Former U.S. Attorney David DeVillers

thank you good morning good morning everybody good morning and welcome back is is it not wonderful to be in this room again yes i cannot tell you how weird it has been for the staff and the camera crew and us to be in the room with just the speakers and we have to pretend that we're the whole audience and it's just been so weird so thank you so much for being here i think i know almost everyone in the room or quite a few of you anyhow my name is jane scott i serve as the president and ceo of the columbus metropolitan club and it is uh it really is i i cannot honestly tell you how grateful i am for you being here today it means a great deal to us um we are serving lunch at 11 30 so when you come in the future please feel free to get here about 11 30. that's to accommodate our live stream which starts exactly at noon we have no flexibility there because the live stream goes live at noon so um when you come in the future as soon as you get here at 11 30 we'll be serving so just a real quick little informal survey how many of you have had at least one vaccine keep your hands up how many of you have had two vaccines all right good job me too i love it and the camera just caught that too so that's not only encouraging for those who haven't got their shots but it also tells folks who are watching that it's a safe room to be in because we're we're all behaving ourselves speaking of behaving yourselves we know we absolutely cannot wear a mask while you're eating although i have tried to drink a cup of coffee through my mask how many of you have done that but please if you would put your mask back on after you've had your meal again the camera does occasionally scan the room and for the benefit of those sitting at the table even though we've been vaccinated as well as the people who are watching they'll know that we're abiding by the requirements for the the requests we'd also like you to please make sure your phones are silenced we've discovered the phones ring really loud over the television so please make sure your phones are silenced but we encourage you to participate in social media feel free to take pictures you can get up and take pictures of the speakers or whatever you like of the room and post them on social media let folks know that you're here in person at the boathouse enjoying a good cmc forum so we can can we can safely fit 80 people in this room and right now we have about 50. so we know that there's plenty of room for more folks and we're encouraging you to encourage your friends to come back to cmc so thank you so much deb price will be back in a uh exactly i can't read my watch 11 minutes to introduce our speaker today thanks okay this is surprising fema's not here yet and that is people listen to my email they got here yes except for chris he's like are they serving are they yes i sent him an email he got an email he doesn't look at him i don't think he looks at it enough yes so i almost took a picture of myself and asked you this ahead of time i like your outfit but the belt i was like yeah is that okay yes yeah it's a problem i tucked it in but this thing is so thin that it does i think it looks better all right we're on all right thank you hi everyone hi guys we're glad you're here today yeah you can see we've got a bunch of people in the room thanks for joining us today glad to have you thank you for talking about your belts it's better than other things undergarments and all that [Laughter] no no you're fine yes get it out there that they're actually alive [Laughter] so you're probably going to see some of your friends here in these shots you're not going to see the lovely mantra modi or me because these people are more interesting to look at than me yes they are because it's so satisfying to have people in the room that's right we want to advertise that yes so also just want to let everyone know we're talking we're online say say hi to ed everyone hi ed there you go hi seymour hello there we are how are you um yes ma'am and you'll want to pick one up because they're not on the table all right oh yeah actually unfortunately they are showing us veggies both veggies no i don't know mushroom ravioli you can take both she can have both of them no no so they just get a shot at me without my mask on hi everyone i was drinking coffee i took it off momentarily just letting everyone know no can i get a cover because i'm not going to eat this just yet all right and it's a beautiful yeah here at the house you can see the sunshine coming in yeah you can see that everybody is actually very socially distanced folks don't have their masks on why they eat but they're going to put them back on afterwards so it's a really great environment and we hope that those of you who are watching might consider coming to see us in person and we just want to remind you oh look at you that's a beautiful wrap i did i love it there you go [Music] [Laughter] all right deadpool hackathon everyone yes you just walked in you're on the mic oh we all understand [Laughter] so they're still dropping food so you may say hey about your meal okay this is the third time i'm gonna try and say this [Laughter] if anyone has any questions please feel free to drop them in the chat and i will pass them along so jane will be able to ask them if she has time so that's right that's right and if this is your first time joining us here at cmc we welcome you letting you know we've been doing uh public forums on wednesdays at noon for 45 years so we would love if you would like to have some information about membership or sponsorship you can find that on our website at www.columbusmetroclub.org and speaking of sponsors like to thank barnes and thornberg for being our sponsor today yes yes yes so good to see people in the room i'm not sure if they were filming when jane asked this but um you might have seen that it appeared to be like 95 percent of the people in the room have had at least one shot yes with almost 80 percent probably having two so yes we are moving along yes we are yes we are looks like our people are continuously joining in thank you for joining our chat today we appreciate you um tuning in and looking forward to today's uh discussion with the former u.s attorney david devillers and colleen marshall and again if you have any questions please feel free to put them in the chat and i can pass them along so we probably have about four or five people in the room who actually have a personal connection to attorney dollars prosecutor developers um and maybe some of you who are watching do too so if you want to make a comment and chat we have a great audience here in our our chat virtual attendance and everybody uh is happy all is to talk back and forth a little bit maybe you guys are away grabbing your lunch yes yes right before i begin that's smart yep yeah yeah yeah nice job nope looks great i like the four seats at the table yeah i think that's fine that's plenty spaced yeah i think i agree all right there are actually pretty nice on camera they are i know i noticed that hi people yes now we're waving when it's probably not on us just letting you know that we're happy you're tuning in thank you oh my goodness if for those of you who are who are watching right now the infamous joey thomas is here we are so happy she is here and for those of you who don't know who joey is she is our greeter for cmc she's always she always used to greet people when people walked in for the forums she had the best smile and we're so happy she's here yep 91 years young yes yeah and she's joining us so pretty awesome very very awesome she it's the face of cnc like manta