Meet Lt. Governor candidate Christian Mitchell and Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump discusses his debut novel

REGINALD HARDWICK:
From Illinois Soul, this is Dialogue. I'm Reginald Hartwick, news and Public Affairs Director at Illinois. Public Media. Dialogue is an exchange about culture straight from the soul. Governor JB Pritzker was unopposed in the Democratic primary this year as he seeks a third term for office. But the incumbent Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton chose to run for US Senate, and she ultimately earned the party's nomination that meant Pritzker had to pick a new running mate. Christian Mitchell served three terms in the Illinois House of Representatives and then spent four years in the Pritzker administration as a deputy governor, essentially a senior aide focusing on the environment, infrastructure, and public safety. He recently talked with Brian Mackey of The 21st Show.

BRIAN MACKEY:
A little biography. Mitchell was born and raised in Chicago. He earned his undergraduate degree in public policy from the University of Chicago. He went on from there to work as a community organizer and also worked for several Democratic politicians. In November, 2012, he was elected to the Illinois House, becoming the youngest member of the 98th General Assembly. He was reelected in the years that followed, including 2018. But at the end of that year, governor elect Pritzker at the time announced Mitchell would serve as deputy governor. During his time in that role, he earned a law degree from Loyola. He also served for a time as executive director of the Democratic Party of Illinois, and in 2023 he joined the Illinois Air National Guard. For the past few years, he served as vice president of civic engagement at the University of Chicago. And now Mitchell is running for Lieutenant Governor in this year's elections in Illinois. And a quick note, I should say, we've also invited Republican candidate, Darren Bailey's running mate, Aaron Del Mar, to join us on the program. His campaign has been in touch. We are working on coordinating availability. Alright, first question. What brought you into politics?

CHRISTIAN MITCHELL:
Well, I grew up, as you said, in the western suburbs of Chicago. I was raised by one of my heroes. My mother, single mom worked at Rush University Hospital in Chicago for nearly 40 years as a NICU nurse, so taking care of the most vulnerable children at their most difficult time. And then my grandfather, who was a union steelworker and a sergeant in the US Army. And we had a normal middle class life, Brian until I was about nine years old. And then like I think many middle class families, we got hit by a series of healthcare crises that really changed our situation. My grandmother got Alzheimer's, my grandfather was in congestive heart failure, and my mother actually would have her own fight with breast cancer. And so I remember watching my mom struggle to figure out how, as she said, to Rob Peter, to pay Paul to make her paycheck stretch as far as it could to try to cover some of those expenses.
And so that really showed me the vulnerability that families have and how we're all in some ways one paycheck from being in a more difficult situation. And that is really what got me thinking a lot about public service. And so I went to the University of Chicago, met one of my mentors there, will Burns, who was a state representative before me who really helped me decide that this was something I wanted to do. Worked on a couple of campaigns as you said in your intro. And then in 2012 a seat came open and I was fortunate to run for it and win. And that was the beginning of my time in politics.

BRIAN MACKEY:
To be blunt about it. So now you're running for Lieutenant Governor. This is regarded by some as one of the worst jobs in Illinois politics. Why do you want it?

CHRISTIAN MITCHELL:
Well, a couple things. I think the first is the most important thing in being Lieutenant Governor is having a really good partnership with the governor. And I think that I've been fortunate to see JB in action for nearly a decade now, working on his first campaign being deputy governor. And this is someone who gets big things done who's already raised the minimum wage and capped the cost of insulin and helped pass the 45 billion rebuild Illinois infrastructure bill that is rebuilding roads and bridges across the state, which is a project of mine as deputy governor. And so I'm getting to work with the best governor in the country to keep getting big things done. I think that's the number one thing. I think the second is we have a level of trust and respect for each other. That means that I'll be, I think, very highly involved in a lot of big initiatives, making sure that we continue to advance the cause of the people of Illinois.
And so I think that for me, when I think about the statutory duties of the office, everything from a rural affairs council, which means that we're touching our farmers and other folks who make the Illinois agriculture sector so great to the Main Streets program that the office has that is going to be helping to think about the future of, yes, places like Chicago, but also places like Belleville and Alton and other towns and municipalities in Illinois. I'm really excited about that work, but I'm also excited about being part of making sure that the governor's agenda about lowering the cost of housing, lowering the cost of energy, raising wages and the cost, the standard of limiting, I should say, for the people of Illinois. I think I'll be heavily involved in that. And that really excites me.

