right now on "andrea mitchell reports," merrick garland being grilled by senators about the fentanyl crisis, the chinese covid coverup, russian war crimes in ukraine and hunter biden. anger at china spotlighted by a house select committee in primetime about china's covid coverup, spying, taiwan and human rights. >> it's not a polite tennis match. this is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century.

the most fundamental freedoms are at stake. >> we don't want a clash of civilizations. but we seek a durable peace. and that is why we have to deter aggression. i will be joined by ukraine's ambassador about russia's latest attacks against her country. russia's war crimes and president zelenskyy's pledge to take the fight to putin's forces in the coming months. good day, everyone. i'm andrea mitchell in washington where attorney general merrick garland is testifying before the senate judiciary committee. a new report from the "washington post" detailing a showdown between the justice department and the fbi before the raid on mar-a-lago to recover the classified documents. prosecutors argued for a surprise raid. two fbi officials, who would be in charge of leading the search, called that plan too combative. instead, they wanted donald

trump's permission. joining me now, ryan nobles, danel harvin, former u.s. attorney paul charlton, phil rucker and brendon buck. phil, let's talk about this new report from your colleague on the behind the scens deliberations. >> this is an extraordinary new reporting inside the discussions within law enforcement about how aggressively to investigate trump over his handling of classified documents and whether to conduct that surprise raid of his mar-a-lago home in august. my colleagues are reporting for the first time that some officials within the fbi who would have been involved in the search were resisting doing the surprise raid and instead advocating that prosecutors and

the fbi work collaboratively with trump's legal team to arrange for a consensual search. this all speaks to how carefully different law enforcement officials were trying to handle the former president. this was an extraordinary kind of investigation, not one with any parallel, not one they are used to conducting. it shows how carefully they were weighing all of these steps and the disputes and arguments they were having internally in the run-up to the raid. >> paul, you have been highlights how unique the situation is in terms of the dynamic between prosecutors, fbi agents. explain. >> it's not unusual that prosecutors and agents would have discussions and disagreements and sometimes heated disagreements about how a case should be handled. prosecutors are usually those who are urging caution, who are urging a methodical view how it is the evidence should be gathered. agents, on the other hand, are usually saying, we need to be

bold, even aggressive in using all of the tools that are available to us, including search warrants. here that was turned on its head. it was the prosecutors who were indicating that a search warrant was the only reasonable means of gathering these classified documents and putting them into a secure place. the agents who were saying, no, we don't want to do a search warrant at this point in time. we want to get a consesual search warrant. some of the agents were worried if they were involved in the investigation, their careers would be at risk. this idea of a crossfire hurricane hangover. the idea that former agents who are involved in the investigation of former president trump somehow had their careers hindered has carried over to today. that's something we should all be very concerned about. >> this goes -- paul, just to go to this further, this goes to

the trump affect, really, because it was donald trump and it was an unusual raid, there's no question about that, a former president of the united states. this is part of the hangover, isn't it? >> that's precisely right. all of this very overt discussion about the fbi and how we can't trust the fbi has now apparently gone down to the line fbi agents, in this case, who were concerned that the optics of a search conducted at mar-a-lago were going to is he -- to be such that their careers be hindered. there should never be a concern that when fbi agents are conducting lawful duties that their careers are at risk. we need agents who are bold, who are assertive, who want to do what the law allows them to do to enforce the law and prosecutors who can assist them in getting search warrants. when politics interferes with this decision making process, when agents are concerned about

their very careers for doing what is right, we all lose. >> ryan, take us through the key topics, the questioning today. a former appeals court judge, former obama nominee to the supreme court. he is very precise, very lawyerly in his answers. what are they asking about with regard to fentanyl, hunter biden? >> all of the above. sometimes one might describe the attorney general as boring in a setting like this, which is often not what senators would like to see. it's important to point out that garland hasn't been before the senate judiciary committee since 2021. it has been some time since they have been able to pepper him with questions. both republicans and democrats have a number of topics they want to press garland on. you mentioned the situation at the border and the delivery of fentanyl over the border. it's a big problem here in the united states. this is how garland responded to