said if you ever walk through those doors you know who joey yeah who joey is and so it's like full circle we finally come back to normal with her here with us today yes so that it's amazing to see her today yeah and i see our people more people are tuning in thank you for joining us again we're looking forward to today's discussion if you have any questions again please feel free to put them in the chat and we will get them passed along with colleen interviewing i know we are going to cover a lot of information today yes we're all very familiar with the householder situation that uh attorney devillers was uh participating in and even more recently if you have read in the dispatch or been paying attention to the news he is now going to be part of the uh hazing um trial that will go on for bgsu so um i know like i say i know a lot of you probably know him from from somewhere because he's been in columbus or around columbus for a very long time and so we're excited to hear what he has to say i think we're going to get ready to get started here you can see three minutes uh everyone's board number dev price you know people everyone knows is going to start us off today thank you everyone for joining us again and three minutes until show time all right i'm going to try and drink my last copy of people seeing me without why not it's okay all right and the infamous jane is coming she's on the mic right now i don't think so no she did not register if she does show up she's welcome okay that's what i don't think she's here okay yeah hey bill hey steve how's it going thanks for joining us of course he puts me on the camera when i'm drinking my coffee all right yay i'm glad you guys are here thanks for saying hi please greet each other in chat yeah and i'm sure a lot of people know each other bill i hope you're feeling better from last weekend yeah the second shot is a real thing yeah don't hey i haven't gotten my second shot yet don't scare me [Music] it's fine and it just goes so fast i know hi julie nice to see you we hope to see some of you in the room sometime here in the next several weeks oh blank screen oh no um i don't know maybe they're getting ready to switch over yeah that's probably what it is i hope so i don't see a blank screen bill can you hear is do you have sound thanks for joining us everyone yeah restart bill that's probably give it a try yeah [Music] [Music] good afternoon and welcome to the columbus metropolitan club welcome to our in-house audience it's so great to see you here again this is my first return to in person and it just feels so wonderful to be out and about again so glad there's so many of you that already have gotten vaccined and doesn't that make us feel a little safer i'm deborah price a member of the cmc board of trustees and a principal at ice miller law firm i want to thank you for tuning in today those of you who are with us online let's begin by welcoming several new members we have mike primo the come along or the community development for all people rachel lee master and jordan ivory from the western governors university john brandt and william forbes i believe william's here william yeah right thank you for joining us william conversation moves us forward and members power our conversation we'd like to invite all of you to join cmc membership is very affordable and a great investment in yourself professionally and in the community there's also a great deal on lifetime membership so if you want to ask any of the staff or go on our website um i would encourage you to do that we're cr trying to um get more people into that legacy group and it's a wonderful way to do it um a quick note the metropolitan club is currently conducting a diversity survey to enable us to better understand our audience responses are anonymous completely and we'd really appreciate if everyone the general public members everyone would please visit our website columbusmetroclub.org or look at the link in our regular emails and participate in this very important survey and did i mention it's anonymous so feel free to help us out in that way cmc live streaming is presented by the emergency response fund of the columbus foundation in partnership with the columbus dispatch pnc and nbc 4i thank you for those sponsorships we'd like also to thank those of you who purchased a virtual seat for today's forum we're very grateful for that support largely because of you we're able to continue this live streaming you can learn more about cmc register for events join or renew your membership purchase a virtual seat or make a donation anytime at columbusmetroclub.org today's forum is sponsored by barnes and thornburg won't you help me thank them now [Applause] and let me begin by saying the u.s attorney's office serving the southern district district oversaw several notable investigations this past year including the first energy racketeering case against former house speaker larry householder and others an alleged pay-to-play schemes involving members of cincinnati city council domestic terrorism illegal guns and drugs political corruption what do these look like in real life well today we get to hear what this looks like from behind the scenes let's welcome our speaker our speakers former us attorney for the southern district whose term was far too short um david devillers and our host cmc board member and co-anchor of nbc4 colleen marshall colleen it's all yours i think i think we can take these off now welcome everyone and a special welcome to you and we appreciate you coming to talk to us because in my job i don't very often get to pick the brain of a u.s attorney but now you're in private life so you have no excuse i'll find one well why don't you first of all give us a little bit about your background you have you have had a storied career not only as a prosecutor here in franklin county as the u.s attorney but also you have done international consulting because you worked for the justice department so give us a quick bio of what your career has been like so i went to law school here in columbus i interned at the franklin county prosecutor's office under mike miller and then um became an attorney got hired on and ron o'brien came in and i worked there for for 10 years i was the director of the gang and organized crime unit with a lot of really really great prosecutors there jimmy lowe liz garrity a lot of people that have kind of moved on to to different things out of the county prosecutor's office greg peterson and we've um after 9 11 i tried to get into doj the attorney's office i was successful and i worked here for uh since in the u.s attorney's office in columbus since 2002 and i was asked to work on some uh foreign terrorist organizations in iraq during the iraq war in o4 so i went there and 04 to investigate we called fto for a terrorist organization and apparently they felt that i was dumb enough to go you know fourth that they invited me back in 0607 to do um to work with the iraqi high tribunal and the prosecution of saddam hussein i was the adviser to the prosecution chamber for for that case so you really haven't done anything remarkable is what you're saying no you have had an incredible career and uh i don't want to gloss over what you've done here locally and recently in fact let's talk about the case that everybody has been talking about the speaker of the house here in at the ohio state house taken into custody and what you labeled the largest bribery scheme in the state history how did your investigation of that begin and how did we get to where we are right now with those charges pending well i can talk a little bit about it i can't get a lot of