, he's from Birmingham. So did you ever meet Choppa? No, he's in Sam's unit. He didn't get to, I've been his, my lawyer met his lawyer. Okay. Um, yeah, his lawyer. His lawyer is hot. They, I'm in love with his lawyer. Oh, not like the really good looking lady. Oh, okay. Some old fat man. Ah, somebody, I wouldn't say no, not after being in isolation for seven and a half, um, now do, do, cause people are going to want to know this is the cameras inside the cell because they there've, there's been footage in like the mainstream press of Chopo in his cell. So do some of the cells actually have. Yeah. Cameras in there. The pictures of Chopo in a cell aren't from ADX they're from MDC, New York. He was in 10 South, which is a notorious pre-trial thing for like big jihadis, big drug Lords, people that attack the president. So he was in that unit 10 South and they had cell, uh, they had video cameras in there. Okay. So there's no video cameras in any of the cells at ADX. And ADX on a range 13, which is a disciplinary, disciplinary, disciplinary unit is there's only four of them on that range. It was built. It was built for Silverstein and Ramsey Yusuf, but they've got cameras in those cells and they still let someone get killed in there. What? Oh, I can share that real quick. A couple of years ago, there was a dude back there and the recreation cages for those cells go, there's like a back door and it takes you into a rec yard. Um, and it's a tiny little thing, but some dude was able to convince some other guy, the only other person on that unit to tie a rope around his neck. And it looked like he was holding him hostage. They can get the guards and escape. Obviously that's not real. So this guy, out of desperation or stupidity or whatever, tied a rope around his neck, slid the rope through for that guy and strangled him. And remember, there are four cameras in each cell, four cameras outside rec. They watched it happen. They don't care. And they let it happen. Yeah, they let that dude get strangled. But those are the only cells that have cameras. Okay, so Chapo's not on that unit. He's just living, programming. Well. Not programming. Yeah, each unit's wildly restrictive, so he is surviving his best. Does he have any letters? He's allowed to write his lawyer and then whatever blood family. Right, you were saying. Whoever they approved. Right. He's not guaranteed to be who you want. Yeah. Tsarnaev, his big thing, like his family is like all his family. Who's Tsarnaev? Oh, sorry, the marathon bomber? The Boston one? Oh, gotcha. You mean the CIA guy? I mean, he's not CIA, though. That dude is real. I mean, I bet he's real. He's real, but he was probably, you know, could be a Manchurian candidate, right? They got somebody to, you know, like whoever popped Charlie Kirk. Come on. Anyways. Whoever popped Charlie Kirk. CIA. That'll be for the Patreon. Yeah. Tsarnaev is, him and his brother were very serious people that got radicalized by Palestine. And because I met people that were on the range with him, so we have like conversations about him. Oh, wow. But that kid, his cousins, because his brother got killed during all that. Right. Um, so he can't talk to his brother. He can talk to his cousins, but they banned them. So he has to talk to like his brother's wife's kid and like weird shit like that. Right. And if someone else gets on the phone while you're on it, like if you're calling your mom, but then your dad gets on the phone, they cut it off and you lose your phone privileges. They cut that call immediately. Um, so that's the unit that Chapo is on. Now, did those kind of guys, do they have any hope of scaling down? Yeah. So Sam's guys, that is put on by the, like some of them have like Janet Reno do it or Bill Barr. I forget that position in the government. Oh, uh, uh, yeah. District attorney or something like this, the district attorney for the whole, for all the districts attorney. Yeah. Um, the United States attorney. Yeah. And so attorney general, there we go. He or she are the ones that have to approve that. And it has a two year thing. Every two years, you're supposed to have a review. They say six months, but it's two years. And so. So if you're a good boy and you've lost some of your notoriety, you can come off of it. Um, or if you have a good enough lawyer and you file a good enough lawsuit, like Richard Reed, he did seven and a half. And so after that, his lawyer, his lawsuits, whatever, he then got put in the elderly unit. Okay. Um, and so that's seven and a half years where he didn't know if he had kids, if his wife died, if his family were dead, you don't know nothing. Um, and so people like Ramsey use, if he's been on that shit for 20 years, uh, there's like, there's very serious, dangerous people. I have been in that unit and we'll always be there, but then there's like bad-ass, uh, mob guys like Vinnie Bassiano. I think he was a banana guy. He was in the Sam's unit, I think for three to five years. And he's just had a normal USP now. Right. Um, so apparently you're only dangerous for a set period of time. Well, yeah, I guess if you get old enough and hopefully like if the politics, it's a lot of, a lot of stuff to do with politics. All of the, all of the big jihadis were on Sam's unit, every single one of them, no matter how well known they were, all of them, even dudes, there was people that were a part of the first 9-11 or first world trade center bombing in 1994 that just got put in normal prisons, USP, uh, Leavenworth, et cetera, et cetera. And then when September 11th happened, they grabbed them despite being on normal yards for five, six years and put them on Sam's unit ADX. Um, so it's, it's not real. No. Um, there's no real reason to it. No. But they find, they find. Like Barry Mills is, he's dead now, but he was in that unit for like 12 years. Come on. Like he can be a normal ADX at this point. Like just be cool. Right. But yeah. Wow. Well, uh, that was amazing. By the book. Go by the book. Link will be in the description. We're going to put your pictures of all of this stuff that we're talking about all over the episode. Uh, if you buy one book that we've promoted on this show, go check out Eric King's book. What's the name of it? One more time. A Clean Hell Anarchy and Abolition. An America's Most Notorious Dungeon. Boom. You heard it first. All right, man. We'll, uh, we'll switch over. We'll do a little, uh, a little bonus chat. We got a lot to talk about. Head over to patreon.com slash the connect show with more of the great Eric King. What a journey, my man. Thanks so much. That was cool. Yeah. Hell yeah. Peace out. We'll see you next week. Rated R. Tap the banner to learn more.