BRIAN MACKEY:
We had a couple of questions from listeners. We invite them to submit questions ahead of time by text message on this point, right? The idea of, well, John and Rockford points out, he cites John Nance Garner. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first vice president famously described the office as not worth a bucket of warm, let's say spit for the radio, one of your predecessors.

CHRISTIAN MITCHELL:
That's not how I remember the quote Brian, but that's pretty good.

BRIAN MACKEY:
One of your could be predecessors as Lieutenant Governor Dave O'Neill resigned the position citing boredom. What would you hope to accomplish beyond the Rural Affairs Council and the Rivers coordinating chairmanship or whatever that other title is?

CHRISTIAN MITCHELL:
Well, I mean, you mentioned that the listener who called in was from Rockford, which has a great mayor and Tom McNamara and is one of the fastest growing municipal regions in the entire country that has done some really interesting stuff on housing as lowered crime has done some real great economic development work in partnership with the governor's office. I've been to meet with the mayor several times on capital projects we got in Rebuild Illinois that are making a big difference in Rockford. So, it really is continuing to do that kind of work. What is the future of the state of Illinois? What's the 2050 plan? What are the things we need to do right now to invest in our community colleges, our colleges, our technical education, our K through 12 education to make sure that Illinoisans are ready for the jobs of now and the jobs of the future?

What's it going to take with everything we're seeing coming out of Washington with the higher input costs for our farmers right now and the tariffs that are making it harder for them to sell their soybeans to market, what are we going to do to continue to open up new markets and push back on all of these new Trump taxes that your listeners may have seen? There's now going to be an 8-cent tax on the mail to pay for the higher cost of fuel because of the war of choice that the president started in the Middle East. So, what are we going to do to bring down those costs for Illinois families to make sure we're protecting our farmers and investing in our small towns and villages and then our big municipalities? Those sorts of things are the things that really excite me, and I think this office gives me a chance to do the thing I love the most. Go around the state of Illinois, talk to people where they are, hear about the things that they want to see done to make their lives a little bit easier, and then work with them to get those things done.

BRIAN MACKEY:
Alright. You mentioned some policy issues there. Let's talk about some of those. You were an advocate for changes to education funding during your time as a lawmaker that led to what's known as evidence-based funding. Do you think those reforms have lived up to their promise? 

CHRISTIAN MITCHELL:
I think there's always more to do, but absolutely. Education, funding reform, evidence-based funding has been a good thing. The governor has put billions of new dollars, I think it's more than two and a half billion dollars in new funding and education. And because of the way the formula was structured, it is going to the schools that need it the most to do the things that they most need. And I want to give a special shout out here to my fellow former, sorry, my former colleague, deputy Governor Andy Minar, who led on this, and I was fortunate to go around the state and do town halls with him because of the connection between not just our urban centers, but also some of our more outflowing rural hamlets that were suffering similar challenges with education. We obviously need to continue to do more to fund public education. The governor's proposed a $200 million fee on social media companies who have had really outsized negative impacts on our children asking for them to help foot the cost of putting more money into K12 of education. There's always more to do, Brian, no question. But it is unassailable that this has been a very good thing for the people of Illinois.

BRIAN MACKEY:
You mentioned $200 million on a proposed social media fee. The teacher's union says, we're still billions of dollars short. The goal was to reach 90% of funding needs for each school by next year. It's estimated we're billions of dollars. Short of that, how else can we bridge that gap?

CHRISTIAN MITCHELL:
Well, I think we have to consider our context. So, evidence-based funding was passed, I want to say back in 2017 and 2017, we had a Republican governor, Bruce Rounder, who had driven us into 16 billion of unpaid bills. We had a massive structural budget deficit that we're still clawing our way out of. We had eight credit rating downgrades. We've now had 10 credit rating upgrades. We are now, all of the state short-term debt is gone and we continue to improve our fiscal situation. But those, that whole that the Republicans dug us into has lasting reverberations and consequences. And now President Trump is talking about withholding something like 8 billion in funding from the people of Illinois. So that is our context. So, we have to continue finding ways to fund education at the level it deserves to be funded at. I don't think myself or the governor would disagree with anything the teachers’ unions are saying so much as we have to find a way to find the revenue, but also to continue to grow the economy so we have more taxpayers so that we continue to get more tax revenue. We look forward to working with anybody who has a good idea about how to do that.

