Return to Transcripts main page

LEGAL VIEW WITH ASHLEIGH BANFIELD

Jared Fogle Pleads Guilty To Child Porn And Sex Charges; Police: Fogle To Pay Victims $100,000 Each. Aired 12:30-1p

Aired August 19, 2015 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[12:30:00] ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN HOST: Former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle and these are live pictures in Indiana of Jared Fogle leaving the federal court house where presumably he has just been processed, in a probationary process. You're going to have to work with me here just in terms of the actual process he's in right now.

But there would likely be a pre-sentencing report if he has in fact signed that plea deal which I believe he has done at this point. There's a lot of work still to be done to determine sentencing in all of this because we do not have that yet. His lawyer is recommending no less than five but the prosecutors in this case, the federal attorneys, are recommending no less than 13. It is more than likely a judge could come in somewhere in between say five to 10 the but less than anyone's guess because you just don't know what a federal judge is going to do.

But there is a throng of media interest in Indianapolis right now at that federal courthouse because he is not likely to be a free man for very long. Once this process is complete, he will go away, behind bars, and it is more than likely he will serve the majority of the sentence. That's how federal cases work when you go away, it's about 90 percent or so of your sentence.

So, I'm not sure exactly when the sentencing will happen but you can see the cameras are right now focusing in on the U.S. attorney, I believe that's Josh Minkler getting ready to get his live news conference about what just transpired and perhaps he'll shed some light on the sentencing, the details of the date and when Jared Fogle might end up actually going off to prison.

Let's listen in.

(BEGIN LIVE PRESS CONFERENCE COVREAGE)

ATTY. JOSH MINKLER, SOUTHERN DISTRICT INDIANA: United State Attorney in the southern district of Indiana our office represents the United States of America in this investigation and prosecution.

Earlier this morning, Jared Fogle, 37, was charged in federal court with one count of receipt of child pornography involving 12 minor victims. He was also charged with one count of traveling to engage in sexual conduct with a minor involving two minor victims.

Mr. Fogle has notified the court in our office that he intends to plead guilty to those charges. That agreement was also filed in federal court this morning. Those documents are a matter of public record and are available to any member of the public that wishes to see them. You have been provided with copies of those documents.

Today Jared Fogle has been charged and has admitted to participating in a five-year criminal scheme to exploit children. Beginning in 2011, Fogle learned that the head of the Jared Foundation, Russell Taylor, was sexually exploiting a 14-year-old girl. At that time, Fogle chose to receive and repeatedly view child pornography involving that 14- year-old girl.

This continued during a four-year period and Fogle's actions resulted in the sexual victimization of 12 minors in the State of Indiana. That's not all. In pleadings filed today, Fogle admitted that he repeatedly traveled from New York from Indiana to New York to engage in commercial sex acts with victims he knew to be children. This conduct began as early as 2010.

First, let's call what it is. This is about using wealth, status, and secrecy to illegally exploit children. Second, this conduct has serious consequences in federal court. Based on this conduct, Mr. Fogle faces a sentence of between five years in federal prison and 12 years in federal prison. Third, there's a community conversation about how we protect our children it's a good conversation but it must always include protecting our children from predators when they cannot protect themselves.

Finally this case was handled exactly like any other child exploitation case. It was investigated and prosecuted exactly the same as any other child exploitation case. And with any child exploitation case, it took time and it took a thorough investigation. The individuals behind me are responsible for a very thorough investigation. A rough estimate of the work they did includes search warrants for 16 smartphones, five basic cell phones, five mp3 players, five tablet, six laptops, one desktop, six loose hard drives, five cameras, including hidden cameras, flash drives, 10 of those, 10 memory cards, 46 CDS and 22 DVDS.

[12:35:12] The approximate amount of data reviewed by the Indiana State Police, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department and the FBI includes 159,634 text messages, 27,140 e-mails, 47,623 images and 3,394 videos. Through this thorough investigation, 14 victims were identified. I'm happy to be joined by the individuals responsible for this investigation in prosecution. This investigation started with the Indiana State Police, I'm happy to have the superintendent of the Indiana State Police with me today, Doug Carter.