details because of course it is a pending case um it's only indictment against mr householder to have been some pleas on the case and investigations ongoing and i think i brought that up in july of last year that a lot of ways the investigation started in july because we were at a covert phase which means and we didn't want the people that we were charging investigating know about it until that point and so at that point we and i mean the fbi and use attorney's office were able to interview witnesses opened up grand jury testimony subpoena documents conduct search warrants knowing that they know we're looking at them now okay so you have to go back the year before that is when we really started looking into them and that's based on i could i'm not going to talk in detail about that but um open source material being the the indictment you know we we started um looking into mr householder and the other people of what we deemed an enterprise of alleged an enterprise and their their dealings with with uh through generation now and and first energy you know you you mentioned the these are rico charges these are federal conspiracy charges are you baffled or do you have an opinion about the fact that he's still serving in the ohio legislature i try to so i know i'm no u.s attorney and i'm not subject to the hatch act but i also don't want some defense attorney during the trial say yeah mr villar's had something against the householder therefore he you know he's got he's spewing his opinions throughout the the greater franklin county columbus southern district of ohio um tainting a possible jury so i'm still going to be careful about what i say about mr householder um i will say i'm surprised he's still in office yes okay that was that was a good way to put it so here's one of the questions i've had about this case from the beginning these five people one of them who apparently has committed suicide i think two now have pled yes in the case charges still pending again against matt borges and larry householder former speaker now a lawmaker this was rico a conspiracy case in which you have alleged 60 million dollars worth of bribes 62. some sorry 62. somebody had to pay those bribes there is you your investigation also involves first energy why have no charges been filed the money had to come from somewhere someone was behind the enterprise making the bribes controlling what was happening in the legislature violating the public trust why no charges against first energy or their new safe harbor collaboration i think again i don't want to speak out of turn and and tick off my aosa and u.s attorney colleagues um but the investigation is ongoing and i it's clearly right so when we even when we brought this up in july and we're going to the press conference we knew yeah we got the the bribies where are the bribers right and that's clearly there's no secret that you know there's it takes two to tango and uh um part of the problem is the investigation in the federal system we very very much lean on our grand jury right so and as i said the investigation really started in july to some extent um that uh grand jury's been suspended to postpone throughout 2020 and 21 because of covet you know we couldn't bring them in these little rooms um we can't zoom with grand juries and so that's slowed down we were able to bring in grand juries here and there but to bring in witnesses and make them compel them to testify in grand jury even doing some grand juries opinions requires that so it clearly slowed down the investigation i know this investigation ongoing and i know the grand jury started up again in march march 1st so i expect that that investigation is is rolling along pretty pretty well right now without trying to make you give specifics just in general when you are investigating a company that might be involved in wrongdoing isn't it difficult when there's this board there are a lot multi people you know a company is not a person so isn't it doesn't that make it more difficult yeah i i think and of course we indicted uh the the this generation now which was the 501c4 we died of that company as well but you know companies are all built on people so from people and you know the companies themselves can be prosecuted they can cease to exist they can be fined the restitution to perhaps victims can be brought back so you can punish them that way but it is difficult and when you're doing a covert investigation on the company itself it's document driven so when you start subpoenaing you know bank records or ip addresses you know they often gets back to them so you have it's very difficult to do that in a sort of uh covert matter it's very overt once you start do that you can ask the court to seal the subpoena and the bank not to um you know just you know to disclose that they often do but often it gets back to them and we know that so that's the difficult part of it yeah i also want to ask you deb price mentioned your term was far too short as u.s attorney i don't think anyone is questioning your competence or the job you did in fact people thought it was remarkable some of the big cases that you were able to pass through in the short amount of time you were there you were not there anymore because of politics as soon as you were you know you were appointed by a republican president as soon as a democrat president comes in and vice versa when we see a change in party at the white house we sometimes see on the local level very competent people have to leave their jobs is that a flaw in this system well i think so [Laughter] but i i think you know you look at it as you know politics is local except if you're in dc right so there's doj has 94 u.s attorneys throughout the entire country i was one of them and um i think that there's a lot of pressure from administrations to to clean shop there there are and there always are both with ours and these you know u.s attorneys are appointed are probably more political and not career guys like i'm a career guy there are a lot of u.s attorneys that were queer guys um but i'm disappointed but i'm not disappointed with anybody because i just you know when i when i agreed to do this i knew this was part of the system and and you know this could be something that uh um that would happen i think the thing that that could be changed and there's a 2012 law that prohibits me to go back to doj in any capacity for five years like as an ausa so that's a fairly new law i don't know if people really thought that through because there are a lot of really really dedicated ausas and the career u.s attorneys and both d's and ours in each administration that would gladly go back in to the line and be it you know prosecute murders and racketeering and things like that and that that brain drain i think is something that that could could be changed in the day-to-day functioning of that office when you were there though did you care who was a d who was an r i did it ever did you feel like politics impacted the job you could do not in the southern district of ohio no i didn't even i don't even know who the d's or ours were so um you know when my one when uh i knew i was gonna get fired and you know i was like all right who can replace me from the office i'm like well like i don't know who the d's and ours are to some extent so uh you know and i and i you know i there's no sticker i've solicited people in my office to see if they'd be interested and and putting in to be a us attorney um but uh so the answer is no i mean but that's a southern district ohio i'm sure there are other districts and jurisdictions where politics have come into play and i've been fortunate you know