Episode 94

Ending the White Collar Life Sentence: The Power of Hope and Community

Hosted by Matt Adams

"The objective is not simply to become pardonable. The objective is to become whole."

Those powerful words come from Jeff Grant, a lawyer whose career unraveled through addiction and criminality, who served time in federal prison and who has spent the decades since rebuilding his life in service to others.

In this riveting episode, host Matt Adams welcomes back Jeff, who is now an ordained minister, advocate and founder of Grant Law, a new kind of law firm helping individuals navigate the issues surrounding white collar prosecution that criminal defense attorneys typically can't address. Together, they tackle the hidden trauma of prosecution, the near-impossible odds of obtaining a presidential pardon and why community may be the only real antidote to isolation.

Jeff shares how his White Collar Support Group — which has held over 530 weekly meetings via Zoom — has helped nearly 2,000 people find hope, connection and a way forward. You'll also hear about the Federal Expungement Initiative, a legislative push Jeff is co-leading to create an expungement path through Congress. And you'll get a preview of his forthcoming essay and the Third Annual White Collar Conference on Oct. 10.

If you believe a life can become something larger than its worst chapter, this conversation is for you.

You can listen to Matt's previous conversation with Jeff in episode 22, "Reclaiming Purpose: A Transformative Journey Through Addiction, Rehab and Prison," here.

The views expressed in this podcast are those of the participants and should not be considered the views of Fox Rothschild LLP or its attorneys. This podcast is for informational purposes only, is not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship.

[00:00:17] Matt Adams: Welcome back to “The Presumption of Innocence,” a podcast brought to you by the White Collar Criminal Defense & Government Investigations practice at Fox Rothschild.

I am your host, Matt Adams, and today I'm delighted to be joined by a returning guest who made a powerful impression the first time he was on this program. In episode 22, entitled Reclaiming Purpose: A Transformative Journey Through Addiction, Rehab, and Prison, we heard the full character arc of Jeff Grant's personal story, from a lucrative legal career that unraveled through addiction and criminality, through federal prison, and into a life of service and a life well-lived indeed.

That episode remains one of our most listened to and discussed, and I'd encourage any first-time listener here with us today to go back and hear it.

Today, we're picking up where that story left off. A lot has changed for Jeff since episode 22, and he is doing extraordinary work at the intersection of the law community and redemption. Jeff, I want to just take a moment to re-acclimate our audience to you.

You're a New York attorney and ordained minister. You founded Grant Law, a new kind of law firm that provides private general counsel services to individuals facing or who have faced white-collar prosecutions. Jeff's also the co-founder of Progressive Prison Ministries and the White Collar Support Group, which meets every Monday evening on Zoom and has served nearly 2,000 justice-impacted people.

He's over 20 years into continuous sobriety, and his work has been featured in The New Yorker, Forbes, Bloomberg Law, Vanity Fair, Business Insider, “The Rich Roll Podcast,” and in a number of other outlets, including this one. Jeff, welcome back to “The Presumption of Innocence.”

I am currently outside of Atlanta, and I'm going to the American Bar Association Southeastern White Collar Conference starting tomorrow. but I am so happy to be in my hotel room and talking to you and available to talk about our own White Collar Conference that's coming up on October 10th, and anything else you want to talk about, Matt.

So I'm, I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you.

But today I want to focus on what's happened since, the work you're doing, the community you've built, a major essay you're about to publish, and a conference that's coming up. I want to start sort of where you left off, right, in episode 22 back in 2023. It's now 2026. Then you had just gotten your law license back and you are now back in the profession.

You are legally able to practice law. Where has that taken you since you last joined us?

And then, like, magically doors start opening as people, you know, recognize that, you know, we- we're doing this to help people and to bring people who've been through the criminal justice system or, or in the process of in the criminal justice system out of isolation and into community. I mean, this Monday we'll hold our 534th weekly meeting on Zoom.

