The residents of The Villages, one of the leading champions in their jail being thrown, fought against the local political machine run by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Ultimately, they were blocked by powerful players but the residents banded together to meet and discuss the rollback of the tax hike on Ryan Grim’s Deconstructed this week. The entity known locally as “the developer” or “the family” benefited from the tax hike while residents could escape paying associated fees with the expansion of their development. The tax hikes were intended to subsidize new developments in the south of the community rather than cover upgrades or new amenities for current residents. In the planned master community of over 130,000 across Marion, Lake, and Sumter counties, many residents have fixed incomes. Suddenly, The Villages, an iconic retirement community in Florida, was hit with a 25 percent property tax hike.

[Theme song taken apart.]

Ryan Grim: Over here I see a bunch more people on golf carts. Is this the, what kind of, what area of The Villages are we in now? Is this the south? This is, this is the wealthy—

This looks like a wealthier area — the villages. And you’ve got—

Greg Grim: Oh, yeah. These houses are a lot bigger.

RG: Yeah. You’ve got big screened in-porches, looking out at golf courses, obviously the palm trees.

Hey RG! I’m here on this episode of Deconstructed with Ryan Grim, taking you to The Villages, a massive retirement community in central Florida, where the descendants of Howard Schwartz, the patriarch who founded the community in the 1970s, are drawing a lot of water and living in a trailer.

RG: So you can’t tell if the golf carts are golfers or current golfers are on their way to golfing or just the way that they get around here. What’s over there? Is that a giant pickleball assemblage?

With a pleasant exclamation mark, we recently drove past a massive sign that depicted the villages as “Florida’s most amiable hometown.” Our father is a winter visitor in the Villages, and I am currently cruising with my brother, RG.

There will be a lot of retirees, counting 130, in this planned community today, headed out on their golf carts to enjoy the endless pickleball courts, free putting greens, tennis courts, and golf courses. Later today, the town squares will be popping with 1-for-2 specials and happy hour.

The Republican stronghold is also here. Mike Pence, the GOP nominee, recently arrived here along with Ron DeSantis, the Governor of Florida, and the close political allies of the family, KellyAnn Conway.

I’m here because the sudden increase of 25 percent in property taxes in 2019 was a harsh blow for numerous individuals residing in The Villages, especially those reliant on fixed incomes.

The Morse household, for the advantage of the developer, was fated to support additional expansion to the south of The Villages. Perhaps you could rationalize the relinquishment if the fresh funds were planned to encompass new facilities for the Villagers or to address the congestion in this area.

Numerous residents from Villages expressed their anger during local gatherings and on various social platforms.

Unknown person: How is it my responsibility, partial, albeit partial, to pay for the development of Buena Vista in another part of the county.

Unknown person: I am totally against us paying for any roads in Southern Oaks.

Unknown person: And I’ve been an administrator and a hospital finance person for major hospitals corporations around the United States. Had I ever presented to the board a budget that went up by 24 percent one year, I wouldn’t be living in The Villages. [Laughter and applause.]

Unknown person: You are sticking it to us, and hopefully we will return the favor at election time. [Cheers and applause.]

Unknown person: I pray to God that everyone of you are replaced. [Cheers and applause.]

The local political machine run by the Villages ended up getting smashed by Gov. Ron Desantis of Florida, who is one of the champions leading the jail throw. However, they still won those seats. So, a group of Villagers decided to run for county commission and roll it back. Anyway, they went ahead with the tax hike.

The Morse family maintains a lot of power in the local area. They also happen to own the local newspaper, The Sun Daily Villages, the glossy magazine, Politics Local, and the radio station, Fox News Radio. Additionally, they own common areas in the pools and provide updates through right-leaning speakers.

Estep Craig, Miller Oren, and Search Gary campaigned together as a team with the clever name EMS, vowing to save The Villages. Three residents of The Villages made the choice to take action and run for office.

Businesses benefitting from the development opposed the tax increase, arguing that it imposes a burden through an impact fee. They also pledged to restore authority to rural regions beyond the community, consequently undoing an effort that had facilitated the family’s dominance over local politics.

Oren Miller, one of the candidates whose wife was a committed opponent of the local high-kill shelter, won the EMS-slate of the animal area’s supporting backers’ rights and added a promise to bring a shelter-kill-free shelter.

In the November 2020 election, the slate of EMS candidates won by a landslide with a 3-2 majority on the commission. However, the incumbents, who had enacted a tax increase to fund the works for T&D, the firm that almost exclusively works for Inc. Villages, received a close to $200,000 in donations from other generous contributors and contractors.