questions about that particular topic. >> we are focusing on fentanyl with enormous urgency. i have personally twice traveled to mexico to try to get greater cooperation from the mexicans on exactly the problem you are talking about. i have separately talked twice in person with the mexican attorney general for exactly the problem that you are talking about. we are focusing on this with enormous urgency. >> there was some partisanship on display as this hearing continues. ted cruz, other senators pressing garland for not doing enough to prosecute those who put threats against the sitting supreme court justice brett kavanaugh and things along those lines. this hearing, which is expected to continue throughout the day in two parts, expected to touch on a range of topics. as we said before, it's been a while since garland has been before this panel. >> i think i saw that merrick

garland was pointing out that as soon as the dobbs decision was leaked, he ordered the marshalls to put security around the homes of the supreme court justices who have been notably concerned about the effects on their lives with all of these protests that have been continuing. speaker mccarthy is being criticized for giving hundreds of hours of january 6 security tapes to fox news host tucker carlson. mccarthy said it was an exclusive. let's play what he had to say about this today. >> i will give it out to the entire country. it was almost 42,000 hours. we are working through that. we work with the capitol police as well. we will make sure security is taken care of. january 6 went through showing things they shouldn't. they showed my exit route. they showed mike pence. i thought that was wrong.

i think sunshine matters. i don't care what side of the issue you are on. >> you work with two previous gop speakers of the house. how would you advise mccarthy on this. it was 44,000 hours of tape, never before seen, held back by the january 6 hearings precisely because it showed is secure rooms and entranceways and cameras. >> i have so many questions about this. i think i would be upset about what he is doing. i'm mostly confused. he said he wants to make sure that there's sunlight. i'm not sure what exactly the american people can gain from 42,000 hours of footage. certainly, going to someone like tucker carlson, i'm actually less concerned about maybe a security risk by sharing this video. tucker carlson made very clear he doesn't think what happened on january 6 was a problem. i think what's more likely is

this footage will be used for some type of propaganda effort to downplay what happened. i understand that he has two repair some relationships with tucker carlson who has been a critic of kevin mccarthy. i'm not sure that this is a wise move. obviously, i'm concerned about the truth that -- how it will be portrayed here. the precedent that is being set here is very concerning. i don't know politically why kevin mccarthy would want to bring this topic back up. i think they had successfully moved beyond the january 6th hearings, put it in the rear view. now it's back in the news. i question the political judgment of that as well. >> i heard bennie thompson say they cleared everything with capitol police before they released tapes publically in their hearings. talk to me about this. you had the homeland security account. you were involved in security for the hill and studying it

afterwards and testifying to the hearings. what do you think about the tapes being given to a host at a network that has been dedicated to challenging whether or not january 6 was even a threat? >> there's two issues here. the first is the security issue as articulated. we don't know -- those are high quality cameras. people can slow the speed, look at security arrangements then, the physical structures are the same. the second part is more insidious. tucker carlson has peddled in t years. i think it's a concern. blaming it from antifa. his imagination knows no bounds. i think he has maligned intent of using the tapes. we will have to figure out what he does with them.

i have advocated since this happened that they be put out there for everyone. other networks can show the truth behind what happened january 6th and not just the tucker carlson story that he is going to put out. >> cherry picking. let me pivot to the gao report. it says the capitol police and the fbi identified credible threats before january 6th and didn't share them. >> we have had this discussion many times. every time me and my team met with these entities, they said there were no credible and specific threats. i'm on record with that. many other agencies on that. this is very interesting to read that there were threats and they were telling us there weren't. the report is instrumental. federal agencies use those to institute change. hopefully, this will bring forward a lot of the issues that we didn't see in the select committee report in terms of recommendations.

>> phil, have you ever seen anything like this where security footage showing exactly how nancy pelosi got to a secure room, where they went, all of the above, lots of -- it's 44,000 hours of this, is given to one network host, especially one who is on record questioning whether this was even an insurrection? >> yeah. it's a pretty stunning development here. and to hand over this footage, which has been kept largely secret for security concerns to a media outfit -- this is not an objective news organization. this is a partisan host on fox news channel who has -- on whose air has been doubting the insurrection and has a clear agenda with this footage. it's a pretty interesting turn of events here.