Open to people who have been prosecuted for white-collar crimes. And this, on October 10th, as I mentioned, we'll have our third annual White Collar Conference. Again, by and for people who've been prosecuted for white-collar crimes. So there's no other conference like it and I don't even know any other group that would, would try to do it or want to do it.

But, I've been to a, a bunch of white-collar conferences by, you know, the ABA and the ACFE, and I know your law firm sponsors a white-collar conference in Philadelphia. And I would say probably mostly for professionals, right? To-

[00:05:47] Jeff Grant: ... as, as training exercises. That's not what our conference is about.

[00:06:00] Jeff Grant: Exactly

And, and specifically, what have you learned about these clients and what they actually need that you maybe didn't anticipate going into this unique practice area that you have sort of carved for yourself?

They all had lawyers and mostly you know, their, their lawyers were varying degrees of competent, and we all... That's like in any profession. Or I can tell you that, you know, once someone is sentenced and and they're sitting in a camp, then basically everyone's sitting around talking about their war stories about what their lawyers did or didn't do for them.

But none of the criminal defense lawyers really had any idea of what to do about the other issues that were in their clients' lives. And that could be emotional issues, spiritual issues, and also legal issues that touched on things other than criminal law. So if they have a tax issue and they went to their criminal defense lawyer and said, "Well, you know, what do I do about these tax issues?"

Mostly the criminal defense lawyer's going to say to them, "I don't know. Go see a tax lawyer." That's true with bankruptcy. It's true with real estate. It’s true with corporate dissolutions, raising money. Whatever it happens to be, it's a very complicated legal, emotional, family, and spiritual mix that people find themselves in.

And I just knew there was nobody specializing in all of those things that surrounded a criminal case. So, I set out to put myself out there, and also to educate people that you don't have to do this alone. Join our, our, our white collar support group. But certainly, there are a certain amount of people who need that kind of lawyer that they can trust.

You and I talked in episode 22 about the psychological toll of white-collar prosecution, the isolation, the shame, the feeling that nobody understands

what you're going through. To, to put it in a word, it's trauma. And we're going to talk a little bit about your essay in a few moments-

[00:08:54] Matt Adams: ... because it's really predicated around trauma.

But since you were on the program last, this entire community has grown, and I know some of your members have become guests on this program because of the work that you're doing to build that critical mass, to build that entire community around addressing some of these intangibles that folks who are justice-impacted go through.

Tell me about the White Collar Support Group, how it's evolved since you were last with us, and what it's really become as, as you've now proudly pronounced, you're, you're into the thousands of meetings and, and hundreds of members.

[00:09:45] Matt Adams:Well, I got it almost right.

They don't really have a place to plug in, and we've provided that. And it, it's really a miracle to see people who are, are scared and lonely. They can't talk to their... Even their, they can't talk to their spouses. I mean, their spouses don't even understand. And many of them have spent a long time lying to themselves and to others about what they're going through.

And there they are now. They've probably been arrested. They've gone on to Google or now AI trying to find solutions. Who can I talk to? Is there anything out there? And they find us. I mean, our our White Collar Support Group is a, a you know, registered trademark of ours, and they...

And some people just go, you know, say, "There's got to be a support group for, for people being prosecuted for white-collar crimes." They find us, we respond to them immediately, and they come on to our, our Zoom call on a Monday night. And there's usually, I don't know, 40, 45 people on that call. And they're dumbstruck.

Matt, I- it's like they can't believe that these people are on this on this call talking about their innermost issues and problem-solving and being solution-based. And like, just like in an AA meeting, you know, laughing and crying and the full range of human emotions. We also have personal you know, get-togethers where we meet in person.

In fact, I just left one. So I'm, I'm outside of Atlanta right now, and I just had lunch with nine support group members, and most of us had never met in person before. You know, we were just like you and I are right now, like boxes on a, on a screen. And what a gift to be able to hug people and, and, be able to provide support to them and be supported by them.