The paper accused them, claiming that they were advocating for a change in the county’s long-established pro-business approach. The Villages’ way of living, which aimed to dismantle, was depicted as the actions of nearly communist new commissioners, who were aggressively attacked by the Daily Sun, EMS right away.

Addressing a gathering of the Property Owners Association, which had supported the EMS slate, Gary Search, a prominent figure from The Villages and one of the candidates, promptly conveyed to the newly elected commissioners the challenges and difficulties they were about to encounter on their journey.

Gary Search: And I was here to represent the people, but from the day I was elected I had a hierarchy of The Villages put his finger in my face and say Search, just remember one thing: I’m a big person, you’re a little person. I can squash you anytime I want. I said, is that a threat? And he said no, it’s a promise.

The three contenders swiftly took action to transform their campaign pledges into actuality, however, the sum of money in question was staggering, reaching well over hundreds of millions of dollars for the developer.

Despite a significant increase of 75 percent in fees, businesses were hit by a vote of 3-2 in March 2021, as Search and Miller wanted to cover the cost of future development with a substantial amount.

The Villages, if the family desired to expand, they could finance it independently. According to the residents, there was no valid justification for subsidizing the Morse family’s expenses for additional growth.

It appeared as though residents had come together to voice their opinions, rejecting the cozy arrangement between business and political elites in the area, and changing the direction of their community’s actions, just like a shut-and-open case.

Next in line was the rollback of property taxes. None of that, naturally, could be permitted.

In January 2021, in Tallahassee, The Villages had an advantageous ally in the appropriate position. They advocated for legislation that aimed to prevent local officials from substantially raising impact fees, and the first retaliatory action was initiated.

After being elected, Brett Hage, who was the president of T&D at the time, was hired by The Villages to receive a salary of $141,000, which was more than double what he received in his first year. This hiring took place following his election to the state House in 2018.

The legislation had a retrospective effect on The Villages. In June, Governor Ron DeSantis enacted the legislation. Hage, who is still being paid by The Village, proposed a bill to prohibit the suggested impact fee on January 9, 2021.

Since being elected to his state House office, Hage’s annual pay has increased by nearly half a million dollars, reaching a net worth of $29,697. His latest financial disclosure for 2021 reveals that his pay has jumped to $925,096, indicating that he received a substantial raise.

The resistance didn’t cease at that point. However, if the opposition from The Villages and DeSantis had stopped there, it would still signify a bold transfer of funds from a developer, directly into the private bank account of a state legislator who subsequently enacted legislation that preserved hundreds of millions of dollars for the developer, while shifting the expenses onto tens of thousands of Floridians.

In addition to removing them from the commission, DeSantis took action and issued executive orders. In December 2021, Republican State Attorney Bill Gladson charged both commissioners, Oren Miller and Gary Search, with felony perjury, which can result in a prison sentence of up to five years.

GS: Two things are happening here: intimidation and humiliation.

RG: That’s Search speaking a month later, addressing the Property Owners’ Association of The Villages.

GS: The second thing is, it’s also to take other candidates, and I love that Andy is still going to run, because it’s to intimidate any other candidate from running against the local government that they’ve controlled for so long.

RG: And here’s the leader of the property proprietor association.

Cliff Wiener: I want to just say, he mentioned something: I had lots of people lined-up to run in 2022 for the two seats that were open. Andrew is the only one still standing at this time. And some people that were going to run in 2024 for other offices that were going to be coming up, slowly but surely they are all dropping. They don’t want to go through what Gary and Oren are going through right now.

RG: I was in the Villages the day of Oren Miller’s sentencing. He had been locked up for more than two months.

[Sound of car door opening.]

Angie Fox: I didn’t know if you were married or what I brought two waters. I’ll put them in the backseat.

RG: Oh thank you. Appreciate it.

Angie Fox, his spouse, was optimistic that the judge would grant Miller credit for time already served and permit his return home. I was en route to meet RG.

RG: How often have you, have you been able to talk to him?

AF: I talk to him every single day.

RG: OK.

AF: Every morning he calls, we haven’t seen each other. We did that one by design two, we know that we’re gonna have to have money for an appeal, and while everybody thinks that we’re rich, we’re not. And so I’m trying to save as much money as I can.

RG: How is Oren doing in jail? Like what are his phone calls like?