i've worked in really two democrat presidential administrations two republicans and i've been fortunate in that politics have never come into play that i've seen i have seen your priorities change but you expect that out of administrations but i haven't had a particular case where they said don't do this or do this i think we all would feel better if politics weren't part of our judicial system there's a move on now to have judges on the ballot have to declare on the ballot whether they are democrat or republican where in the past we want judges to be so non-biased that they don't have to be political what do you think about that movement should we know when we vote whether someone's a democrat or a republican well i think in practical terms if you really want to know you could find out because you have the the slate cards right so who the d's and who the r's are and you can do that i'd go a step further now now this is very liberating to me because i've never been able to say anything like this in my career because of the hatch act so i would there are also the ideas of appointing judges through you know independent um committees and then letting the people de-elect them that is if there's a particular judge that they feel is is poor or they don't like then they as the people as citizens we can move to unelect them as being being a judge and some some states have that and that seems to me the best way to take politics out of out of being a judge because you you have to raise money you have to run you have to do ads you have to you know and it can be very you know i've spent my career prosecuting corrupt politicians in a lot of ways and name some well i mean you you can i promise i had sent a judge to prison actually a sitting judge so uh and uh a guy named judge mcauliffe um but uh again he got involved in politics you know he had to raise money and when she when you do that every time you have to raise money and you absolutely 100 percent do as an elected judge both in common police and municipal and the supreme court there's always that even appearance of impropriety and and if we could somehow get rid of that i think that would be fantastic you mentioned you were involved in the prosecution of saddam hussein you were fighting terrorism overseas is you look at the landscape now where where is our greatest threat domestic terrorism or foreign terrorism uh you know i think we have to so it there's a big difference between an ft a foreign terrorist organization and a domestic terrorization there's different legal um differences you know if an fto is declared by the state department with input by the president and the and the department of justice and they're they're on a list right there's you know who they are they're isis you know they're al qaeda they're you know they're there there's a list of i don't think there's 40 something of them and domestic terrorism or the domestic terrorist organizations aren't really don't really exist in the legal terms and as far as criminal law is concerned there's elements of a defense that makes a domestic domestic terrorist acts and i wouldn't necessarily i so that so as a lawyer i'm not ready to say domestic terrorism as i'm going to say extremist groups and so you have extremist groups both on the right and the left and and um that's those those extremes and the disinformation that either they've bought into or their ideologies and what they're willing to do to to to go forward i think that's the biggest threat within the united states i still think we need to really be careful about um foreign terrorist organizations as well though well the foreign terrorist organizations that you fought against we hear the president now talking about pulling out of afghanistan do you think that is an invitation for them to rebuild themselves it could be you know basically any quite frankly any failed state in afghanistan is no longer i would no longer declare a foul state it's just is there political will for the afghan government to to fight to to stop giving safe harbor to you know al-qaeda um you know you've got other places like yemen they're falling apart that could be a foul state you've got you know in places in africa and and somalia there are failed states and when you have that vacuum that's where terrorist organizations go to to breed and recruit so why are you reluctant to call the extremist groups here in this country who do terrorist acts why are you reluctant to call them domestic terrorists well no i don't if they're committing terrorist acts then then their terrorist group right so they follow that definition if they you know um you know blow up a power grid because of their um political views and attempt to influence that's that's the elements of the offense right so that's then they're a terrorist group i think that we we we get so tied up in all their domestic characters no they're just extremists they're they're extremists you know they they have extreme views and when they are they gonna commit acts they become a terrorist group when they commit the crime right they don't they're not a terrorist group until they commit the crime so characterize for me your take on what happened in washington on january 6th as you were watching that unfold what were you thinking who in ohio has gone there to to infiltrate the capitol building and we were on calls i was on a call with i mean as soon as very quickly um i was on a call with chris hoffman was a special agent in charge in in columbus or in ohio uh for the fbi and then i was on a call with doj and you know we were putting out um i think you know i put out right away a press release that anyone that has crossed state lines with the intention of of committing violence or or um stopping the proceedings within the capital building are going to be prosecuted and we've we have prosecuted a lot of them and there are ohio ties what can you tell us i know you can't get specific about cases but tell us should we be surprised at the ohio elements that were there that day no i i don't pick on ohio necessarily but yeah i think that there a lot in the midwest uh was i think a lot of people went to to the capitol um and were part of that we do have militia groups and extremist groups um in in ohio uh and you know we've we know who they are we you know know what they to some extent what they're they're up to and the fbi is very good at at that intelligence gathering but the thing is you can't do anything especially within the united states within until they commit the crime or are about to commit the crime you know we had the the um individuals that were conspiring to commit a crime against abducting the the governor of michigan that actually happened in in dublin ohio one of the meetings that we knew about we were we were on it um but um and stopping it but you have to for conspiracy as you know you know you have to let it go a little bit to be able to establish a conspiracy um but a lot of what we do is suppress it especially with a lot of these um extremist groups i'll call you know let them know that they're being watched let them know that you know uh you know stealing firearms um is is a crime let them know that uh you know calling in on the internet and talking about committing crimes is a crime and suppressing it's probably better than waiting for it to happen but when it does that's when they become a criminal enterprise like rico your office was involved i believe in stopping what they planned to do against the governor of michigan house how early were you in on that and how were you in on that so we get a we work with our other u.s attorney's offices throughout the country