#IMWITHHIM KAVANAUGH

Like many Americans I watched the Kavanaugh hearings yesterday. And as I sat that I could not help but wonder how we got here. How is it that so many senators and ordinary citizens are so quick to pass judgement on a man who they do know even know? If the senators and many people in this country are opposed to his nomination on ideological grounds, does that give them the right to assume that he is therefore guilty of a crime committed over 30 years ago?  Finally, why was Kavanaugh so bothered by these accusations if he knows them to be untrue? Why the anger? 

As I mentioned in an entry over 18 months ago http://www.whitecollarguru.com/2017/01/innocent-until-proven-guilty-or-guilty.html and well before President Trump brought it up earlier this week, I lament that the idea that we are innocent until proven guilty is, for all practical purposes, nothing more than a myth. Once someone has been indicted and that indictment is covered in the press, in the eyes of many, he is already guilty. From there it becomes very difficult to get a fair trial even if the defendant is innocent. The onus is on the defendant to prove his innocence instead of on the government to prove guilt. This creates a completely backwards system of justice where people are always quick to believe allegations whether they can be corroborated or not. For those who already decided that Kavanaugh was unfit for the Supreme Court this was yet another excuse (not a reason) to protest his nomination. 

As to the outrage by Kavanaugh, I can empathize. I have two daughters, one of whom is 15. As a father, nothing scares me more than an episode such as what happened to Kavanaugh’s accuser, Dr. Ford. I am sure every father shares the same fears, so I am not going to attempt to white wash the cultural epidemic that has victimized women for all too long. Thankfully, many of these perpetrators have been exposed and brought to justice. Finally, albeit belatedly, there is a cultural revolution where women are saying that they are not going to take it anymore! And it is about time!

At the same time, I have been on the receiving end of baseless accusations. While I have never been accused by women of inappropriate behavior, it was alleged in a deposition that I engaged is some repulsive actions that, if true would have changed even my closest friends' views of me and destroyed my marriage. The fact is they were not true and no one who knows me believed them to be true. Nevertheless, I attempted to have the release of these transcripts blocked by the courts. When I called my lawyers to proceed with this action they asked me why I cared. They told me that I am being accused of being part of a fraud involving the loss of a billion dollars and this is nothing compared to that!

So why did I instruct them to do so? There are two types of allegations. There are the types that can be proven or disproven and there are the types that are difficult to refute. As far as the allegations regarding my complicity went, I was prepared than as I am today to prove that the accusations as it related to my alleged criminal activity were without any merit. I had correspondence that supported my position and my actions at the time clearly demonstrated that I was not a co-conspirator. On the contrary, there was ample evidence to support the notion that I was misled and lied to more than any person involved in the case. 

Sexual allegations, however, are an entirely different matter. It is very difficult to prove a negative. Just as there was no way to substantiate the baseless accusations when it came to my morality, there was no way to disprove these accusations. These types of accusations amounted to an attack on my family, my marriage and my morality. I knew that one day my daughters would grow up and would read all of these disgusting things about their father. I had to fight back. I was not going to allow this to go unanswered even if it meant there was only a small outside chance that the release of these transcripts could be blocked.

So, I understand Judge Kavanaugh's outrage. I understand what it means to have your morality attacked. I understand what it means to endure an attack on the very foundation of your marriage. I understand what it means to have a daughter who will one day have to read things about her father that cannot be corroborated nor disproven. I understand what it means to be accused of something impossible to defend against. So, while I am unsure what to make of Dr. Ford's accusations, I am sure of what to make of Kavanaugh's response. It is the response of someone under attack for actions he never committed. In short, #imwithhim.

Time To Go Home!

Two years ago today I left the Federal Prison Camp in Miami. On one hand it feels like yesterday and on the other hand it seems like my incarceration was a lifetime ago. Now, I had originally planned to head down there today and take a video on location, but my luck they would mistake me for an escapee and I would get stuck there until they realized that I did not belong. No thank you.

The day I was taken off to prison, my lawyer told my family that I would leave prison in the best shape of my life. And he was right. I entered prison at my absolute highest weight and left there having lost close to 25 pounds. My exit weight was 155 lb. Even more impressive, I left prison able to bench press greater than my body weight. By the time I left, I was running 10 miles a day and working out for an hour on top of that. In other words, prison amounted to a federally funded get in shape regiment. Many people go to fat camp to lose weight and pay thousands of dollars per week. I, on the other hand had Uncle Sam pay for my program. I am not alone in this. For many people, prison amounts to more time of freedom. How is this possible you ask? Well there are those who get sentenced to even up yo five years. The enter prison overweight, diabetic and with high blood pressure as a result of their obesity. In short, they are on the way to an early death. However, once they are in prison, at some point they realize that they might as well use that time to better themselves. By the time the leave, they may have added 10 years to their lives because many of their health problems will have dissipated with the the new healthy lifestyle. Again thank you Uncle Sam.