>> paul, let's talk about the fbi. i'm going to interrupt myself. the trial -- the trial in south carolina is resuming with closing arguments. we will go to live coverage of that. the defense gets ready to stand up and start its closing arguments. let me see whether they are starting. let's listen in. >> were murdered at the kennels by alex murdaugh. paul suffered two shotgun blasts. maggie suffered five blackout rifle wounds. after an exhaustive investigation, there's only one person who had the motive, who had the means, who had the

opportunity to commit these crimes and also whose guilty conduct after these crimes betrays him. the defendant was one person living a lie. the defendant is the person on which a storm was descending. the defendant is a person where his own storm would actually mean consequences for maggie and paul. consequences for those who trusted him. that person is the defendant. i know this has been a long trial, because it's a complicated case. i'm not going to talk forever. i promise. but i am going to try to distill this down for you. the first thing i want to do is set the stage. to set the stage, we have to understand a little bit about

alex murdaugh and who he was and who he is. he was a person of singular prominence and respect in this community. but he is also a person who has been able to avoid accountability for all of his life. while he was giving the illusion of wealth and a very lucrative law practice, some bad land deals and that sort of thing exacerbated by the economic recession led to some financial problems. then he had some big cases in the early 2000 -- 2011 and 2012 -- all his partners thought that had taken care of things. you have heard cases like the thomas case and the badger case. the evidence that you have heard shows the defendant became so

addicted and so dependent on a velocity of money that millions of dollars in legal fees he was receiving was not enough. so he started to steal. how did he steal? he stole by billing personal expenses to the firm. he stole by stealing from his own family. you heard the testimony about the check he stole from his brother randy. then the main ways were two schemes he developed. the first was to get checks made out from the client trust account to the bank to fast talk the staff and fast talk the clients with thosets and take it to another bank where his buddy would convert those and use those to pay personal expenses. each time, until the end, it worked because the client was also getting a big check. they were walking out of there

thinking that everything had been fine when it was not. then in 2015, he opened up the fake account. then all he had to do was get disbursements made out to that account. once he did that, he would convert those to his personal use. to do that, he had to fast talk staff and fast talk clients. that scheme continued up until everything fell apart in the end. the other thing you have to understand is during this time when he is earning millions of dollars and stealing millions of dollars, he was also borrowing millions of dollars from wherever he can. the bank, his law partners, his father. it still wasn't enough. this slow burn was continuing and continuing until the boat crash happened in february of 2019. that changed everything. that set in motion things that were going to happen because of the criminal charges related to

that case as well as the civil charges related to that case. in the aftermath of the boat case, things changed. the pace of his stealing increased. in fact, that's when he stole the money from tony satterfield that you heard from. ultimately stole about $4.5 million, between them and others. unlike other cases, tony, who was the son of his longtime housekeeper, he took all of the money. took every bit of it. that was coming to a head as we move into the spring of 2021. there had been some publicity. you heard from tony that he was -- the defendant reached out in the spring of 2021 because there had been publicity and saying, i'm still work on the case. everything is fine. i'm working on the case. it's good. the reality is, the defendant didn't have that money to pay it back. he had one saving grace.

as you have heard, they don't get paid until the end of the year. his saving grace was the ferris case which they tried in december. they get the verdict and get paid in march. that's when he convinced chris wilson to send the $792,000 of fees for him. that only lasted two months. then he is running out of money again. you have heard in the boat case, that mark tinsley was seeking to get a large personal recovery from alex murdaugh of $10 million, because he thought, as many people did, that he was wealthy and had a lot of money. when they said he didn't, he filed a motion to compel. you have heard testimony about whether or not that had been granted. it doesn't change the fact that's what mark tinsley was seeking to do. that boat case hearing had been