DOUG CARTER, SUPERINTENDENT INDIANA STATE POLICE: Words tend to do escape me today as this came to fruition and I appreciate the response. You've heard me say before the relationships that we have, the folks standing behind me in my opinion are second to none anywhere in the nation and I'm very, very proud of that. That I would also be remised to not identify the folks that were able to do what they've done in a tremendous cost to themselves into their families over the course these last several months.

ISP Detective Kevin Goetz, INPD Detective Darren Oddier, Lead Forensic Examiner Chris Cecil, Investigative Analyst Brandi St. Claire (ph), Analyst Julie Zorger (ph), and certainly Steve Degroda (ph), who you hear from -- hearing just a few minutes and as I just previously mentioned, incredible, incredible partners with the FBI and the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.

As Josh had indicated, fame and fortune will not protect you from attacking those most vulnerable in our communities and this is absolute testament to that commitment no matter what color of shirt we wear or who we are or where we're from, we will find out who you are. Every single resource we've learned over time it can't be all things to all people. But imagine the possibility of combining our resources together and seeing the successful end result as we are today.

This started from a tip from a private citizen to an Indiana State Police officer some many, many months ago. It was led to this incredibly complicated organizational investigative skill of the people that I referenced and those standing behind me today. Somebody knows what you're doing, so those of you that are out there continuing to do what Mr. Fogle has done, someone will tell us eventually.

The technical expertise that was used, that was collaborative and attached to this complex investigation should be an example to America not just the State of Indiana and I believe that it is. I cannot think of anything more repugnant than sexually victimizing a child. Any and all resources have been, will be, and will always be committed to seeking out who you are and where you live no matter who you are. Thank you all very, very much.

MINKLER: I'm pleased to have with me the special agent in charge of the lead federal investigation in this matter, the Federal Bureau of Investigation Mr. Jay Abbot.

JAY ABBOT, SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE: Thanks, Josh. Good afternoon. I want to open first by personally thanking Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter for ISP's partnership. As a direct result of Indiana State Police initiative and this investigation would not have progressed to where it is today. And I'm very thankful for that and again, just echoing the superintendent's words, the partnership that we're able to bring to investigations like this between us, ISP and Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department is equaled by none.

As with all child pornography cases, the FBI investigates these matters with a sense of urgency due to the extreme vulnerability the victims involved, our children. This case demonstrates our commitment to investigate those who possess and distribute child pornography. The FBI looks forward to continuing its work on such matters with the United States Attorneys Office, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department and of course Indiana State Police and we look forward to continuing on with these cases in that type of fashion on and on. Thanks, Josh.

[12:39:59] MINKLER: I'm happy also to be joined by the Chief of Police for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. He has proven time and time again his commitment to assist and support and to do whatever it takes for any federal investigation and I know personally as do all the men standing behind me if there's a child victim, the chief will send the cavalry. So I'm happy to have him here with me today to make a few remarks.

RICHARD HITE, CHIEF OF INDIANA METROPOLITAN POLICE: Thank you for your leadership Mr. Minkler. Thank you my good friend Doug Carter, and Jay Abbot of the FBI. Ladies and gentlemen, this case came about because of you. Citizens who say that they are concerned about our communities step up and do the right thing and report out. You see something, say something then you said something. You said something to a very worthy group, the state police, who are partners but we also want to thank our five detectives who were involved in doing a lot of cyber work involved in these cases.

This is very unique in the country and one of the first cases in a long time that we're literally dealing with a celebrity who had access, power, and resources to do anything he wanted to in the world but he chose to utilize that to cajole, to convince and even take advantage of children.

I think it's important to note that cyber crimes are hard to track and trace as you heard, to trace evidence, the forensics involved, 47,000 e-mails and text messages, a lot of information to go through. But the tenacity of our investigative team behind us to be able to work through all that muck and mire and think about all the things they had to go through emotionally to bring this to justice I'd say it is important that we've stand here today as a team saying thank you to the community and thanking those persons who reached out to those families and put services in place for them as well.