You know, it's a gift. And you know, we all have common issues. I mean, no one's story is identical, but the issues and the feelings are common. So, it's just great to be of service that way.

[00:12:21] Jeff Grant: It has.

What we tell newcomers when they come on is that the work is really done during the week and not on the Monday night meetings. Relationships get formed, people's stories resonate with one another, and then they reach out to one another. And I'm always, I'm always surprised when people have found each other, and then they're engaging in some kind of activity.

And frankly, it's the healthiest thing I've, I've ever seen where people are, are working together to heal and, and to try to get well. In over 10 years and 2,000 people that have joined our meetings, there's never been any issues of people doing anything untoward.

No one has ever been subpoenaed for talking to other people in the group or outside the group. Probation officers know us, the judges know us, the prosecutors know us, and they send us, they send us their people. I mean, there's no place else to send people. And it, it's free.

And most of the people who join us, you know, they're, they're they're far from being able to afford anything like the kind of life that they had prior, and they can't afford you know, a big money therapist, and they can't afford a lot of things. But free they can afford. And so we, we charge no dues or fees, and once a year we do have a fundraising drive that coincides with our annual conference, and those are donations basically by law firms and people who are outside of the group who, who believe in the work we're doing.

And, and again, I never thought that was going to happen either. I mean, I I didn't imagine there would be a day where we would garner that kind of respect and amongst lawyers and prosecutors and judges where they would see the good work we're doing.

You told your own personal story about it in your prior visit with us. Everything about the system and how it operates sort of reinforces that instinct. Don't talk, don't post, don't draw attention. The problem is that, and as you aptly put it, that's where the despair lives. That's where people's demons fester.

And non-violent white-collar offenders seldomly serve a life sentence. There is generally light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to a white-collar case, that there will be a point in time, in most instances, where somebody pays their debt to society, they come out, and they have to build it over again.

And that is a herculean task. Just knowing from you and others whom I've interacted with about just how difficult it is to serve your time and then try to rebuild your life into something. It's often used colloquially, I think, that a white-collar prosecution sometimes carries with it a life sentence because the financial toll that white-collar prosecution and conviction in particular brings is dramatic with very, very significant forfeiture and restitution often demanded, the cost of legal services.

That life sentence, to me, is what you're trying to end, is, is to tell people that there is a way forward, that despair is not the option. When I talk about that idea of a white-collar life sentence, what does that mean to you?

Even if they win their case, in the few occasions where there's been an, an acquittal or the government has dismissed the case, there’s still scars last forever, and Google lasts forever, and AI lasts forever. And people find it very, very difficult to reacclimate. And sometimes sometimes, and it's a, it's a strange phenomenon, but in some ways prison actually gives people closure.

And, and some of the people who get probation, for example, are left like wandering out in the desert. It's what they really wanted. They really wanted to get probation, but they haven't had emotional closure. And I know people who have gotten sentences of, of probation, non-custodial sentences, and five years later they're, they're lost.

This is one of the reasons why, two things, one, why we, we try to tell people from the very beginning "We know you're concerned about going to prison." That's, you know, on the forefront of almost everybody's mind. But that's not the most important thing. The most important thing is having a comeback.

And if you start from the very beginning of planning your comeback, what's that going to look like? What tools do I need? What resources do I need? How do I express this to my lawyer? How do I, things can go differently. Nonetheless you know, post post-judgment or post-sentencing or post-prison there's a lot of work to do, and it's, it's an up- uphill battle.

Well, that's one of the reasons our, our conference, the theme of our conference on October 10th is Ending the White Collar Life Sentence. So we we have panelists and speakers who are going to be talking about different facets of ending the white collar life sentence. Would you like me to go a little bit into the into the conference before we, we kind of get to that?

[00:18:31] Jeff Grant: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:33] Jeff Grant: Yeah, sure.

[00:18:43] Jeff Grant: That's right.