AF: He got very sick at one point. He had 10 days that they weren’t giving him his medicine — his heart, heart and thyroid. And he had the first 10 days he wasn’t even getting that medicine. So he was in bad shape. He’s handling it with all the grace that he normally handled things, but he’s—

It’s not, this is not a piece of cake. I mean, he’s doing it and he knows he may not get out today. I mean, that I know. I mean, the judge said we didn’t think that he would remand him to jail. So that was a shock.

The local shelter with a distressingly high euthanasia rate tends to acquire the pet before a group of volunteers from Lost Pets of the Villages, an organization established by Angie Fox to assist people in locating their lost pets, can reach it.

AF: I realized we didn’t have a system here to get dogs back home when they got lost. So I started Lost Pets of the Villages. And it started out with, I mean, I had a lot of friends here. I put ’em all in this, in the group. And it grew, I think it’s over—

RG: The Facebook group?

AF: Yeah, I think it’s over 6,000 now. I don’t remember. I had to get, when Oren, we were boots on the ground when I did it, we were boots on the ground. If somebody found a dog, we’d leave whatever we were doing and we’d get the dog.

If they couldn’t foster in place, we’d get the dog and drive around the neighborhood and find the owner. Or you know, if we had to bring the dog home for a period of time or find a foster, whatever we had to do to keep the dog out of our shelters.

The funding was revoked, but following Ron Desantis’s removal of him and his colleague Gary Search from the commission and the appointment of substitutes, Oren Miller succeeded in having it approved when he campaigned for the commission. One of his primary pledges was to allocate funds for establishing a shelter that doesn’t euthanize animals.

The newly elected commissioner, Miller, needs to understand how the Sunshine Law in Florida’s Government background works in order to conduct a little investigation.

The Service Center of Sumter County in The Villages convened on February 16, 2021, where the county board underwent a series of training sessions on the Sunshine Laws in the subsequent months. The commissioners took their oath of office in November 2020. Two significant stipulations for Miller’s narrative are: Firstly, county commissioners are only allowed to publicly discuss county matters during official meetings, not privately with fellow commissioners. Secondly, the commissioners are prohibited from utilizing a “third-party channel” for such communications as well. The state takes great pride in its legislation promoting government transparency.

[Gavel pounding]

We’ll call the meeting to order. This is a special meeting of the board of county commissioners of Sumter County.

The concept was rejected by a vote of 4-1. The primary matter at hand was a proposal put forth by the county administrator, Bradley Arnold, suggesting that the commission abstain from increasing impact fees on businesses. Instead, it was proposed to engage in discussions with the developer to reach a mutually agreed upon voluntary impact fee.

Miller, along with his wife, who were both supporters of the local kill shelter and local animal rights advocates, turned to the ongoing conflict as their last matter of concern.

Oren Miller: I’d like to see an animal advocacy group put together. We’ve got way too much animosity between animal services and the animal advocates in Sumter County. Too many things have been done in the past that do not help. Both groups have a reason to be in existence.

During that meeting, present was Miller. Taking into account Search’s expertise in psychology, he recommended Gary Search as the mediator and put forward the idea of establishing a reconciliation group of sorts.

OM: I would like to ask for Commissioner Search to mediate that group if he’s willing. This is news to him, I’m blindsiding him with this.

GS: Yes, yes, you are.

OM: But, with your background— well, if you don’t want to do it, I’m OK.

GS: No, no, no.

OM: I’m saying he’s got a background in mediation and negotiating and there’s some strong personalities in that group. So that he can keep peace in the meeting, I would like him to mediate that group.

RG: Miller was talking about a group that consisted of his spouse, Angie Fox.

Following a thorough discussion among the members of the board, Bradley Arnold, the county administrator, intervened.

Bradley Arnold: The advocacy group component and the names that Commissioner Miller has raised, there’s a conflict that’s associated with that. There’s a conflict associated with sunshine law issues that we’ve already run into. The problem that we had was, I had a meeting with Commissioner Search and he relayed his conversation with Angie Fox that was advocating for this very solution to be presented to the board.

Arnold is once again speaking at the meeting. Although it seemed like Search did not have prior knowledge of his nomination as a mediator, Arnold was essentially suggesting that Miller had illicitly contacted Search’s wife regarding the proposal, potentially violating the Florida Sunshine Laws.

BA: I then had a directive email from Commissioner Miller that said, go and do this and use commissioner search for that specific purpose. That indicates clearly that Angie Fox is a conduit of communication between two commissioners, which is a violation of open meetings.

Two individuals lodged a complaint, and he nearly urged someone from the spectators to submit a complaint. Arnold suggested that the concept of the committee should be postponed while waiting for a possible inquiry, RG.