that was the u.s attorney in michigan his case but um the fbi was involved in the uh we have sources you know we've we've had sources in some of these extremist groups that we're reporting on other sources and extremist groups so you know where you're doing good when you have that but um you have sources and you have search warrants and you have we're able to if we were able to establish probable cause that they're using a phone or a computer or a particular you know um or even on code on in the internet you know uh we can we can surveil it and that's what we do the the patriot act allows us to do that with domestic terrorist organizations as well as foreign terrorist organizations do you think that we will see growth in this type of extremist activity some of the people as we saw on january 6th took great pride in what they were doing and foolishly photographed themselves and posted it and made your job i imagine the job of people investigating that a lot easier we love it when they do that it's fantastic did you think from your perspective again as a prosecutor what was donald trump's role in that was it an incitement i don't think it would be a legal incitement if i was a prosecutor well if it was legal excitement he'd be indicted right now you know one of the administrations or he will be indicted so um whether it's it's impeachable offense that's different that's a political decision and and you know he didn't help you know i think that's obvious to say but whether i don't think he meets the elements of the criminal offense of inciting violence so you would not be pursuing charges against him if you were in that role still yes based on what i know and i've seen and that i would well i would not let's bring it back home a little bit uh you were involved in a lot of the gang activity i think the short north posse was one of your cases and back at that time there was a lot of talk about what gangs were doing in columbus we don't hear that as much anymore is it because of the efforts that you took more than a decade ago with that short north posse case and maybe if some of our younger people in the audience you might want to remind them what that was about but it was a massive case one of the prosecutors lives on my street and i remember he had to have armed guards at his house is that doug's dad yeah yeah that was that was the ex-clan that was ronald dawson excellent which i i prosecuted too with doug and yeah my wife was thrilled about that case because they were guarding us too for a year um that was in the 90s so it evolved so in the 90s when i was a young prosecutor it was you know bloods and crips and folks and gangster disciples and um very much based on there there really wasn't any any me any dogma to what they were doing so if you're in the blood and you're wearing blue we're going to shoot at you and that's kind of how it went now dawson was kind of one of the first people in x-clan to try to capitalize on that and become kind of a hit-men sort of traditional organized crime and a lot of those gangs in the 90s morphed into that including the short north posse now the short enough posse was kind of a drug dealing enterprise in the for the most part in the short north but in the later 2000s and up until we the big short enough past case i tried 2016 with with uh um kevin kelly as the usa officer brian martinez and it was a massive in fact mike miller was one of the defense attorneys in that case so it was a big case and there were 16 murders within a 10 um year period but it was had nothing to do with they weren't killing anybody because of the their rival gang because of their their their killing people over the bottom dollar they're killing people because they knew they had drugs and money and they were going to take it and sell it or they were killing people because they were getting paid to as head or they were killing people because they felt that they were going to try to rob them or take their their drug territory not just in columbus but in places like you know i think newark and zanesville and where they they grew they grew into what you would call traditional organized crime and that's what you're seeing now in columbus that's why you're seeing less they call themselves bloods or crips for an enterprise for eureka that's what we'd use we try to you know kind of give them some sort of name because often they do but it's not your traditional they've morphed and particularly with cartels being a part of the sea now both columbus is a source city for cartels and that's why we're seeing you know blows up and fentanyl is the new crap and it's horrific and and it's worth a lot of money and it's really really easy to bring in because it's such a small amount we routinely get notices from the coroner's office that there's a new and more deadly source of fentanyl on the street and that there have been so many overdoses within a week's period and it's so is this the you know when you hear mexican cartels we think of law and order and on nbc new york this is columbus ohio do you think people would be shocked at the level of drugs that are on our streets yes and be clear in columbus the sinaloa cartel is here 100 dea says the mexican authorities said we work with the mexican authorities um they come here and they deliver mostly fentanyl now so in the reason dr ortiz is the frank county coroner and we've we talk a lot we still actually talk in a fair amount and the problem we're seeing the scourge of fentanyl was it used to be black tar heroin coming in and you know blacks a kilo of well 100 kilos of black tower heroin is as potent as one kilogram of fentanyl okay and you can if you team 50 to 100 depending on the or carbohydrate so it's so easy you know a 100 kilos of cocaine's a lot it's hard to bring in but fentanyl is easy to bring in and the drug dealers once it gets here by the cartels their connections are good old americans so they're that's very rare we used to see cartels actually selling black car tar heroine on the streets it's not it's now it's like a franchise so it comes to columbus it's sold in columbus but it's also distributed to west virginia um down south towards cincinnati and to southern pennsylvania in fact my colleagues in in west virginia and pennsylvania the u.s attorney's office you know always said why do i why are half the people in my prison have 614 tattoos on because their columbus guys go in there selling the fentanyl that gets brought here by the cartels so that's kind of how it happens and why it's really a problem and it's a huge problem last year and the beginning of 2019 is we never ever ever saw cocaine mixed with heroin or fentanyl they just didn't do it they're two different ones a stimulant one's an opioid but they still have the euphoria regardless we started to see fentanyl mixed in with cocaine and so if you're doing a line of cocaine and your drug dealer isn't perfect about what they do and you snort that you're going to die and what we've seen is the amount of um overdose deaths in franklin county the vast majority of them are phenomenal with cocaine now and that's why we're seeing so many people drop dead people that aren't traditional heroin addicts the same thing that makes columbus and correct me if i'm wrong but i understand that the same thing that makes columbus a transportation center a distribution center you know we are close to much of the population if you come here to columbus that's why people have their hubs here that they can get push things out isn't that why it also makes us an attractive drug hub absolutely and that's exactly why you know we we go um you know you you got pittsburgh you