And that rebuilding is really what you're, what you're trying to do. And, and, and it really brings me up, and, and before I get into your conference, I want to end on that note so that-

[00:19:03] Matt Adams: ... our audience can can, can participate. But you have a forthcoming major essay coming out, and it's called, “The Trauma of Asking for Forgiveness and the Community That Carries Us Through.”

It's being published on the Sentencing Matters substack at Harvard. I understand that by the time we release this episode, your essay will have been released. So we're not scooping your editors. This is, this is going to be released following the public release of the essay. But I want to bring our audience into your thinking and why you chose this topic.

Why don't you give us just an overview of what the essay is about?

And, and that's with under the last two administrations, there, there have been a relatively large amount of pardons given compared to the administrations before that. But still in the low thousands of pardons with hundreds of thousands of people who would like to get a pardon, just applying for one itself brings up all kinds of, of issues.

You have to relive the very moments in life, that life was so debilitating and so difficult and so traumatic. And not only do you have to bring it up for yourself, but then you have to bring it up for your spouse, your children. I mean, in many instances, when people were going through their, their criminal justice issues, their children were young.

They probably didn't understand what was really going on at the time, if they were told at all. And now it's 10 or 15 or 20 years later, and you've got to retell this story and reach out to people who were involved, who can write letters, who can verify your work and your volunteerism, and, and retrace every last aspect of what happened, why it happened, what were you thinking about, do you have remorse for it? And there's a story that has to be told in order to be able to apply for a pardon. I mean, that's like ripping a decades-old scab off a wound that we've tried to heal. We've done everything in our, in our power to try to heal it, although you can never fully heal it.

And now, oh, we have people who are trying to get a pardon without any real understanding that the chances of them getting that pardon are very, very slim. Although I'm not saying you shouldn't try, I would recommend anybody try, but I want you to understand what the unintended consequences are of making that decision.

And one of them is, is that you're going to have to rip open your entire life and relive it.

You know, when common folk think of the pardon power, they generally think about it as a means by which to avoid prosecution. But seldomly do we think about it, I think, the way you are, which is as a means by which to assist in rehabilitation after one's debts to society are paid.

And I think that's a really striking perspective, because the pardon authority is broad, as Professor Barkow told us in episode 55. It can be employed by the executive at any time, and that power is before prosecution, during prosecution, or after prosecution. And the perspective that you bring to this as somebody that's justice-impacted and leads a justice-impacted community, about the idea of what it would hold to have that pardon issued at the conclusion of the criminal justice system, where there's nothing left.

You've paid your debt. You've done your time. You've done your restitution. All that's left is getting back your name and getting back your life and getting back your identity, so you no longer have to walk through life with that scarlet letter of having been a convicted felon. To me, sitting here listening to you talk about that, reading your, your essay on the subject, that's really the best and highest use of the pardon power.

It's controversial when people get pardoned to avoid the consequences of their actions. It shouldn't be controversial, in my opinion, to have people pardoned who have already gone through everything that the law can throw at them, essentially. And that's just a, a remarkable perspective that you bring.

And I guess what you're saying is that that process is unto itself traumatic. Do you have any kind of empirical evidence about what percentage of the pardon applications that go through the Pardon Office at the White House are actually people that have fully paid their debt to society and not seeking to either short-circuit the consequences of their actions or, or, or otherwise you know, avoid their punishment?

And just in the last week, for example the president commuted some sentences.

And they're going to be coming home. There's been very few end-of-sentence pardons given out by this administration. The, the pardons that have been given out have been for other reasons. But most of our evidence comes from the states.

Half the states have a, some kind of expungement process, and got to be careful not to confuse what an expungement is and what a pardon is, because in the states they can use those terms interchangeably. In the federal system, the president you know, has the unique power to be able to issue pardons, but there is no expungement process in the federal system.