Lastly, I want to make sure we send a message. You may hide in the confines of your home, on the internet, on your laptop, your tablet and thinking not being found. We will find you. And (inaudible) what you're doing even if no one is looking, well we're looking, we're paying attention and we'll find you. Thank you.

MINKLER: We also received extraordinary support from the Marion County Prosecutor's Office Ryan Mears is here representing the Marion County Prosecutor's Office and I'd like to thank them for their support.

The lead prosecutor on this matter is the head of our Project Safe Childhood Division. He is the senior litigation council and he spearheaded this investigation in prosecution. I would like to recognize Steve Debrota who will make a few remarks and then if you have any questions, Mr. Debrota will be happy to answer them.

STEVE DEBROTA, ASSISTANT U.S ATTORNEY IN INDIANAPOLIS: So, one of the initial purposes of the investigation was to try to find how many victims were at acute risk and might be subject to a sexual exploitation in real time. So, what we did was the investigative team looked at all of the e-mails, all of the text messages, all of the pictures, all of the communications we could find and interviewed as many witnesses as possible to determine who needed to be in a safer place and who had needed to have their victimization recognized.

Today we know there are 14 children who were victimized as a result of this course of conduct, 12 of them were in Indiana, two of them with in another state. And all of them were subjected to very serious federal crimes. The federal law protects children under the age of 18 from victimization and child pornography. It also protects them from being used in commercial sex acts.

Child prostitution is a very serious federal crime both those are. So what we're able to determine was that there were 14 victims we identified in the investigation. We found out where they were and we got them all in a safer position.

One of the thing this is plea agreement does that's groundbreaking is it provides $1.4 million in restitution to these kids, four of whom are now adults and in desperate straits. Each of them gets $100,000 so that they can help recover from the effects of what they've been through, paying for treatment, counseling, medical services, getting their life together, educational services, and so forth

That's the largest restitution order I've seen in the Southern District of Indiana. I've done these cases since 1991. I think it's one of the largest in the country. That was vitally important and that's part of this plea agreement.

Jared Fogle had to pay that money, everyone recognizes he's wealthy. But today he's less wealthy and for the benefit of those victims. He's also forfeiting $50,000 to represent basically assets he used in connection to some of these things.

Now, at the end of the day, what we have here is a long course of conduct that begins well before the period of the child pornography being produced with Russell Taylor. It begins with Mr. Fogle doing this by himself in the late 2000 period and continuing until quite recently. So, that course of conduct is not related to Mr. Taylor but with Mr. Taylor what's going on is we alleged Taylor's producing this material and providing it to Mr. Fogle.

[12:45:04] If Mr. Fogle had done the right thing when he learned of the victimization of the first victim, the first girl who was 14, he'd reported that to authorities, victims two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, and 12 never would have been sexually victimized.

So we're holding him responsible for all of that victimization. He didn't do the right thing. What he chose instead to do was profit that from that exploitation and get the result for his own benefit and his own use. So that's what this case is about. It's a result of a thorough wide-ranging investigation. It took time to get it right.

So does anybody have any questions?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is the status of the case against Mr. Taylor?

DEBROTA: Taylor is charged. He's detained in federal custody. He's charged under what's called a criminal complaint. That is a document used for a period of time and then we have to indict the case. So he's in a period of time where he's held in custody on a complaint and the law allows us to do that to sort out what we would charge him with in that period of time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is Mr. Fogle's agreement that is a cooperative agreement? DEBROTA: Yes, it is not a cooperation agreement. If you look at the plea agreement, it doesn't contain cooperation terms. The mandatory minimum sentence he can get under that agreement is 60 months of imprisonment. The judge would not have the authority to give less than that, followed by at least five years of supervised release. That's like parole. We don't have parole in the federal system.

So the minimum impact on Jared Fogle is 10 years as result. However, what we did is we capped our recommendation on the imprisonment at 151 months and there's no cap on the amount of supervised release he can get. So we can't ask for more than 151 months. If you do the math, that's a little over 12 years and we can also ask for much longer supervised release in five years.