BA: So my concern is that where you have something that unfortunately I became a witness to a violation that becomes an ethics related issue. If that is filed by someone and the investigation occurs, my concern is: is that you may want to wait until that activity has happened and the investigation has been concluded before you involve anything to do with Angie Fox, who’s currently acting as a conduit.

RG: That, at the very least, was Arnold’s account of what happened.

AF: Now Gary told us that Gary had taken it to Bradley and I don’t know if, if you talked to Gary or what Gary said, but Gary had taken it to Bradley. And Bradley told him not to bring it up and he had told him, he told Oren not to bring it up, but that’s not what the email says.

RG: That’s Angie Fox once more.

Arnold was not only aware that Miller would bring the idea to the board, but he also sent an email to the county attorney himself, intercepting the obtained information that encouraged him directly.

As per emails acquired through a request for public records by Fox, Miller did in fact communicate with Arnold regarding his concept on February 11, 2021. Miller expressed, “I was playing golf today and Angie spoke with Commissioner Search.” He further added, “I am unaware of the details of their conversation and I have no desire to find out. I am only aware that his experience would be valuable in serving as a facilitator. I am uncertain if he would be willing to undertake this task, but I believe he might be inclined to.”

Arnold replied that he thought it was a good idea to forward the email to the County Attorney, as he needed direction from the Board, since Miller had asked him to bring up the issue.

During my interview with Arnold, he mentioned that his involvement in the meeting initiated the subsequent inquiry.

BA: That’s what ultimately led to the complaint with the State Attorney’s Office from at least one individual. I think that they had more complaints.

RG: Arnold had a contingency plan in case Miller didn’t mention it.

BA: If that had not been raised by him at the meeting, it was the plan of the county attorney to share how dangerously close the commissioners are coming to a potential open meetings violation. But before she could provide that support, he had already proceeded. And then that basically met all of the conditions from my concern that I had raised with the county attorney.

Regardless of whether Miller introduced his proposal or not, Arnold had intentions to raise an accusation of infringement upon open meetings, commonly referred to as RG.

RG: On that particular meeting, did you suggest that he bring that particular issue to the board?

BA: Actually, what I stated was— No, absolutely not to that degree.

“He mentioned in an email that the exchange occurred before I became aware of the open meetings matter, which is discussed in the minutes of the meeting,” he added when I presented him with the emails at a later time.

However, Miller’s personal email did mention that his spouse had already communicated with Search.

Supposedly fabricating the details of their phone conversations, Miller and Search were ultimately apprehended and accused of preposterous felony perjury offenses. A formal inquiry was initiated. Instead of being forwarded to the ethics commission in Tallahassee as one would anticipate, they were directly submitted as criminal grievances to the local state attorney. In fact, three official grievances were lodged.

Miller said he didn’t remember most of the calls. He didn’t recall any calls about prosecutors showing him a calendar or giving him heads up to cross-check his schedule. Miller remembered some calls about a golf outing. There were also calls about arranging for someone from J’s Dough to bring apple fritters for staff meetings. The apple fritters took an excessive amount of time, causing delays in coordinating the pickups. Miller mentioned calls about Covid relief or church functions. He said there were no calls about an active business commission after training.

The resistance to The Villages’ political apparatus was rapidly diminishing. The Daily Sun consistently published photographs of Search’s and Miller’s during the entire saga.

Legal expenses were overwhelming Search and Miller quickly. A prison sentence, which was not ideal, was also a concern due to Search’s scheduled surgery. However, Search managed to avoid prison by striking a deal with prosecutors to provide testimony at Miller’s trial. As a result of this agreement, Search was prevented from running for office for six months, thereby blocking his participation in the upcoming election.

Read my article in The Intercept for further information on those specifics. The entire experience was quite tumultuous. For example, they would plan together to determine who would bring each Dough J’s to a meeting. Investigation verified that the two of them had conversed over the phone sometime after January or February, but their conversation did not pertain to commission matters. However, Search’s testimony did not ultimately incriminate Miller.

Two and a half months later, we’re waiting at the courthouse for Miller’s sentencing. He marched off to jail and was sentenced without being given bond. The jury found Miller guilty based on apparently sufficient circumstantial evidence, which was relentlessly covered by the Daily Sun. Perhaps coupled with the existence of the calls themselves, the calls stopped after Miller talked about business commission on the phone. Now, there is not a single witness or evidence presented by the prosecution in the search for Miller.

[Courthouse]

Marshal: Let me see your flashlight before you go in.