scheduled for june 10th. in may of 2021, as we move into june, that's when alex's paralegal got the expense check for the ferris case but not the fee check and tried to raise that to alex and couldn't get a straight answer, tried to raise it to chris wilson and couldn't get a straight answer. so it goes to gene and gene goes to the partners. they can't get an answer about that either. they want an answer to that. they are worried because alex has been talking about structuring fees. they are worried he might be trying to hide assets because of the boat case. they don't want to be a part of that. all of these things are coming to a head. his finances are falling apart. you heard from the banker. you heard where his finances were at on june 7, 2021. you saw what happened in the

wake of that. within a short period of time, he was negative $347,000. on june 7, 2021, he was in the office. he was working on the boat case, working on financial disclosures when gene came in and confronted him about those fees that he no longer had and couldn't pay back. on june 7, 2021, he tells this to gene, his father is having a very difficult time. while they might have said it was positive news, the reality is that he was very, very sick. he had always been someone that the defendant could go to, that he could borrow money from. so that pressure is happening as well.

on june 7, 2021, all these pressures were mounting. the defendant killed maggie and paul. how do we know that? we will talk in detail about that. the time line puts him there. the forensic time line puts him there. the use of his family weapons corroborates that. his lies and guilty actions afterwards confirms it. we will go over each of those in great detail. before we get to that though, i want to finish out. because in the wake of this, everything changes. all those things that were

coming to a head immediately go away. it's a different world now. they are not asking about the ferris fees anymore. you heard testimony, mark tinsley doesn't believe the case is going to have the same value anymore because sympathies of the case have changed after this tragedy. you heard that. who would better understand that than alex murdaugh? the boat case hearing goes away. everyone immediately rallies around alex murdaugh. it worked, because it allowed him to borrow $250,000 from johnny parker, his law partner, who wouldn't have loaned him that if he knew what he was up to and allowed him to get a loan that hadn't been applied for and to send that money to chris wilson and convince chris to pay another $192,000 of his own

money and to send an email to the firm everything was okay. that made it another month or so until anette found that check in his office and gene looked up the forged accounts. what was the reaction of alex murdaugh? within a day of september 3rd of him being forced to resign, his buddy chris wilson is trying to see him, comes and sees him on september 4th and confronts him about what he has been doing. then within two hours, the side of the road happens. alex is a victim again. when accountability was at his door, he was a victim again. he told an extremely detailed

lie and went so far as to draw a sketch with the police of this assailant. the accountability that it forced up again, he tried to get it to go away. it worked for a little while. people thought, my gosh, what's happened here? should we be suspicious of alex anymore? this time it fell apart quicker. his own brother figured out that he was trying to buy drugs. the case fell apart very quickly. this is the setup for what we look at and what's going on. it seems like a story that's far removed from most people's experience, because it is. it's a different story like has never been seen before. but the reason is is that he is

a different man than the kind of stories we have seen before. this is a different set of circumstances than we have seen before. it's certainly easy to understand when you have a middle-aged man who is out ward -- outwardly successful, a vong fami -- strong family legacy, a prominence in the community and a reputation but is living a lie, is living a lie. that leads to and can lead to those pressures being overwhelming. and actions like this happening. husbands have been killing wives, unfortunately, for years.

and husbands killing sons goes back as far as king herod. those pressures mount and someone becomes a family annihilator. the computer input, please. all right. we gotta do a little law school.

i'm certainly not a professor, but we need to go through a few of the concepts here. the fundamental role of why you are here. as you judge told you, he is the judge of the law but you are judge of the facts. a big part of that is that you determine credibility. you determine believability. you determine which witnesses you want to rely on or not rely on. you can rely on a part of a witness's testimony, all of the witness's testimony, one against many, many against one. it's up to each one of you individually to make that determination and decisions and to collectively discuss those and to a group decision. credibility is important. is it believable? is what somebody is telling you believable? there's many things you can consider in credibility. a few of those are the demeanor of the witness on the witness stand. whether the witness has a reason to be biased.