got indianapolis you got cincinnati you got cleveland all within what you know two hours from here and then then everything goes from there so it's really easy for the cartel to bring their drugs here and move on to to these other areas particularly when you have willing participants and there are you now i understand have been asked to be a special prosecutor in the hazing death of a young student at bowling green university are you going to be doing more of these consulting kind of prosecution cases and as you go into this kind of a case that might be a little different than what you handled when you were at the u.s attorney's office what's your ground game so here i'm a special on special counsel i'm not the the county prosecutor up in and bowling green is going to handle any uh criminal matters i'm asked to do the investigations and then bowling green is going to find if there's code violations based on that findings of fact investigation in fact you know i'll let you know boeing green speak to to that but we're almost done we'll be we'll be done probably by the end of this this month with the investigation um but yeah no i i think one it's it's uh barnes and thorberg who happens to be our sponsor here today uh you know that that's something that they've done that's that's that's the reason i went there quite frankly because there are a lot of ausas and um former u.s attorneys that work nationally for barnes and thornburg and you know that's part of a big part of what we're about is doing these investigations for both for colleges and companies and um you know i'm also working with the with um jobs and family services on this this poa fraud and you know that that they know where to go because of that being and i love doing it and i think i'm pretty good at it you know parents look at cases like that and think oh lord you send your kid away for to school and and this is what happens i imagine for your family the kinds of cases you've done over the years did it influence the way you parented because you know about the drugs on the street and you know about the gangs and you know uh about the extremists and you know did it make you a more wary parent i think actually less so because i think my kids kind of saw that too right so they they knew about unless i'm a bad parent my wife's a great parent but i think they they kind of saw that you know they they lived it and and you know they knew they were under protection you know they remember being under protection and they understand what what i did and um and you know i really appreciate them going through all that because it wasn't easy but to some extent i was less worried about them because they knew the repercussions because i'd be sitting on dinner table telling these horror stories all the time well i remember the the people who were guarding my my neighbor's house they would play basketball with the kids you know when when he wasn't at home they didn't have as much to do but they were still guarding his house so i imagine that for your kids this is just a way of life for your wife maybe not so much yeah no she reminds me that it's not so much a proper way of life but she's also fantastic though i mean i mean i've been all over the world some some not so uh nice places and uh you know dave my family actually went with me for two years we went to the republic of georgia and they moved with me the whole family and you know we live there and um you know they end up loving it but you know you know i'm not sure if too many wives and children be willing to pack up and go to the ex-republic of georgia not know anything about it so you know i love her and she's fantastic and she's she's put up with a lot the language barriers must have been nightmarish yeah yeah i'm one of the few people that can speak a little georgian though so uh there's it's not a very uh it's um it's not a very popular language in the world so as you look back at your job at the u.s attorney's office here how difficult is it going to be for you when they get to the prosecution of larry householder when they when they move forward on these cases that were such a part of your career and you were an intensive person from what i've heard how difficult is it for you to not want to be involved in that not want to pick up the phone and talk to them and say this is how i think you should be doing it this is what you should be looking for i'm not saying i'm not going to do that when they really pick up the phone is another thing oh it's yeah it's killing me you know and that case and grand jury is a very very secret thing we keep it very serious so i don't ask about the investigation at all and these are still these are been my friends for 20 years you know and um you know there's the the ms-13 case here and there's you know the um some of the some of the murders which is really kind of what i did as an aosa to a lot of the the violent crime stuff and um oh there's a lot of there's cases in dayton too there was the detective del rio was was killed um and those cases are just you know i think about them all the time the cases involving the riots here in the columbus area last year obviously those are being handled on the local level nothing federal came out of that but as you watched that unfold did you some people are saying i see why there was unrest i see the the relationship between police officers and especially communities of color i know why they're angry how what how did you weigh in on those cases well i could i could definitely see why people are angry and you know we had a some pretty pretty rough police shootings here in columbus just after that you know that that you know are being investigated there's no secret about about that um but crime's crime and if you commit it then we have a duty of sworn duty to to to prosecute you for it we did actually prosecute some cases out of the the summer um protests and riots based on firearms offenses um but for the most part you know and honestly i i i can say this now because i've moved but i lived on the corner of gay and high street and during that i you know watched the whole thing and you saw kind of the angry sort of people going through and then you saw people that seem to be taking advantage of the the situation you know going through and you know causing trouble just to do it and he also saw other protesters the vast majority of more peaceful and angry going after the people that were sitting there and quite frankly the vast majority of the the that we investigated the people that were were causing most of the crime were were white guys i mean they were and they were there um i'm not sure why they were there i'm not sure what they were doing but there was this kind of um antifa movement maybe i don't know if they're antifa but we didn't prosecute anybody for for coming into the state crossing state lines to commit any particular act but we sure looked at a lot of them i i'm going to remind everyone that in a few minutes we're going to take audience questions which is kind of our custom so if you have a question and i'm sure many of you do jane's going to get a microphone ready for you i don't know how you're handling that jane but i have a final question for you which is we listen to the breadth and depth of your experience you were clearly passionate about justice and what you did a lot of people were saddened that you left that office would you when that five-year period is up would you ever want to go back would you want to be reappointed to be u.s attorney or go back into a prosecutorial kind of role this is sponsored by barnes i would absolutely entertain that and i and and and my