BRIAN MACKEY:
As deputy governor, you are a key negotiator over what became the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, which made a lot of changes to power and energy, including a phase out of fossil fuels by 2045 last year, a report from a number of state agencies warned Illinois could face energy shortfalls going into the 2030s. Energy demands from data centers have already driven up costs here. What would you do to deal with those issues?

CHRISTIAN MITCHELL:
So, I want to point out a couple of things. I mean, again, this is another place where a lot of changes in federal policy have had difficult impacts on the people of Illinois. There were a lot of new wind and solar projects, other projects that were in the queue to come online that have since been canceled by the Trump administration. That is energy that was ready to go, that could help make sure that we had more resource capacity in the state of Illinois and that has had a negative impact, and we'll have a negative impact over time on prices. So that's one thing that I think has certainly hit us pretty hard. I think the second is we've got to continue investing in new resources that are going to help to drive down cost, ensure reliability. The governor has said that we want to lead the nation.
We already have a significant amount of our power, about 54% that comes from nuclear energy. We would like to have more power that comes from nuclear energy, get new reactors online. We've got a plant that has a reactor license that we could bring online, I think in the relatively short term that can supply clean and reliable power 24 hours a day and help lower costs for consumers. We also need to continue, and we just passed something on battery storage as well as additional clean energy resources that again will help bring new resources online. So that stuff is all going to be helpful. I want to remind folks that part of what was baked into Siege is that the Illinois Commerce Commission and others can look and say, Hey, listen, there's a resource that's going to go offline and we're not ready for it to do so we can override and have a circuit breaker to make sure that that plant can stay online. So, I think CJ was well designed. We continue to see challenges at the federal level, but we are very, very, I think focused on bringing new, clean, affordable energy sources online to provide reliable power for the people of Illinois.

BRIAN MACKEY:
What do you think should be state policy toward data centers? I know the governor has celebrated their location here in the past. We've also seen no local opposition in places like Champaign and Springfield to putting data centers in those counties. What should the state's policy be toward that?

CHRISTIAN MITCHELL:
I think the governor called in his budget address for pausing the state data center tax credit in part because there's real concern about the impact that data centers are having on prices for everyday consumers. There's been a lot of discussion about how those data centers can bring their own energy and their own power, and I think you've seen some of our utilities start to take steps towards asking them to do so. You've got multi-billion-dollar tech corporations that are looking to build these data centers for the effectuation of their business. Since they've got that kind of capital, they need to put some of that capital up in order to make sure that the people of Illinois and the people of the Midwest and the nation are not overly burdened by new price increases, driven by the fact that some of these data centers themselves demand as much energy as entire small towns. And so I think that asking the folks who're going to benefit the most to help solve the problem is the right way to go so that we continue to move our economy forward but not do so in a way that means that the small business owner or the everyday household is paying more for their energy because Meta or some other big tech company wants to build a new data center.

BRIAN MACKEY:
Would you be open to reconsidering the climate goals set by CJ, the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act?

CHRISTIAN MITCHELL:
Again, I think the thing that I mentioned before, Brian, I think is a really relevant point, which is if the concern is if there is a plant or something that is going offline that would cause reliability issues built into that bill right now is the ability to say, hold on, let's keep that plant online until such time as we are ready for it to go away. And so, I think that that sort of circuit breaker is the appropriate approach and I think we also need to give the new energy storage work time to come online.

REGINALD HARDWICK:
You're listening to a conversation between Brian Mackey of the 21st show and Christian Mitchell who is running for Lieutenant Governor as democratic governor. JB Pritzker's seeks a third term in office. This is the dialogue show from Illinois Soul. I'm Reginald Hardwick. Here's more from their discussion on March 26th.

BRIAN MACKEY:
We have Rolf calling from Woodridge. Rolf, thanks for calling in.

CALLER ROLF:
Thank you very much, Brian. Mr. Mitchell, I have a question regarding the DNRI believe, and recently my wife and I took a trip around the state and we wanted to go to some historic sites and various other places, state parks, and whatnot. I have an enjoyment of history and archeology. I went to Cahokia. The Cahokia Visitor Center has been closed now for renovation for four years, which is, I keep inquiring about when it's going to open. And the latest is there's no date that they've set. Went down to Fort Massac down at one of the oldest forts in the state, and I was very shocked to see the building all boarded up with plywood that is so old that it's peeling off the buildings. It just seems to me as if the state is not open for tourism like they're advertising. Maybe this is as much a request, an awareness thing, but it just seems like we do not do as good of a job as some neighboring states in encouraging tourism other than in Chicago, of course. Can you comment on that,

BRIAN MACKEY:
Rolf? Thanks so much for the call. Appreciate it. Christian Mitchell.