whether the testimony of the witness was contradicted on one hand or supported or corroborated on another. whether the witness has been dishonest in the past. again, you can believe witnesses all against one, one against others. you can believe portions of a witness's testimony as you see fit. same thing for experts. expert is a legal determination that allows them to give an opinion. just because someone is qualified as an expert doesn't mean that you have to accept their opinion. you can judge that based on your assessment of the credibility and the relevance and the believability of that testimony. there's nothing different about that when someone is an expert. beyond a reasonable doubt. i talked about this at the beginning of the case. it's our burden, it's a burden we welcome, it's how this system works that we have to prove the

guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. what is a reasonable doubt? a reasonable doubt is a doubt that makes a reasonable, honest, sincere juror hesitate to act. it's proof that a reasonable person would not hesitate to rely on in their affairs. but a reasonable doubt is not -- it doesn't have to overcome every possible doubt. it doesn't have to overcome every possible doubt. i used to try a case against the defense attorney and he would pull up a picture. i have the mona lisa. he would tear off a piece like that and say, ladies and gentlemen, that's reasonable doubt. my response to that is, you still know what this is. right?

you still know what it is. that's reasonable doubt. if you still know what it is and you are firmly convinced, then it is your duty under the oath you have taken as the judge will give you the law to convict the defendant. direct proves existence of the fact. circumstantial evidence is proof of a chain of facts and circumstances indicating the existence of that fact. we talked a little bit about that at the beginning. sometimes people in common discussions will say, the case is just circumstantial. the law says that doesn't matter. the circumstantial evidence can be just as good as direct evidence. it is just as good. it makes no distinction between that. the judge will charge you on that. there's no greater degree of certainty required. the circumstances must be consistent with each other and taken together point to the guilt of the defendant. i gave you an illustration at

the beginning. i'm not going to re-do the whole thing. about being inside and you go outside and it starts raining. you know it's raining because you got evidence. you are getting wet. if you go inside and you are in a closed room and all of a sudden it gets dark and you hear thunder and you hear the wind and you hear the rain coming down on top of the roof and then after an hour or so you go outside and the sun is shining but there's limbs in the yard and it's wet as far as the eye can see and puddles in the yard and in the driveway, is there any reasonable doubt what happened, that it rained? again, i will say it again. supposedly i guess somebody could have sprayed the neighborhood with a hose and blown a fan to blow the wind down -- simulate wind. that's not a reasonable doubt. circumstantial evidence can be just as strong as direct

evidence. it is just as strong. the law makes no distinction just because it's circumstantial. let's talk about murder. murder is the willful killing of someone with malice aforethought. the unlawful and killing of any person by one with malice aforethought. the crime of murder is really as far as the elements go fairly simple. the terms are malice, the mental state that the person must have, and aforethought. let's talk about those. what do they mean? malice -- it could be any of these. it can be hatred, ill will or hostility toward another t. can be the intentional doing of a wrongful act with an intent to inflict an injury under the circumstances that the law would infer an evil intent. it can be a general malignant recklessness of the lives and

safety of others. it can be a wicked and depraved spirit intent on doing wrong. it could be using firearms, a shotgun and a blackout, to blow somebody away. that can be malice, ladies and gentlemen, if that's what you decide. aforethought. sounds like it has to be planned. certainly planning would account for aforethought. but it can be conceived at the very moment, a split second or in conjunction with the act. aforethought doesn't require planning for that malice to occur. all it has to do is exist in the moment, just a split second or in the moment that the act occurs. when that trigger is pulled, as long as there's that intentional doing of a wrongful act, intent to inflict an injury, an evil

intent, a malignant recklessness, which you can infer from the circumstances of the case, then that's all you need. how do you do that? i said infer. people don't always yell out what their intentions are. you have to infer it from the circumstances of the case itself. look at the crime scene. look at what happened. look at the back story. look at all the circumstances that come together. you can infer malice from those. last bit of law school. malice and drugs. voluntary intoxication does not impair a person's ability to act with malice aforethought. that's a little principal. if you voluntarily get intoxicated, it is not a defense to a crime.