firm knows that that's something that i would consider i don't know if it's gonna be right for me in five years i have no idea but but yeah i've been prosecuting my entire you know entire life and uh and i loved it well let me give you a final chance to put a plug in for barnes and thornburg and talk about the kind of work that you hope you get to do there yeah i i again you know i think one of the things that uh that barnes and sport they do a lot of different things or we do a lot of different things but a lot of that is these investigations and and there's a lot of different um companies corporations universities uh uh uh enterprises that you know we you know we want to go ahead and see help them out as clients to investigate any issues any problems any legalities that may be happening and we're here for it barnes and thornburg everyone let's jane i know we've been getting questions online too and we welcome and thank our online audience and can you give us start with the first question sure we're going to go back and forth between online questions and folks here in the audience so anyone in the audience that has a question feel free to get up here and by the way i'm going to have to charge barnes and thornburg a little bit more money for the sponsorship today thank you very much dave bill lafayette says when you exact a penalty against a corporation like first energy the ones who really pay are the remote shareholders how do we address that is it just a risk of holding stock no that's true and shareholders can sue the the those enterprises for the misconduct so there's a civil balance there and if there's fines and restitution then the restitution is going to go to the the victims of the fraud first um in any any sort of case like that but then the the shareholders can sue the corporation and the assets of the corporation based on illegalities hello rene de lane from women who dare and mr developers we obviously all of us noted that you lead with your values which are integrity and courage can you tell us a little bit about your roots or what influenced you in your life to uh live this way and lead your life this way you know i don't i i had a i had a great family i think and i grew up kind of lower middle class than in new york and and uh my military family you know so uh you know my my parents and kind of always you know taught me to to you know do what's right um i've always known what's right but i try to i try to do it's right my you know my wife and my kids and my friends seem to to to be that way again i i don't know any better i've always been just a prosecutor even since my since my first year of law school you know i was an intern so it's all i've done another question from online andrew tobias would like to know dave's feelings on the role of dark money in state politics given its role in the case he led and whether any reforms are needed andrew tobias of the cleveland plain dealer maybe uh so could be he knows uh but so yeah so you know we have these things and i don't want to get in too much that's very complicated but 51c4s are are um an animal created by the governments for for social welfare so people can go ahead and create these these these organizations that are uh do not have to report their donors to the federal election committee and it sounds great but in practicality the problem is and they're not supposed to be uh their primary their primary role can't be political but you can use that that money that no one knows about and millions and hundreds of millions tens of million dollars can go into it and not you have no idea who is being who is is uh donating to it and you can have 99 of the funding could go to attack a particular ballot initiative or to support a particular ballot initiative because that's not considered politics within the the meaning of the 51c4 you can't attack or support a particular candidate for office as the majority of what you're doing so 49 of the funds going into a 51c4 can be used to attack or support a particular candidate and that's that's the problem you know i understand you want to be you know unanimous when anonymous when it comes to um speech often that's that's a right but are we going to say that that you're going to be anonymous as far as funding uh political funding and that's a political decision i i have to inject here what do you should citizens united be overturned well you know it has nothing to do with citizens united because citizens united allows it to to happen but citizens united basically set up super pacs so super pacs you could donate as much money as you want but you have to report your donors to the sec the problem is with 501 c4s is you don't have to that's that that's the issue that's why it's dark money that's why super pacs aren't are you know millions of dollars the koch brothers and george soros they can throw his money much but you know you know he's doing it with dark money you don't and that's what a 501c4 is hi dave i'm carol luper a headline just popped up on my phone the female police officer who shot and killed dante wright has just been charged with second-degree manslaughter would you explain second-degree manslaughter so it's different between states if you uh there's intentional murder right which is an f1 murder and then there's um manslaughter where you go and you commit um a particular felonies and as a direct result of that felony someone dies that's a manslaughter and then there's kind of a reckless killing or negligent homicide in ohio if negligent homicide where if you negligently kill somebody that is you don't mean to do it um and but you're negligent in fulfilling your duties and you kill somebody that would be negligent homicide reckless uh manslaughter could be also a reckless killing so with disregard to the safety of somebody you commit an act with reckless disregard and someone dies a result of that that would be manslaughter when you heard that she thought her gun was a taser uh you know handguns and tasers feel and weigh very differently were you surprised that that's how that was explained i actually saw the video and heard that the the strange part is before as you hear the video you hear taser taser taser that's what police are trying to do say have a taser but you can see the person has a glock in their hand as they're saying taser taser and you can almost you know it's a body cam so the other police officers don't necessarily see what's going on you almost see it happening unfortunately but yeah it's if if if the person somehow was making this up and intended to kill a person that's flat-out murder if you can prove that that's intentional killing but if it's negligent or it's reckless it is a negative homicide or or it should be a manslaughter it's still very very serious offense it's still a homicide offense and still jail time it can still be jail time completely up to the judge depending on the the law of that particular state okay i've got a lot of good questions someone on youtube doesn't say who i am curious as to whether mr devillers has ever in the past considered running for political office or if that is something that he might think about in the future no i'm not i'm not again it's the it's all this it's i and i've said this a number of times i'd love to be an office holder i i'm i'm that's why i like being an attorney i just want to run for it i mean and the problem is is that you know you have to ask for money right you have to do that and and god bless the politicians that do because you have to there's no way around it the way our system is and i'm just not i'm not billed for it hi i'm carol mcguire um let's talk about leaks how