So if you get a pardon in the federal system, that's a forgiveness. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to have, but it's not like total expungement of a record. Frankly, we, we do have a project that the White Collar Support Group has put together called the Federal Expungement Initiative, and where we are going to be writing legislation and trying to move that out after the mid- midterms.

And interestingly, Rachel Barkow is one of the co-founders with me, along with Doug Berman and Mark Osler. And we think that there's room now for that conversation of having a, an expungement law that's been an, an act of Congress and that does not run through the Office of the President.

Frankly, it would be much more expungement than it would be a pardon.

Whether or not that's something that there's appetite for, you know, much political will for, we'll see. But-

[00:27:03] Jeff Grant: at least theoretically if it works in, in half the states, there's no reason it shouldn't work in the, in the federal government.

And when you talk about this trauma, bringing us back a little bit to your essay and the core thesis that there could be the reopening of wounds that have already started to heal. You describe a distinction in the essay between choosing to tell your story and being required to tell it.

[00:27:40] Matt Adams: Why is that distinction important?

I think it was seven or eight years ago now that I, that I a- applied to get reinstated, and I understood what the benefits were and what the burdens were going to be. I wrote a 14,000-word essay to append to my, my law license reinstatement application. A lot of that was because, one, I wanted to tell the whole story, but by that point I had been a, a guest on many podcasts and there had been articles written about me and, and, and I had to go through every single one of them and make sure that the story I wrote down, the retelling of the story that I wrote down to get my law license reinstated, was going to align with the stories that I told all along the way on podcasts and in articles.

There's a lot of people who have never told their story. There's a lot of people who have told their stories in brief. you’re your story when you're, when you're telling it fully is a lot different than when you have 20 minutes to you know, just tell the highlights of your story.

It's grueling. It is, it is gut-wrenching to reopen those wounds. I knew what the chances were of my getting my law license reinstated. By that point I'd had I'd hired experts, I'd hired a lawyer. I tr- I thought my chances were pretty good. But nobody who applies for a pardon, nobody is going to tell you that your chances are pretty good.

Nobody is going to tell you that there's, like, a direct path from, from this gripping wound-opening story that you're in the midst of reliving and that it's going to lead to getting a pardon.

Are you?

I don't think it's any more or less transparent now than it was under previous administration. You know, there's been a recent upheaval at the pardon- US Pardon Attorney's office just this last week, and that follows another recent upheaval w- within the last couple of years at the US Pardons Attorneys.

And the question is, is that really a, a value-added office? I mean, is it really doing what it was set out to do? In history, I mean probably 30 years ago or more it had a viable function. I mean, there were hundreds of pardons that went from the Pardon Office to the White House Counsel's Office every year, and it was a, a matter of course that they were signed off on.

Now it's just not that anymore. So like, I'm not... I, I would advise anybody to apply for a pardon. I mean, why not? Give it a shot. But if, if you don't take the shot, you're not going to score. But just know what you're getting into. This is a rough process for anybody, and in the course of trying to end the white-collar life sentence, you know, there's a lot of things that people who have been convicted of white-collar crimes, they can't do.

They're gated out of certain professions. They can't even coach softball in their kids' softball league. Anything that, where a felony would prevent you from, living a, you know, a full and complete life. Do I think you should try? Yeah, absolutely, I think you should try.

But there's a difference between us supporting people who are applying for pardons and, and being a, a trauma-informed healers and trauma-informed community where we're helping people through the trauma of this next stage of their criminal justice journey.

The objective is to become whole." Arguing, obviously, for a holistic mental health approach to rehabilitation rather than merely checking a box post-conviction, post-sentence, post-"debt to society", as I put it earlier, that you are now pardoned and you should just be reintegrated. Who's your intended audience with those words?

Is it the people on the receiving end of those sentences? Is it the lawyers that represent them? Is it lawmakers in Congress who have the power to design a better approach? Or is it a combination of all of them?

