Keith Alan Raniere has released a podcast – via his followers – and it is available on Apple podcast and Spotify.
But you don’t need to go there, you can hear it right here.
Along with something you can’t get elsewhere — a transcript of the entire episode.
Raniere Speaks · 1. The Devil, Hitler and Lady Justice
Listen to the teaser of the podcast on anchor
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You have a prepaid call, you will not be charged for this call, this call is from Keith Raniere, an inmate at a federal prison. This call is being recorded and is subject to monitoring. Hang up to decline the call or to accept, dial five now. This call is from a federal prison.
Suneel Chakravorty
Hey Keith…
Keith Raniere
Good morning. Did I wake you?
Suneel Chakravorty
Uh no…I was up already.
Keith Raniere
Oh, good. Again, I’m just going to freewheel a little to see how this goes, to express a few things. And I think it’ll be initially pretty short and more of a monologue. But, you know, one of the things for people who may listen to this, you know, there’ll be a whole range of people…there are going to be a lot of people who think I’m horrible and there’s going to be some people who are…They don’t know what this is.
Keith Raniere
And then there’s going to be, probably, a very small group of people that think I’m good or like me. I’m looking to get everyone to listen rationally, if possible, or as many people as possible because what’s going on here is a much bigger issue. You know, one of the things with this, I guess if I were to say a little quote, it would be in our country: “Hitler doesn’t stand a chance of surviving a false robbery charge”.
Keith Raniere
In this case, and, you know, there are people who dislike me for all sorts of reasons and probably a lot of them valid, most of the ones I’ve seen are not valid. But there’s certainly a lot of reasons someone could not like someone like me. But as much as I might be disliked, when something is not valid under the law, that is something that is far more atrocious than whatever people might think of me. You know, in my case, not only do I believe I’m innocent and all the people that I’ve had analyze the case, believe I’m innocent.
Keith Raniere
But the procedures done have been very bad. For me, in my life, I’ve always tried to do good things. And I always felt I rose to a sort of a low level of doing good things, nothing medium or very high. You know, you have the the people, the Gandhis, the Martin Luther Kings, all those great people of the world. And, you know, I’m nowhere, nowhere near that in what I’ve been able to achieve yet in this particular case, I’m given a spotlight that is far greater than my personhood.
Keith Raniere
And the question is, what do you do? I mean, in this particular case, it’s a grave injustice and there’s…I’m given this big spotlight, and what we need to do is show the injustice no matter what a person thinks of me. And my hope is, you know, probably at the end of these podcasts or things along those lines, there’ll be people who really liked me before the podcast and maybe won’t like me after. And then there’ll be some people who really didn’t like me before the podcast that maybe like me more. But, what I do hope is there will be someone who really doesn’t like me but will stand with me in this injustice because this injustice affects far more than me. And it affects even far more than the the hundreds of thousands of people that are in prison or have been in prison. It affects every person. And before I got into this situation, I had no idea. I was so backward and ignorant. And now I know a little more.
Keith Raniere
You know, there’s a quote from a book and it’s very interesting. It’s between Thomas Moore and Will Roper. The book’s called “The Man for All Seasons” by Robert Bolt or the literary piece, I should say. And Thomas Moore says: “And go as he should, if he were the devil himself, until he broke the law.” And Will Roper says: “So now you would give the devil the benefit of the law?” And Thomas Moore says: “Yes, what would you do?
Keith Raniere
Cut a road through the law to get after the devil? That means, just break down the laws and go after the devil?” And Roper says: “Yes, I would cut down every law in England to do that.” And Thomas says: “Oh, and when the last law was down and the devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper? All the laws being flat. This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, man’s laws, not God’s.
Keith Raniere
And if you cut them down… (interrupted)
Automated Prison Message
This call is from a federal prison.
Keith Raniere
(continued) …And you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I would give the devil the benefit of the law for my own safety’s sake.” And in this country right now, the devil doesn’t have the benefit of the law and in many ways I seem to be the devil. For this particular series of podcasts, I want to divide it into two sections:
Keith Raniere
One, we’ll have discussions about me being the devil, all the bad things people think and what I would say about them. And the other side is discussing the law and how it affects me and my conduct and what I have allegedly done. And in that case, we’re actually putting out a contest and we’re going to take $25,000 dollars and we’re going to go through charge by charge. And, the first person, if you will, who can show that my charge meets the elements of the charge wins the $25,000 dollars. And then for people who can write essays on why my conduct doesn’t fit the charge, we have $10,000 of prizes for the top… I believe it’s three essays. So we’re actually paying more than double for someone to find that somehow I meet the elements of these charges. And I would invite anyone out there, including lawyers, prosecutors, jurors, you know, the judge, my prosecutors.
Keith Raniere
And if people need their name held anonymously or anonymous or if indeed the court has ordered that we will hold the names anonymous to protect people, but have them look at the charges. This just happens to be a situation where out there in the media, really, there’s no voice that says I’m good, that says I’m nice, that likes me, or that analyzes things from a different perspective other than one of what I will call hate. All of us, I think, have caught a real infection of hate.
Keith Raniere
My hope is, you know, if you analyze what my lawyers have always said and the way we presented information, we try to do it honorably and without hate. But that’s been what’s been done on the other side. And we need to look at this. The lady justice is supposed to be blind. She’s supposed to have a blindfold on and and not have people like politicians and media whispering in her ears. Lady justice being blind is the most important thing.
Keith Raniere
And we have to treat people that we love and we want to exonerate from charges the exact same way we treat people who we hate and we want to indict and we want to convict. So those that we want to convict get the same benefits as those that we would would never convict but they’ve been charged. And we want to show what’s going on in the justice system. You know, a statistic that I heard that amazed me… There are people on death row.
Keith Raniere
These are people that are waiting to be executed and one out of nine of them is supposedly innocent. Can you imagine that? In this country, one out of nine. And if for such a serious charge where people go and they analyze the charge because someone’s life is on the line, if one out of nine times we’re wrong, imagine lesser charges. Imagine more politically motivated things. My charges come at a time where the climate is really not good, you know? You have Epsteins, you have Weinsteins, you have the #Metoo movement, you have all of these different things going on and a lot of it’s legitimate.
Keith Raniere
Women have been treated terribly in this country and in the world, but in particular in this country by people of power, by people like me. But that doesn’t mean that I did those things, and it certainly doesn’t mean that I’m guilty of these charges. So, I think this might be sort of an intro, a quick little podcast, and then, you know, we can do more. Let’s see how this just goes, how it processes, how it plays.
Keith Raniere
What do you think?
Suneel Chakravorty
I think it’s great. It really opens the door to a dialogue.
Keith Raniere
Well, well, do it and we can always add an addendum on it or whatever but I need to get off in like 25 seconds. So, write me what you think. Write me what Marianna and other people think, and I’ll speak to you maybe in the next few days or at least we’ll write.
Suneel Chakravorty
Yeah, that sounds good.
Keith Raniere
Great. Thank you, so much.