it does not negate the malicious nature of that crime. if one voluntarily intox indicaintoxicates themselves, they are just as responsible for their actions. take the law that comes from the judge. but this is a legal principal you will hear. voluntary intoxication is not a defense to a crime. why does the law say that? you can't take whatever it is and deny responsibility for what you have done under the law. all right? i will move through this quickly, because we already

talked about it. just for scheduling, i'm going to have to stop my argument so we can all eat. i will give you a chance to get away from this for a little bit. i'm going to go through some of this that we just talked about but very quickly. gathering storm in alex's life. we talked about the family legacy. you heard how important that was tore him and this family and how it was in danger because of the boat case. the criminal charges as well as the civil charges. that legacy was in danger. it was threatening also to expose him for who he really was, which would totally destroy his part of that legacy. lose his career. lose his bar license. face consequences like he has never seen. he is also a successful lawyer and a part-time prosecutor.

as we go through and talk about the circumstances of this case and talk about the crime scene and the time line and all the rest of it, think of it with that in mind. this is an individual who is trained to understand how to put together cases, complex cases. he has been a prosecutor. he has done complex car wrecks. he understands the law. he has given closing arguments to juries before. when you have a defendant like that, be thinking about whether or not this individual is constructing defenses and constructing alibis. talked about his law practice. you heard how lucrative it is. i had to struggle with him to get him to admit he was wealthy, making more than $1 million a year. i will let you decide whether or not that's wealthy.

he admitted that that was not uncommon for him to make that much money on top of stealing and borrowing on top of that. the important thing to remember again -- i want to highlight this -- is that they get -- the way that firm works, they get their money at the end of the year. it's up to them to make it last. that's the big problem that he had. that's why he had to get the ferris fees. if he is out of money in may, he is not going -- unless he can borrow or steal it, he is out of luck. the hounds were at the gate. we talked about this. he has -- you heard, i think, gene describe him as having intentional chaos. we had the land deals. he is serving this huge debt load. he needs new money coming in. this has been going on for more than a decade. a constant hamster wheel.

the stress and the pressure of that would be extreme, because it's been going on for so long. always having to stay one step ahead of the game. always having to beg, literally beg, borrow or steal for over a decade. to have the truth from being exposed. that's been going on all that time. the big cases, the partners think he paid off his debts. he is getting paid millions of dollars but he is stealing on top of that. it's not enough to keep the hamster wheel going. he borrows and he steals. the methods i mentioned, the psb checks, the fake forge, you got fake business expenses, the firm card. from his family and his law partners.

each one of these depends on him being able to sit down and look someone in the eye and convince them that what they're doing is right when in reality that wasn't happening. all those clients trusted him based on this. we sat there and went through that. it may have been exhausting. i apologize for that. but he couldn't tell you about one conversation that he had that stuck with him. that's how easily it came to him. is that relevant to your consideration of what he had to say for you? that's for y'all to decide. couldn't name one conversation. just had that same answer that he had rehearsed. didn't want to talk about any of those individuals. they trusted him. as he looked you in the eye and asked you to do the same.

down at the bottom, it's not just the clients. it's his staff. they're doing paperwork. they're filling all that out. he had to fast talk them as well. alex's situation i think is akin to a ponzi. a ponzi is kind of like a pyramid scheme. it depends on new money coming in to pay old investors. it works. it will work for a long time as long as you can keep that money coming in. the second you can't, the second that you are out of options, it crashes and burns. that's how every ponzi crashes and burns. that's the situation his finances were like. that's the situation had a was arriving in june of 2021 when he was at the scene with the

victims minutes before they died and lied to everyone who would listen about it. a gathering storm. the boat case, other factors that were arising, each one leading to that inevitable day of reckoning. the trial lawyers conference where he was confronted. mark tinsley was confronted by alex. alex denied it. alex is telling you the truth even though everyone who knew him had no idea who he was. everyone. no one knew who he really was. the people who came in here and said we thought this about them, not a single person knew who he really was. that's how convincing he is. he denies this confrontation when mark was like -- what you doing about the boat case? mark says, you are going to have to pay money to the family.