So it's potentially a very long sentence. At the end of the day too, it's up to the judge to decide the sentence. It's not a binding plea in that regard except that, he has to get at least five years in imprisonment and at least five years supervised release.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you ran down the list of phones, laptops, desktops, is that all Jared Fogle-centered or is that also Russell Taylor's?

DEBROTA: That's the material recovered from the Taylor residence and the Taylor case plus the stuff recovered from Fogle's residence. But primarily that's recovered from the Taylor side of the aisle except for cell phones. Primarily what we recovered from the Fogle search were cell phones that proved to be useful.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you walk us through a little bit of the process no less than five but as many as 12 plus years. This obviously has to be a recommendation from your office to the judge. What's happening now? What happens before we're sitting in a courtroom and hear what his sentence will be?

DEBROTAL: OK, next step is it would be a hearing to do a change of plea and then a sentencing. Normally that occurs after a pre-sentence investigative report is prepared, takes a couple months.

What happened this morning was he was formally apprised of the charges and he waived indictment by the grand jury to move the case forward. So the next thing that will happen will be a change of plea hearing.

If the court accepts his plea of guilty, then the court would go on to the sentencing phase. Under federal law, the judge will have to give him at least 60 months of imprisonment, that's not discretionary, and at least 60 months of supervised release to follow. However, under federal law the judge ultimately gets to pick the sentence under federal and under this deal

The theoretical statutory maximum would be 50 years. But that's theoretical. The reality would be there's a long sentencing process that occurs and the judge will pick the sentence after hearing from arguments from the parties. All we've done as said we can't ask for more than 151 months which it relates to an advisory computation that's complicated and kind of inside baseball. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It said in that agreement that the government will file a motion requesting the court to decrease offense level by one level. What does that mean?

DEBROTA: If you plead guilty in federal court you get a one level decrease in the advisory computation. That's true of all cases, nothing special there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jared's attorneys are seeking five years. Is there something wrong with that? Why are you seeking more?

DEBROTA: I'm not going to request five years. I have the right under the deal to request up to 151 months.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you tell us what you will request?

DEBROTA: You know what I do, I decide that after I hear the arguments and I get all the evidence and do the pre-sentence and I talk to the victims. They're processing a lot right now. I want to hear from them. There are 14 of them. We met or talked to all of them yesterday and I don't think it's fair to have that communication only once, so I want to hear what they have to say.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What about their age ranges now? You said a couple are adults, I believe,

DEBROTA: Four of them are adults, 10 of them are minors.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Were the two girls were involved in prostitution will they say this absolved this case?

DEBROTA: Well, in effect or getting - and by giving them $100,000 in restitution, we're putting them in a position where they can get their lives together.

OK, they're not residence to the Southern District of Indiana as you could understand I don't want to say too much about them, but they both were acting in a capacity being exploited and being prostitutes well under the age of 18 years when they interacted with Mr. Fogle.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I guess what I'm asking is did they get services as a result of the investigation? Were they able to get services or get pulled out of that life?

DEBROTA: Oh, we're doing that now, yes, exactly. Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And Jared's attorneys are seeking five years. Is that too little?

[12:50:05] DEBROTA: Look, that's the argument they can make. I note that's their job to do that. We're going to argue for what we think is the appropriate sentence. It isn't going to be five years.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ...how did Jared use his celebrity status or power? What makes him, that Jared Fogle, different than any other lower class guys who would go off and do this? DEBROTA: He has the assets and position and ability to travel. If you look at the charging documents you'll see some of the locations where this occurred. Very expensive hotels in New York for example, the kind of place that you wouldn't necessarily always see sting operations. So he is allowed to travel and take -- he's taking advantage of that, being away from where he lives to sort of further that activity.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did he ever say "Hey, you're with Jared from subway," or "Hey I'm pretty powerful, I can destroy you." If this ever comes up, did he ever coerce or threaten people?

DEBROTA: That's not something we're alleging. It's a little simpler than that. With regard to the victimization, the 12 of them relate to his relationship with a long-time friend of his, Russell Taylor. That explains that. Russell Taylor does work for his foundation. They are old friends.