You know, we're, we're all in the same system, and, you know, this, this is a cry for healing. You know, people have gotten hurt. And there are victims who've gotten hurt, and there are families who've gotten hurt, but even the people who have committed these crimes or been at least convicted of these crimes, you know, th- there's a, there's human tragedy there.

There's a... They, they have stories, and they want a genuine second chance. There is not an easy answer as to how to get that second chance. In many cases, they will never be able to live a complete life again, and that's not to say they can't have a purposeful life, they can't have a happy life. I, I do.

I mean, I'm, I'm probably near the top of the food chain. I'm probably a poster boy for someone who has made a comeback. But I can tell you on any given morning, I'm still traumatized or institutionalized. There are mornings where I just can't get out of bed. And that's and I'm home from prison 19 years, and I'm a professional who works with people who are heading to or coming home from prison every day.

But I'm not going to pretend that it, it doesn't still affect me. I can't imagine I can't put myself in any- anybody else's shoes, but I just can't imagine what it's like if you're going through it and you, and you just have no hope whatsoever. And our job is to try to give them hope. And chances are you're not going to get it. So then what do we do? What we do is we, we have community, and we help each other, and we have people, frankly, people we have, like people like you, Matt, to be honest, who reached out and to like, you know, you know, this, this is bigger than me. This is even bigger than my profession.

This is huge. What do we do to try to bring some light and love to it all? And and the answer is we, we, we be honest, we be authentic, we, we talk about the difficult things, and we try to bring people through it.

You've spoken extensively on your work building that community between now and your past visit with us here on the program. And part of the community that you're constructing is the third annual White Collar Conference. Tell us about it.

That's a Saturday morning at 9:00 AM. Our keynote speaker is now former Bureau of Prisons Deputy Director Josh Smith. And, you know, Josh has an incredible story where he served five years in prison, then became a successful businessman after prison, and then was recruited to become the deputy director of the Bureau of Prisons with a criminal record.

So that was a big move. He recently moved on from that, and he's doing some philanthropic things. He'll be our keynote speaker. Our fireside chat interviewee is Dickie Scruggs, and about a decade ago, Dickie was probably, more than a decade ago, Dickie was the wealthiest attorney in the country.

He had been the lead, lead trial attorney for the tobacco litigation, and he also did Katrina. And I think he-- I can't remember. There was another large class action that he was the attorney for, and he made a lot of money. A lot of money, billions of dollars. And yet wound up in prison anyway for trying to bribe a judge.

And he's going to talk about it, and he's 80 years old now. And Dickie wants to set the record straight about what happened and all the good work he's been doing since with his nonprofit, and we're really grateful to have him.

[00:37:27] Jeff Grant: Yes. We have a panel on careers after justice involvement, and I would say almost everybody who joins the White Collar Support Group or who makes an inquiry has a, a, a career issue.

They want to know how they can put food on the table for their family. And so we have three people, plus a moderator, all of whom have come back and in various ways have been successful. And, and that's by thinking out of the box and coming into community and understanding that their lives have not been over.

And they're going to talk about the specifics of how that happened and the mindset they've had and the opportunities and what they've had to do. I can tell you that you're never going to get ahead if you're, if you're not going to get out of bed. Oh, that rhymed, actually. There's-- I guess there, there, there actually-- Maybe there's something to that line.

But, they're all going to talk about it. And then we have our, our pardon trauma panel. And for that one we have Mark Osler, who is a professor of criminal justice at the University of St. Thomas Law School and a member of our Federal Expungement Initiative. And he'sgoing to be bringing us up to date on pardons and looking at pardons from a different lens.

Basically from a,a long-term lens. Realistically, what everyone, everyone heard there weregoing to be pardons given out, and everyone jumped on it real fast. They hired lawyers and prison consultants and people who said that they could help them get pardons. Realistically, very few of those people are actually going to get pardons.

But looking at it as a long-term project, that not only is about pardon, but it's about, you know, making someone whole is an in- that, that's an incredible undertaking, and Mark's going to talk about that. And we have someone specifically from our white-collar support group, who's going to talk about his pardon journey.