millions of dollars. alex doesn't have that. he is barely one step ahead of the game at this point. he doesn't have insurance coverage anymore or at least not a big umbrella policy. why? his insurance company dropped him after the satterfield case. the insurance company thinks the money went to the boys but it didn't. they don't know he stole it all. they don't want to ensure him anymore. he doesn't have that to help him pay the beach case. what's the one hope he has? that's the ferris case. they get a verdict in february of 2021, $792,000. eventually, he tells chris wilson, i'm going to structure those, which is a lie. and gets the fees sent to him in

march. it's spent in two months. the boat case isn't going away. mark says, show us your books if you are telling me you are broke. i think his testimony was, he could cobble together $1 million, which i guess that's broke for him. it wasn't enough. so they refuse. that's what leads to the motion to compel. there's been a lot of argument about, is that going to be granted or not? what we know is that mark said that's what he was seeking to do. he was seeking to do it because he had been told by the defense that he didn't have money. so he is like, prove it. none of us believe that. knowing what we know about you in this community. prove it. alex can't have anybody obtaining his financial records. it's all going to be apparent.

that forge account is going to open right up. he can't have that happen. it will all end. he will lose his career. he will lose his livelihood. he will face investigations and consequences like he has never -- like he has been able to avoid his entire life. if he can just stay one step ahead. just one month longer. one day longer. he is never going to have to face that accountability that he has to face. the hearing is scheduled for june 10, 2021. no one is here to argue that it's definitely going to be granted. all we are arguing is what the witnesses said they were intending to do. as you have seen in court over the past six weeks, things happen and a process starts. once that process starts,

there's a conclusion to it. there's a conclusion to that. then you heard from tony satterfield who got up on the stand and talked about the fact that there was some coverage about this case as we move into the spring of 2021. he hears from alex. alex lies to him and says, yeah, we're hoping to get this case moving. you saw the text message to that effect when the reality was it had already been stolen. how is he going to pay that? that's millions of dollars. that's millions of dollars. eventually, they're going to figure out that this money has been paid.

the insurance company thinks it's going to the right place. at some point the question is going to get asked. that alone is going to break everything apart. ferris case, this is when his paralegal finds the expense check and not the fee check. i have told you this part of the story. you heard the testimony. it sets off that inquiry. now we have this on top of everything else that we are mentioning. this is like nothing he has ever experienced. he has been able to stay one step ahead of the game. after the boat case, his appetite increased greatly. he started stealing millions of dollars. he is running out of options. all these factors are converging. they are convering on one week, one day. that arrives. his father is in the hospital. there's a confrontation with

gene. alex wards off a conversation. he is working on the boat case. then the tragedy happens. and it worked. it's not the only reason but it's part of the reason. the pressures on this man were unbearable, and they were all reaching a crescendo the day his wife and son were murdered by him. all on that day. and in the wake of this, everything changes. people stop asking about these

things, the community has changed like you would expect. people are concerned, they're scared, they're worried, and everything's changed. the backlash from the boat case has gone away, and all of that has changed, and that's why mark tinsley thought his case was over. who would understand that better than him? this is exactly the kind of work he did. his skills as a lawyer were understanding the emotional value of a case. understanding the sympathies of a case. if you have a sympathetic plaintiff and an unsympathetic defendant, that is in the civil world, that's a big case. but if those get reversed, if those change, if all of a sudden your defendant is more sympathetic, it changes it. it changes the entirety of what mark tinsley's position on this case was for the beach family, that alex was going to have to pay money, and that's what he told you from the stand.

he said the second -- if al exx had been the victim, the entirety of the case has changed. i'm not trying to demand that level of -- he gets 600 of it, ultimately gets the 750, he convinces chris wilson, it's pretty much the main thing he did after this was to make sure he could get that money, enough of it to chris wilson so he could send an email to the law firm say it's all good. it's may not thing he did in the wake of his murders of his wife and son, he made sure to stay one step ahead of the game because he had more time now. he had time he didn't have on june 7th, but he had it now. and that's the first thing he

did. that's the first thing he did. that's the main thing he did was keep the hamster wheel going. i know it seems like a lot, but you have to consider the unique circumstances of this particular man. this particular man who has proven over and over again that he will do anything to keep that hamster wheel going and to avoid accountability, and he's been doing it for over ten years. he just finally reached a point that he had never reached before. of course the hearing on the motion to compel was canceled. who would go forward with that in the wake of what's happening? that goes away. i think you heard from the testimony it doesn't get rescheduled until long after