With regard to the other two, he's taking advantage of ways of obtaing child prostitutes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... Are there any 14 names in the court documents, they only -- believed to be the only two underage girls have vocal with that...

DEBROTA: Minor victim is 13 and 14 were underage at the time of the sexual activity with him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is it believed to be any additional victims or...

DEBROTA: Those are the two we've been able to identify through that wide-ranging investigation that we did.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is there any evidence the Jared foundation was used by Taylor to select to his alleged victims?

DEBROTA: Not directly, no. Nothing do with the work in the Jared foundation has anything do with the child prostitution here. Except that sometimes he would do that while traveling on foundation business. But in no event was he using the foundation to get at the child prostitutes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are there any crimes that could have charged...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did he not participated in and apparently worked on in an agreement with you?

DEBROTA: In essence, no. I mean we have 14 victims and if you look at the charging documents we've considered what happened to all 14 victims.

In federal court the number of counts doesn't always make a huge difference. There's enough statutory exposure here at 50 years to get a sentence of the type we would recommend.

So we didn't cut him any breaks. As the U.S attorney said, this is the deal you get if you do this whether you're rich or not. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you get any indication from the victims that they were bowled over by his celebrity status?

DEBROTA: A lot of them didn't know who he was. Some of them did. They didn't know they'd been victims. With regard to a lot of the victims in Indiana, they had no idea they're being filmed. So they had to wake up one day and find out they'd be sexually exploited because they happened to be at somebody's house changing clothes, showering, whatever.

So it made it all the worse that that's happening with a famous person because it draws attention to what they've had to go through. This is one of the reasons why they need such high restitution and why we made it a priority to get them help.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Minkler can you explain to the public why someone of this caliber is...

(OFF-MIKE)

MINKLER: Certainly. Then that's a good question. We believed that Mr. Fogle should not be treated any best, better or any worse in this investigation, in this prosecution, or how it is handled in federal court.

This is the recommendation we would make on bond on anybody that did this, whether it's Jared Fogle or not.

So we believe that he should be treated no better and no worse than anybody else based on his status.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is there any indication when he was making those trips to New York City he was doing those on behalf of the subway? Was he making appearances for the company?

DEBROTA: He was doing this primarily on business travel and without distinguishing between whether it's foundation or subway. He's taking advantage of being on business travel to do this when he's otherwise doing business events.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you go back over the comments you said? Some of this activity predated his association with Taylor or Taylor's foundation?

DEBROTA: Right, if you look at the charging document, you'll see an allegation that we say Mr. Fogle's activity, seeking out underage minors for sex, starts around 2007. And specifically he communicated about that starting in around 2007 with people who were not prostitutes describing that activity. That's in paragraph 45 and 46 of the charging documents that lays that out.

With regard to the solicitation of that we have within the text messages we have that says the U.S. attorney said, that's around 2010.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The plea agreement leaves open the possibility that if we discover other criminality there that's a charges that we filed, are you satisfied or knew of this, you know, plumbed the depths of his illegal behavior or is there still...

[12:55:03] DEBROTA: Well first off this agreement you're correct was carefully drafted. So that if something else emerges he's -- I can do something about that. I can hold him responsible for that. We can file more charges.

However, the reason why we looked at all of those thousands of text messages and pictures in all those devices was just try to get as much certainty as possible, OK.

I can tell you that the investigators here read a lot of those text messages two and three times and looked at these pictures in some cases for a long period of time to try to figure out who all we had pictures off.

I'm fairly confident other than the 14 victims we have here we don't have any other victim we can identify through the evidence we've recovered having looked at all of it very exhaustively.

So what we would need at this point is someone to come forward and say "Me, too, it happened to me as well," and then we'd investigate that. But one of the things we felt we owed everyone was certainty on what happened and what didn't happen and that's our answer. There are 14 victims here and that's what we charged him with.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is it possible there are other victims out there by you, does not been able to identify?

DEBROTA: I'll say this, in the time period we have a lot of evidence for, I doubt it because we have a lot of evidence on what he's doing and not doing in those periods of time.