CHRISTIAN MITCHELL:
Yeah, Rolf, thank you so much for your question. Actually, I was just in southern Illinois a couple of weeks ago and got over to Ren Lake to see some of the progress on renovations over there. And my understanding is that's expected to reopen here sometime either later this year or potentially early next year. Short answer is, let me look into it. Obviously we care deeply about tourism across the state and have an agency that focuses on doing that work across the state. So I will ask questions about Kki, et cetera. I can say under Director Phelps Finney, we've put a real focus on this. I am not, I try very much as somebody who is getting back into politics, not spent a bunch of time in the past. But I do want to remind folks because we had a 736 day budget impasse. You had projects this, by the way, in 27, 20 16, 20 17, under under Bruce rounder.

You had a bunch of projects that shut down for a significant time where now we are still catching up on getting new supplies for them, which again has been strangled a bit by some of the tariffs you've seen from President Trump. So there's a lot of construction work going on, but a lot of it's catching us up on a backlog. Again, not an excuse, want to make sure we continue to move the ball forward, but some of it is legacy from that paralyzation of state government for a few years and making sure that we can get back up to speed. So I'm happy to look into it and your concern is heard. Well, thanks for calling.

BRIAN MACKEY:
I would actually go back even farther that the Blagojevich administration is really when the sort of defunding or disinvestment, at least in the Department of Natural Resources began. But let's get to another listener question. This is John in Chicago who is very engaged, actually sent us a little transcript of a committee hearing May 25th, 2017. He says, during a committee hearing on a bill, pushed by then Mayor Rahm Emanuel to impose stiffer penalties on people convicted of illegally possessing guns. You asked then Chicago Police Department Superintendent Eddie Johnson, what impact the bill would have on reducing shootings in Chicago. He assured you it would reduce shootings by half in one to three years you voted for the bill. And shootings did not decline at that rate until the penalty enhancement provisions sunsetted. And then John asks, has your thinking on public safety evolved since then?
CHRISTIAN MITCHELL:
Thanks to the question, I remember this hearing hearing very well, and my stance on public safety has always been we need to make sure that we have treatment and rehabilitation, especially for nonviolent offenders, simply because locking people away for small amounts of possession of marijuana, et cetera, does not work, is not helpful. It's not useful. Often takes people away from jobs that can keep them out of trouble. When you pick up a weapon and you discharge that weapon in the community, I have significantly less tolerance for that because now you have done something that can not only potentially hurt the target of your aggression, but also can go through a window and hit somebody else. This happened several times in my district when I was a state representative. So in that sense, I continue and I think the governor's in this place as well to say we have no tolerance for violent crime.
It's a scourge on our community. It makes it harder to attract tourists and to make sure that people feel safe in their homes. So in that sense, I remain somebody who believes that violent crime is something that we have to do all we can to stamp out to make sure that we're doing not just the criminal justice side of it, but also things like community violence intervention. We have seen drops in the past few years in violent crime in Chicago. That's good. And in part it's the real focus on community violence intervention and some of the investments that the city has made, but also we made in new equipment and training for police. By the way, governor Pritzker has presided over an unprecedented number of new cadet classes. And as deputy governor for public safety, I helped to get the funding for those cadet classes for the Illinois State Police. So we remain laser focused on driving down violent crime in the state of Illinois and making sure for nonviolent offenders, they have the resources they need to not re-offend.

BRIAN MACKEY:
Another listener question we got, this was a text message from somebody who identifies themselves as S in Mattoon. This is related to the state's policy of Chicago Transit last year had a fiscal cliff that they were facing and money was redirected to them from the road fund. Republican lawmakers raised frustration over what they saw as a lack of funding for downstate transit. S in Mattoon says, don't forget the southern half of the state. We need good roads too. Why are you taking motor fuel tax money generated in southern counties and shipping it to Chicago without those home generated dollars? We can't rebuild or maintain rural roads, roads that all products in Illinois use to feed the world. So what would you say to s who feels they're being, I guess, neglected by state government?