do you go through an investigation as deep and broad as this householder one was and for what i'm assuming was a fairly lengthy period of time and prevent the leaks that might be very tempting to make by some folks we went to pretty pretty great extremes um in that particular case one is i kept the case in cincinnati so it for a long story kind of started there anyway and the two aosas are fantastic uh they're they're running the case but we kept it there because we didn't want to bring it and columbus has got great aosas too and it's the capital but like let's keep it there not because there's any leaks in columbus and there there aren't but there's still that possibility you know you know it's a draft indictment of garbage you know anything like that could come come across but the other way the reason is we didn't do it it wasn't leaks is because we didn't do those subpoenaings we didn't do those search warrants we didn't do things where they could become they become aware that's why i keep stressing that the investigation really really started in july of of last year i have to ask you when you realize that this is the speaker of the house in ohio a political figure who had a lot of clout did that make you be more double down on your accuracy in this case were you concerned about the politics of it you know i before this i knew less about state house politics than i did you know medieval architecture and i know nothing about medieval architecture so i it it's not something that i really you know was was i'm deeply involved with but yeah anytime you're any time you're going to go after a politician you need to make sure you you want to make sure you get all everything all your um you know your eyes dot and t's crossed but the same time you shouldn't be treated any different than anybody else if you commit the crime they commit the crime and i think that's a problem that we've had and i'll say me too like with the southern discovery for 20 years i think we've been passive and a bit tentative about pulling trigger on corruption particularly corruption cases because of that and what i when i became u.s attorney the one thing i think the very first thing i told the entire office is don't be afraid to lose a trial if you have the case if there's probable cause if you are convinced they're guilty you're never going to get in trouble if you try to to prosecute it so this is from kathy ann kowalski from energy news network and ion ohio and i'm going to read this verbatim criminal charges relating to house bill 6 have not yet been filed against first energy energy uh harbor or any former officers of or puco or puc as of 325 which is when she submitted this question why then wouldn't it be in the public interest to list lifts days of civil proceedings that are currently benefiting the two companies a special when especially when any company personnel remain free to assert their fifth amendment rights in discovery they have been paused a lot of the the the discovery of the civil in the civil cases dave yost our attorney general has been working some things and um you know he we've talked and made it clear and he's made it clear that he would if we thought that the discovery was going to jeopardize our criminal investigation and trials then they would be paused and a lot of that a lot of it is paused some can they can go forward to a point but a lot of the civil litigation is paused because of that what's the timetable on the criminal case do you know so again i don't want to on the trial that's pending the diamond um i i think it's set for right now in the in the fall um but it probably won't go until i'd be surprised if it goes to trial this year and that's based on primarily that's a coveted area because we've got people that are already locked up in prison they have first shot at going to trial so it's more of the having the space in the courthouse yep yeah yeah so we're seeing violence escalated here in columbus and the question is if you could wave a magic wand what would you do to curb violence any new gun rules um the one thing that as far as gun rules are concerned things we see are often these um these gun shows you know there's been a lot about it and it is true that all federally licensed dealers even at gun shows have to go ahead and um get your id before they they sell to you but let's say i have like seven guns and i go to a gun show and just dave i'm not i'm not doing it to make money i'm just you know doing to recoup or sell some antique i can do that and i don't have to ask for idea id and that is a legitimate loophole in the in the system you know if are we going to like i get that people don't want to do it i get the people like i don't want to get in trouble for selling someone a gun so why do i have to you know there that's my constant right to have it sell it i'm just a person i'm here to make money off it but if we really want to to go ahead and show like firearm responsibility and be able to trace firearms that's the best way to go about doing another way to do it is quite frankly is is what we call um nibin that is when a gun guy makes a gun a gun manufacturer makes a gun he shoots in the water gets a serial number takes the that that shell casing that came out of it puts in a system and that system that shell cases always match that gun that is so if there's a crime committed in in la and that gun leaves a shell casing we can then say we know that shell casing came from that gun with that that serial number let's trace who bought that gun if that person about to get who'd they sell it to and so on and so on so that's something we can do that seems pretty that seems pretty easy well it's awesome it's manpower intensive it's not just the computer they also have to look at but but it's it's you can do it great jane i think we have time i'm getting the signal from one more question um pick a good one you mentioned a couple of possible reforms in the judicial system and then i also have a question about is is there racial prejudice in the judicial system are there other reforms you'd like to see um perfect world what would you do um again i like the the concept of de-electing judges and having like a committee bipartisan committee that's elected that's selected by probably the governor and the or county commissioners or the legislature or something that effect we have democrats and republicans on it do it and the bar association to get involved as far as i mean yeah there's i think there's racism a lot of our system i think we do have a lot of african-american judges here in franklin county i think we're we're fortunate but um and i think it is a diverse bench but um you know that's not like that everywhere in ohio mr devillers we thank you so much for being frank and honest uh it's been really enlightening yes please thank him thanks well folks i hope you found today's forum as uh insightful as i did it was it was really really interesting dave and colleen next week we'll convene our annual state of nonprofits forum featuring director of human service chamber of central ohio michael corey thanks to the emergency response fund of the columbus foundation for presenting our live stream partnership with the columbus dispatch and pnc and thanks once again to our sponsors barnes and thornburg thanks again to all of our our online virtual virtual seat patrons and once again to our speakers thank you all tune in next week until then be well and stay safe thanks all [Music] you

Channel: Metro Club

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Id: S_m6czuo1iE

Length: 69min 33sec (4173 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 14 2021