So what is it like to leave prison? Well it is actually kind of surreal. As a prisoner gets ready to leave the vultures start circling. While in prison, I bought shorts, sweatpants, t-shirts, boxers, and sweatshirts. Obviously, aside from what I was going to wear when I left, I was not going to bring home an oversupply of grey clothing. Suddenly everybody wants your old clothing. They even want your socks and underwear! Now there are those who oddly enough try to sell these items as they leave. But I just gave everything away. Even my underwear.

Obviously, unless you are a hermit, you will have made friends there. It is kind of hard to say goodbye, not because you will miss anything but because many of the friends still have plenty of time left before they go home. At the same time there is a strange camaraderie that develops between prisoners. For the most part everyone is happy for the guy that gets to go home and be with his family.

You would not think it but the actual process of "checking out" is a long drawn out process. It can take over two hours. One would think that all of the paperwork is ready when you are ready to leave, but this is not the Hilton or even Motel 6 for that matter. It is almost as if, no one even realized you were leaving that day. I had thought I would be walking out at 830 or so. In the end I walked out at close to 11!

Keep in mind that for most people when they are released, they do not go home. Usually, they are transitioned to a half way house where they can go to work every day and go home for the weekends. This is exactly what happened  to me. Technically, upon release a prisoner is still in prison while at the halfway house. It is a way to transition prisoners back into everyday life. For me this meant that while my actual sentence was 17 months or so, I got to spend the last six and a half in a halfway house or under home confinement. So while the intent of the halfway house is to ease the transition for many people, especially those of us with white collar offenses, it is a way to lessen the time in the actual prison. Incidentally, the last 10% of a sentence is spent at home.

Finally, when I was released, I saw my wife and kids waiting in the car. Now even though I had just seen them two days earlier when they came to visit, this was different. It was as if I had been gone a lifetime and was seeing everyone for the first time in ages. There is something about the conclusion of a sentence that cannot be described. The idea that a difficult period is finally over is akin to being born anew. So while the rebuilding process is daunting for anyone who leaves prison, the very chance to rebuild is in and of itself a reason to celebrate.

As I sit here two years later I wonder if it is good that I went to prison. Depending on the day my wife will either tell you it was the best 11 months or the worst 11 months of her life. Am I stronger for having gone? Yes. Am I a better person? I think so. Do I appreciate the things that I used to take for granted? Absolutely. Did I deserve to go to prison. Well that is a topic for another day. As a punishment, I don't think it was relevant and there are cheaper better, less disruptive ways that they could have punished me when the feds decided that I committed a crime. However, as challenges in life go, there are certainly greater ones than having to spend 10 months in a prison camp. Given the challenges I have seen people endure be it health, or any other of the thousands of stressors that we inevitably face I think short prison time in a camp is among the easier to endure. Plus you come out better looking at the end!

When Prisoners Put A Hit On Me

I was given lots of advice before I went into prison. The most important piece of advice I was given was remain innocuous and do not get into any conflict. I was told to keep my head down and it would be better if no one knew I was even there. This is good advice. Unfortunately, that is advice that also goes against my very being. I don't know why, but sometimes I cannot help myself.

We used to joke around that there is a saying that goes something like "Be all you can be....in prison." And indeed, people made themselves out to be much more than they actually were. At times, it seemed I was the only one in the entire prison who did not own either a Lamborghini, Ferrari or a Bentley. It also seemed that I was one of the only people from Miami who did not own a house on Star Island. I think there were actually more people at the Miami prison camp that owned houses on Star Island than there are houses on Star Island!  For the most part I just laughed at most of these fictional tales. I someone wanted to make themselves seem rich, fine by me. For the most part I kept my mouth shut. Of course, like I said sometimes, I cannot help myself. 

There were two individuals within our little Jewish community that just annoyed me with some of the nonsense that came out of their mouths. One of them, we will call him Myles, I met the day I arrived at the camp. Myles could not keep his mouth shut. At first, he was nice to me. I think it was because he thought I was a somebody. He routinely mentioned that there was a bulletin on radio 610 AM the day that I was sentenced. He mentioned this over and over and over. Over time this story morphed into that there was a breaking news interruption to regular programming that I was sentenced. To say this was annoying is an understatement. However, Myles was willing to cook for me and arrange for different foods to be smuggled for himself which he would share with me, so I let it go.

Myles had been originally sentenced to 24 years in some telephone billing scam. He managed to get that reduced to 12 years somehow. He routinely told us that he had $20 million stashed away in untraceable Swiss bank accounts. Of course, given today's banking secrecy laws that is impossible. He claimed that the Feds told him if he gives up the money he could go home but he refused. Myles also said that Alan Dershowitz was representing him on appeal and that he was going to be getting out soon. Myles claimed had twin 14-year-old daughters studying in Switzerland and because they were so far away they could rarely visit him. In short Myles did not shut up. Little of this was true.

Myles could not help himself but run his mouth all the time. When someone did something he did not like he would simply spread lies about them. In one instance he claimed that a prisoner had snitched on 32 defendants. Another time, when he got word that someone had received contraband tuna that he felt belonged to him he made sure that the prison staff found out. Myles was nothing short of a weasel. He also had no pictured of his daughters which was very suspicious. Myles even tried to have me branded as a snitch. By the time June of 2016 rolled around I was totally sick of the guy. 