CHRISTIAN MITCHELL:
Well, I want to say to s first of all, I love the way he ended that question because southern Illinois is a bread basket, not just for Illinois, but also for the nation. So thank you S and everybody in southern Illinois for what you do. The other thing I would say though is that when I was deputy governor, I presided over the rebuild Illinois capital program 45 billion in new capital construction. And for the money that went to roads, I want to say more than 60% of it went to roads and bridges south of Interstate 80. And we actually, by the way, got some flack for that because those unnecessary areas that vote for Democrats. But the bottom line is that's where the needs were. That's where the roads were. That's where the work needed to be done. So we will continue to put more money into downstate roads and bridges. There actually was significant money in that new RTA bill for downstate transit rebuilding and investing in those systems. But most importantly, we will always make sure that we have the resources we need to fund the rebuild of those roads, how we get goods to and from market. It's how we continue to grow our economy. So I'm very, very grateful for the question. I would say I think that the facts on the numbers are a little bit different than, as has stated, there is significant money going to downstate roads and bridges, and there should be.

BRIAN MACKEY:
We are in an era where trust and institutions in our society, in the government, in law, in media, in higher education, it seems to be eroding. And the same thing is going for social cohesion, right? What steps should we be taking? What steps will you take if elected to help rebuild trust and unity in our society?

CHRISTIAN MITCHELL:
Thank you for asking that question, Brian. It's a really good one. It's one I think about a lot and I want to give you two answers. The first is, my view is that you show up for people. A couple of weeks ago I was in Crawford County and apparently was the first new statewide candidate to be down at the Crawford County Democrats in something like 20 years. And I was happy to do it, but also a little bit heartbroken to hear that. My view is that your time is the most valuable thing you have in life. Your time is your life and you demonstrate how much you care about people by showing up for them. So my pledge to your listeners and to the people of Illinois, I'm going to show up everywhere I can because ultimately I want to make sure that you find me accessible, that you can see me and touch me and see that I am real.
Second thing I would say is you mentioned a couple of times I'm fortunate to serve in the Illinois National Guard. I'm a captain and judge advocate and I serve at the Wing in Peoria, Illinois. And every single time I go down for drill, I am with people who I'm quite sure have very different political beliefs than me. Some maybe the same others, very different, many of whom I'm sure are not voting for me. But we managed to work together to get some of the most complicated aircraft in the world up and down and get people back safe. Make sure that the soldiers and airmen have what they need to go off and protect our country or help with a disaster in our state and come back home safe. And it's a reminder that we can do big things together, even when we don't necessarily agree because we work with each other.
We see each other's humanity. We recognize that there is so much more that pulls us together than pulls us apart. And my commitment is to continue building those sorts of relationships and reminding people that we're all in this together. And the big challenges of this century from dealing with war and peace, to making sure we have an economy that includes everyone to making sure we protect the rights of every Illinois is going to require our collective enterprise and our belief in each other. And my faith teaches me and my experience teaches me that we can do this when we're willing to believe in each other.

REGINALD HARDWICK:
We've been listening to Christian Mitchell who is seeking a Lieutenant Governor role as Democratic incumbent. JB Pritzker seeks reelection to a third term as governor this November.

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

In his debut novel, the civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump imagines a horrific crime that feels all too real. A Black man named Hollis Montrose gets stopped by white police officers while driving in Chicago. The man compliantly answers the officer's questions, but suddenly, the officers yank him from his car, kick him in the ribs, then they shoot him 10 times.

BENJAMIN CRUMP: (Reading) It wasn't fair. None of it was fair. How could so much be taken from him without provocation, as if his life held no meaning - inconsequential, like that of an insect caught in a gale, whipped and thrashed until splattering on a car's windshield.

RASCOE: Ben Crump's new book is called "Worse Than A Lie." It follows a winding, perilous path to justice for Hollis Montrose. Ben Crump joins me now. Good morning.

CRUMP: Good morning, Queen.

RASCOE: Well, thank you very much. Hollis Montrose is an older Black man who is a respected former police officer, and he has a loving wife and family, but he becomes the victim of police brutality himself. What were you trying to illustrate through this characterization?

CRUMP: Certainly, Ayesha. This situation, Hollis Montrose, this Black police officer, you can't find a better citizen. And that was intentional because I know oftentimes when you have cases of police brutality, they try to assassinate the victim's character. Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and the list goes on and on. But I wanted to have a character who was a good person through and through. But when we have a system that immediately tries to have the officers appear as angels and the victims appear as something less than, that's where Attorney Beau Lee Cooper realizes very early on in the novel that it's a broken system, and to beat a broken system, he's going to need more than just the truth.