And this is a cellular biologist who has 400 peer-reviewed papers about fighting disease and, and even after all that work he's done, he's been unable to get a pardon. And he's the perfect candidate to get a pardon, but he doesn't probably have the resources that it would take to get a pardon, and we'll have to be discussing what that means.

[00:39:59] Jeff Grant: Well, the conference website is whitecollarconference.com. That's not a hard one to remember.

Whitecollarconference.com. And you want information about our support group, you can learn more at prisonist.org. That's prisonist like feminist.org. Or you can reach me at my law firm at grantlaw.com. And, and we never turn anyone away. We do, we, we find a resource for everybody who calls. And that's a, it's a heavy lift, but you know, we do it out of love and caring.

[00:40:40] Jeff Grant: Mm-hmm ...

[00:41:02] Jeff Grant: In my-

[00:41:05] Jeff Grant: In my opinion, it, it, there's 100% chance there's going to be meaningful reform. The only question is whether or not it's going to be in my lifetime. I'm on the board of directors of the Legal Action Center in New York City, and we've pushed through a lot of legislation.

And there was a seminal piece of legislation on, on an issue that was put through, and Governor Kathy Hochul signed it, signed it in Albany. And while she was signing it, she looked at everybody in the room who had been involved in the legislation as she was signing the act into law.

And she looked at everyone and she said, you know, "Thank you because by the time the culture change happens that this bill will be meaningful, you'll have all been long forgotten." And I think that's going to be the case here, too. You know, because it takes not only a an act of law, it also takes a culture shift.

You know, no act of law is going to, even expungement, is going to make it palatable for everybody. There's still a, a stigma attached, and we need as a society to be able to wrap our arms around people and actually want to give them a second chance. Do I think that's going to happen? Yes, of course, otherwise I wouldn't be doing the work I'm doing.

Do I think it's going to be during my lifetime? I don't know about that. But at least we've started. You know, we've, we've, we've pushed the boat off the dock.

Finally, Jeff, I want to l- end on sort of a poignant note. I want you to speak directly to somebody who might be listening right now that's going through an investigation, a prosecution, the unnerving process, that trauma that you speak of, that you write of, that you preach, that you act, and that your second chapter of your career has been exclusively driven around trying to help.

What words do you have that can put that person to, to some level of ease as they go through what could be one of the most frightening experiences of their life?

The, the whole point of having a community, of having a support group, is that we have the experience that you don't have. I'm not asking anybody to have blind hope, blind faith in anything. What I'm asking you to do is to stop doing it alone, because we have hundreds of people who are at your service who can tell you exactly what they did to cross the rubicon from one side to the other, and I am a poster boy of that.

And I promise you, there is nothing special about my story whatsoever. If I can do it, anybody can do it. All you got to do is decide to not do it alone.

It's free and confidential. Visit the website or email Jeff at [email protected]. He's also with Progressive Prison Ministries at prisonist.org. The third annual White Collar Conference of the White Collar Support Group will be October 10th, 2026, at 9:00 AM by Zoom. And his forthcoming essay, “The Trauma of Asking for Forgiveness,” will be published by the time this episode is released on the Sentencing Matters substack at Harvard.

Jeff Grant, this has been a deeply thoughtful and important conversation. I'll say to our listeners what I said at the top. If you haven't heard episode 22, go back and listen to it now. It gives you the foundation for what Jeff's talking about today, and today's episode shows you what can be built from that foundation.

A human life can become something larger than its worst chapter, and I think, Jeff, you are demonstrating that over and over again every day.

[00:45:53] Matt Adams: Well, thank you for being with us. That's our show for today If this conversation resonated with you, please subscribe to “The Presumption of Innocence” wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or review.

It helps our listeners find us. You can find all of our 90-plus episodes on our website, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Until next time, I'm Matt Adams. Thank you for listening. Take care.