While no one really believed much of Myles's tale, we all pretty much believed the story about the kids. We always asked him when they were going to visit. Finally, during June, they were coming for a visit on a Friday evening. So of course, Myles got dressed in his nicest prison uniform that Friday and while many of us attended services he was scheduled for a visit. That evening, I asked him how his visit was, and he said it went well. Something however seemed off. A few of us, suspicious as we were asked the other inmates what the twins were like. The response was very odd. No one had even seen Myles in the visiting room that night. We asked the inmate whose job it was to work in the visiting room if Myles had a visit and he informed us that Myles had not been called to the visiting room that Friday evening. We asked him to check the list the next day and he confirmed that no visit had taken place. Myles had fabricated the entire episode. This was bizarre.

Now in prison, when someone is caught in a lie, someone is going to do some digging through a source outside of prison. What we found out was that there were no twin daughters living in Switzerland. There was one daughter. She was living in New Jersey with her mother who was never actually married to Myles. The daughter had recently been taken into Child Protective services. So, Myles was a liar. No real surprise there. 

One day Myles crossed the line with me. He went to one of the members of the community and claimed that I said something about a third person and he felt I was being divisive. Oh, the irony. Basically, game on. I let it be known to someone who had breakfast with Myles every day that there were no two daughters, and there was no visit. The next day at breakfast, which I never attended, this person was all too happy to announce, "hey Myles, Szafranski said your two daughters don't exist!” And just like that Myles was caught in his own web of lies.

Well an hour later, as I was going for my morning run, I see Myles on the track and he charges at me yelling "come here you pussy!!!!!!!" he knocks off my hat and proceeds to chase me, presumably with the intent of provoking me into a fight; something that could have delayed my release day that was less that 90 days away. So, I ran on to the track. To give an appropriate visualization, Myles is a few inches shy of 5 feet tall and weighs around 225 pounds with John Lennon glasses. He looks like a little elf. So here we are about 830 in the morning and this little elf is chasing me, in the peak shape of my adult life, around the track yelling "come back here you pussy!!!" Finally, someone got in his way and restrained him while his little arms flailed in the wind. Finally, as he calmed down I yelled, hey Myles, don't forget I'm getting out in 3 months while you will be here until 2023! To which he responded, "I am getting out a lot sooner than that!". Another lie. Victory, me.

The next person, we will call him Mark was actually from Miami. He was in prison for Mortgage fraud. He was actually known as the foreclosure king of Miami because of all of the properties that he lost. Mark made the mistake on day one of telling me that he knew some of the people that I knew and said negative things about them. The truth was that he had committed adultery with the wife of someone who was deathly ill, and ultimately raided the kid's trust fund. Mark also thought he was a somebody. He came to us from the higher security prison where he was able to convince people he was someone of importance. He had a business there in selling porn and cigarettes. In the camp, however, those items were much easier to come by so Mark did not really have anything to offer. Within a month he was in debt to the tune of $500. He also claimed his wife never came to see him because she is so beautiful that the other inmates could not help but stare at her whenever she came. Mark was far from Prince Charming. He was a pathological liar who also could not keep his mouth shut.

So, Mark and I did not get along. That's fine, it isn't as though I planned on developing long term relationships in prison. Over time however, he started stealing from the Jewish community and would try to get himself jobs where he would have access to certain items, all the while claiming he was all pious. Not good. Finally, one Friday night he made a derogatory comment about my wife. Bad move. As he was heading back to his dorm, I yelled at him, Hey Mark, do everyone a favor and try not to bang anyone’s wife on the way back! He lost it! I exposed him as the low life he was, and he was not happy. He was going to try and get revenge. He and Myles that it.

One would not believe it, but I actually got along with most of the people I met. I had friends in the Black community, the Puerto Rican community and even the white community. I figured it was good to have some manner of protection. I also employed members of each community to do my laundry, make my bed and clean for me. One day I got word that Myles and Mark had put a hit on me. Now this is a camp, so putting a hit does not mean that I was at risk of getting beat up. No, what they planned to do was plant cigarettes in my area and under my blanket. Well as luck would have it, the go to guy for this was the person who I was paying to do my laundry! The one thing that prisoners hate is the idea of losing income. My laundry man viewed their hit as an attempt to lower his prison income! This did not make him happy. So instead of going along with their plan, he simply pretended that he would help them out all the while getting word to me that they had made me a target. 

I simply went to my counselor, with whom I also got along for an entirely different reason and let her know what was going on and that if they did find any cigarettes in my area that they were not mine. In the end the next two months were uneventful. Those tow idiots managed to spread a rumor that I was a bully which made for some comic relief, but I managed to leave prison in September while they sat there mystified how their hit failed. So, while it is certainly important to try and remain innocuous as possible in prison, it is equally important to make sure that you have enough communication with the other inmates to know what is happening around you.