RASCOE: This attorney, Beau Lee Cooper, who is this civil rights attorney who has helped all these people, he knows how to do the media coverage. I mean, Beau Lee, Ben Crump, what (laughter) can you talk about - I guess I want you to talk to me about how much of Beau Lee Cooper is Ben Crump, and how much of Beau Lee Cooper is the character?

CRUMP: I want to say Beau Lee draws on some of the experiences that Ben Crump has learned over the years. I grew up watching old "Perry Mason" television shows with my grandmother. As I got older in law school, I read John Grisham's "The Rainmaker" and Michael Connelly's "The Lincoln Lawyer." And these were incredible legal thrillers. But what I did not see was me and my culture and my community represented. So with the Beau Lee Cooper series, this is the first time you see a brother who's going to be this legal hero. I would like to think that it's a legal thriller wrapped in Black culture.

RASCOE: Obviously, you're a civil rights attorney. You've been involved in some high-profile cases representing the families of George Floyd, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, and many others. You talked about in this book about how Beau Lee Cooper would need more than the truth. What do you mean by that, needing more than the truth?

CRUMP: My grandmother, when I was a little boy, she would say, what's worse than a lie? And that is to tell the truth and nobody believe you. In this book, the prosecutors, the judge, the police union, everybody is trying to oppress the truth, even though...

RASCOE: And has that been your experience? Not to cut you off, Attorney Crump, but has that been your experience?

CRUMP: Oh, that is certainly my experience. It's the system. You know, we say, oh, well, that's a bad apple. No, the system is bad, and we have to make the system see all citizens as American citizens and not have a hierarchy on who deserves the constitutional rights and who doesn't. And so that's what Beau Lee Cooper understands in "Worse Than A Lie," that he's going to have to fight not only in the court of law, but also in the court of public opinion, that he's going to need people in the community, but he's also going to need people who will look at the video with unbiased eyes.

RASCOE: Yeah. Let's talk about the video because it does come out later in the book that a witness recorded the incident involving Hollis and the white officers. And so there is video footage, and the family of Hollis is like, well, this should make everything straight, right? We got it on camera. But repeatedly in the book, Beau Lee's like, that's not enough. And obviously, we have seen witness videos in so many of these cases - right? - George Floyd and the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Macklin Good in Minneapolis.

CRUMP: Yes.

RASCOE: Talk to me about the importance of the videos but how that's not enough.

CRUMP: You know, it really, Ayesha, is imitating life. Hollis Montrose is shot 10 times on video. And in real life, Alex Pretti in Minneapolis is shot 10 times by ICE agents on video. People see the video. They create different narratives. The system tries to be able to say what parts of the video can be used and not used. And they have experts testify to why you should not trust your own eyes. And so you see all of that playing out in the novel, but we see it all playing out, Ayesha, in real life.

RASCOE: Staying on the topic of Minneapolis, you are consulting with the attorneys representing the family of Renee Macklin Good. What can you tell us about the competing investigations, federal and state, into her death?

CRUMP: Just like with Alex Pretti, Renee Good case is very similar to what's happening in the book, the fact that we have video. But then you have the narrative coming from the Justice Department and Homeland Security that she pointed the vehicle at the officer, and so the officer was in a life-or-death situation and had to use deadly force. I submit to you, in Renee Good's situation, there were 100 things this officer could have done besides to shoot and kill Renee Good.

RASCOE: I want to also just ask you, because Beau Lee Cooper uses - you know, he knows that he has to utilize the media. Sometimes attorneys as yourself will face criticism because they'll say, oh, it's a media hound. They want attention, all of that. What were you trying to show in the book about the use of the media by an attorney like Beau Lee?

CRUMP: Thurgood Marshall once said that most people would never really know what happens in the courtroom when you're fighting for liberty and justice. He said he would write his legal memos and his briefs and his pleadings to be engaging so people will not only be engaged but people would be learning what actually happens in a courtroom. Well, what could be more engaging than a legal thriller? Millions and millions of people read legal thrillers. And so I wanted to create a civil rights legal thriller because God knows we need more civil rights and civil rights lawyers in America today in 2026. I pray that "Worse Than A Lie" will inspire the next generation of civil rights lawyers.

RASCOE: That's civil rights attorney and author Benjamin Crump speaking about his new novel. it's called "Worse Than A Lie." Thank you so much for joining us.

CRUMP: Thank you so much, queen.