There's a lot of coverage in those cellphones and text messages. So it have to be something farther back in time older than our evidence has easy access to, like a long time ago kind of thing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did the criminal activity end with Taylor's arrest are there to continue after Taylor's arrest?

DEBROTA: As we say in the charging document, it goes on after Taylor's arrest. You'll see that the end date of Mr. Fogle's activity is in June of 2015.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you explain what that was implements two months...

DEBROTA: It's more of count two but not successfully.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You investigate these kinds of crime, involving Mr. Fogle, is this the typical way people try to hide child pornography? The monitor (ph) of this, through coverage of computers, is this typical in the case like this...

DEBROTA: Unfortunately with cheap storage media and lots of places you can put videos and images, it's more common now. We see things on small storage devices, laptops, computers, cellphones, cameras. So now what we do is we use on-scene computer forensic triage, this is what the state police in particular specializes in. We have a mobile forensic laboratory; we pull up at the house and start looking at that stuff in realtime. That's how as many of you know we did the Fogle search, OK.

We go through all of that entire media to make sure we're not missing any victims. And unfortunately because storage media gets so big and so cheap this is getting increasingly more difficult for law enforcement to keep track off.

In indiana, we're fortunate because we have this capability. If Mr. Fogle had lived in a lot of other places in the country we wouldn't be having this conversation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jared is showing?

DEBROTA: Because they don't have mobile forensic laboratories. They don't have the Indiana State Police. They don't have a vibrant federal, local partnership, state partnership. They don't have an internet crimes against children task force that's effective. They don't have a lot of experienced people, OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fogle has shown a willingness and ability to travel for this, was there or is there any concern of OK, you have an electronic monitoring device that he will leave assuming he still has the assets to maybe leave?

DEBROTA: I don't think he's going anywhere.

If he does, we'll catch him. We'll arrest him and we'll prosecute him some more, OK.

The -- in making bond arguments and decisions, I've been involved in maybe 500 cases like this, OK.

And there are people worse than Jared Fogle in jail right now. And there are people less worse than Jared Fogle not in jail right now.

And at the end of the day we have so many places we can put prisoners. We have to make good decisions, OK.

He knew this investigation was coming when Taylor was arrested in April of 2015. He didn't flee. He had all the opportunity too and knew we were coming, I would think. So if he didn't flee in that period of time and he negotiates a plea and signs this is document and agrees to pay $1.45 million to victims. I think he probably is going to stay around. But if not, we'll find him.

I don't think Jared can flee very far without getting recognized.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One more question. Mr. Fogle's attorney said that today that his client has a medical condition. He's well aware that he has this condition; do you consider that what he did was because of the medical condition?

DEBROTA: They're going to present all of that to the judge at sentencing. I haven't seen what they're talking about yet. What we know is we know what his criminal conduct is. And we've made our charging decisions based on what we believe he did and now what he's admitted he did.

Down the road they can make mitigation arguments if they want too and talk about all of that. But that we're not ready to respond to any of that yet. I need to see what they're talking about.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Steve as this investigation is playing out, there were media reports in surfaced that a former subway franchise owner may have shared texts with subway management from Fogle saying that he had had sex with a 16-year-old. Is the subway facing any investigation about not reporting them, can you relate to this?

DEBROTA: So our charges are against Jared Fogle, not against subway. And let me say, Jared Fogle is not a subway employee anymore and there are thousands of subway employees around the world that are probably equally appalled right now, OK.

[12:59:59] So the question of what that franchisee is said or didn't say to the subway people is not something that's been part of our charging package here. Fogle doesn't tell when we meet with him we didn't meet with Fogle he said nobody tipped me that there was anything serious going on here that cause me to quit my behavior.

So, we don't think that process, as that witness may or may not have described it, successfully worked, in terms of preventing Fogle from doing anything or encouraging him to do anything.

So, right now, obviously, we still investigate all of those questions but there are no charges or allegations right now that anybody at Subway knew he was doing all of these things and decided to let him do that for some crazy reason. OK?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, folks, thank you very much.

(END LIVE PRESS CONFERENCE COVERAGE)