everything crashes and burns in september. doesn't even get rescheduled in the wake of this. didn't have to worry about that either and the potential that had for exposing him because the second somebody looks at his accounts, the second his own partner, danny henderson looks at his accounts in representing him, says he will me see them, he can't do that. he can't even show them to his own partner because what's going to happen? they're going to see it too. he can't let that happen or everything falls apart. and he loses everything including that legacy that you heard from individuals up there that's so important to him, more important than anything. i'm not going to go through all of this. this is the time line, and you can see as we -- and i'll let you all look at that. you can see how this develops, how this hamster wheel

continues, how he always has to be one step ahead of the game. you know, we've talked about the red beard and the land deals that went bad that get charged off. you have the state bank still dealing with him. he then appoints a conservator and borrows up to $1 million from an account without their knowledge. and then he has to steal money from the badger case where he's already making a huge amount of legal fees. he has to steal money from the badger case to pay off the plowler girls before they pay 18, and then there's an accounting for that. then he opens up the forge account, and it continues. 338,000 from d.m. martin, johnny bush, richards, 225, he's maxing out a million dollar line of credit. the only way to stay afloat is to beg, borrow, and steal.

he's maxing out a million dollar line of credit. he steals some more money, but he's right back to where he was. march of 2018, he's now maxed out not only a million dollar line of credit but also a $600,000 line of credit. a line of credit, almost like a credit card maxed out. then the boat crash happens, and look what happens to the figures. 3.7 million, 1.1 million, $1 million. and then you have the double homicide. this is some of the exhibits, this is as you recall, there will be statements and they're in evidence showing the defendant's assets on june 7th, 2021 and the reds are his

liabilities. that one's green, but it's negative, and then over here, that's where he was a couple of months later. he'd borrowed $750,000 and still ended up $347,000 in the hole, which part of that had to cover. i think it was called the most generous overdraft policy ever conceived. i mean, in fairness, though, he did get a $5 overdraft charge. anyway, all right, what else do we have? because we talked about a lot of things about the finances, and i know that there's been a lot of that. really it's the only way to understand all the things that were affected this middle aged outwardly professional successful man who had all of these pressures on him like no one had ever seen. well, we've got the pills. he claims he's had a pill addiction for 20 years.

what does he say about that? he says it makes him paranoid. he says it makes him agitated. he says opiates give him energy. use your common sense about that. but he also says and even said this in the telephone interview off to the side of the road that the withdrawals will make you do anything, anything to get rid of them. that's common sense as well. we know how powerful opiates can be and how the addiction of opiates can be extremely power. . the withdrawals not being dope sick can be extremely powerful, but he's also saying he's taking a thousand milligrams a day, and he's trying to blame all of his theft on that. that's not what these records reflect. they reflect an insatiable desire for money and a hamster

wheel that's been going on for a long time and you don't really see the escalation from his drug dealer until march of 2021. i would ask you also one of the tenets of juries is common sense. that's what you're here for is for an individual and a collective common sense. common sense a thousand milligrams a day, does that sound survivable? he sat there on that stand and told you that's what he was taking, and as we're going to go through this process, we're going to talk about what he said on the stand and how many times on the fly that he looked you in your eyes and didn't tell you the truth. he's very good at it. his own partner said that. he's very, very good at it. i'd leave it to you to decide whether a thousand milligrams a

day is survivable of opiates. if it was that you still engage in work, have a successful practice, and then on top of that engage in these complex conspiracies to steal and fool everyone and live a life and how people outwardly think that you're, you know, who you profess to be in public. if you were taking a thousand milligrams a day, does that make common sense? i submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, it doesn't. i have no doubt that he was taking opiate pills. but i think he looked you -- i would submit to you to decide whether or not he looked you in the eye and claimed an amount that's inconsistent with whatever else we know about this man. it's really inconsistent with the survivability as a matter of common sense. he can never function at the level he's been functioning,

keeping