RG: That’s a microphone.

Marshal: Microphone, OK.

He sported a complete facial hair growth and donned an orange and white one-piece garment. During his time in confinement, he shed over 20 pounds in the span of 74 days. On January 30, 2023, a frail 72-year-old Miller, previously holding the position of commissioner but removed from his post due to a decree by DeSantis, was escorted into the Marion County Courthouse while being restrained with handcuffs.

AF: [Crying] I miss him so much.

Unknown person: And you know what? He said you wouldn’t recognize him, I did.

AF: I did.

Unknown person: Of course you did.

Unknown: I liked the beard. [Crosstalk]

AF: I actually did kind of like the beard.

RG: Numerous followers of Millers’ filled the courtroom. And three of them provided testimony as witnesses vouching for his character.

Bryant Fulgham: My name is Bryant Fulgham…

Dock Blanchard: How long have you known Mr. Miller?

BF: Since I was 14 years old.

I know Oren Miller to be the most truthful person I’ve ever met, and I want to share this with the court with his honor that Oren Miller and Angie Fox on September 7th, 2020 brought me and my mother down to see my dying grandfather at the VA hospital in Tampa. A man who was district chief of the Bushnell Fire Department and worked with the state of Florida for the prison system for 30 years. He was dying and Oren and Angie were at my house in Bushnell from the villages in a matter of moments. They brought us down there, they fed us, they sat down there the entire time that my grandfather was on life support. Oren Miller is the greatest man I’ve ever met. I think what’s happening is a travesty.

Gene McRedmond: Gene McRedmond.

DB: Do you know Mr. Miller?

GM: Yeah, I’ve known Oren for eleven years.

When I reflect back on things that Oren has done, what comes to mind mostly is [Hurricane] Irma back several years ago. And I think at that time Oren was number one or number two in charge of CERT— community emergency response team. He set up a center where people were bringing food, and water, and drinks.

And then I remember even before the storm stopped, Oren asked me to go with him. And we went through the whole old section — the orange blossom section of the Villages — which has a lot of old people, elderly people. And we knocked on door after door after door looking for people that needed help. And it was sad, you know, there are a lot of widows, widowers.

We met one lady who was without power for about two days and her insulin needed to be replaced. And we helped so many people and it was Oren who did that. And it was Oren who worked 24 hours a day for about two days trying to make sure that everybody was taken care of. He didn’t have to do that, but he did it. And that’s Oren. He doesn’t have to do anything, but he does it anyway because it’s the right thing to do.

At the nearby waste disposal site, a total of 200 hours of community service were assigned. Furthermore, the judge granted Miller 36 months of supervised probation and credited the time already served, even though there was no victim, no violence, and no prior criminal history.

Outside the courtroom, I inquired the prosecutor a few queries.

RG: What’s your sense of whether justice was served in this case?

Prosecutor: I think the jury listened to the evidence that was presented and returned to verdict based on that, and it was up to them and they made their decision.

After being sentenced, Miller called Angie and her friends from jail to meet them for lunch at a nearby McDonald’s.

Recorded voice: Thank you for using Securus. You may start the conversation now.

AF: Hi Honey. Are you ready to come home?

OM: I’m ready.

AF: I’m on my way. I’ll be, I’ll be home. I’ll be there in a minute. I love you. Bye.

RG: I had a conversation with Oren Miller following his release.

RG: How are you feeling?

OM: Physically I’m probably back to about 90 percent. I’m not sure they were giving me the right doses of medicine and they were obviously giving them to me at the wrong time. And there was a couple days I slept through the first medication call, so they refused to gimme my medication in the afternoon. So I didn’t get my medications on some days.

RG: And Angie said you went 10 days in the beginning without any of it. Is that right?

OM: Eight, eight days without my heart medicine and 13 days without my thyroid medicine.

RG: What did that do to you physically?

OM: Dizziness and light-headed nonstop.

RG: How, how many people were in there with you?

OM: 80.

RG: And what, what was the population like?

OM: The total population was 1,800 people.

RG: Oh.

OM: In my particular pod it was 80 people.

RG: And were you all together in a day room?

OM: Yes. Night room, day room. The whole, the whole thing. The day room had seating for 56 people, but yet we had 80 people in the pod. So when breakfast, lunch, and dinner was served, only 56 people could actually sit down at a picnic table type thing with metal and eat. The rest of them had to stand up at their beds and or sit on the floor and eat on their beds.

RG: Now because of your seniority, did you get a seat or because you were brand new, you had to sit on your bed? What was your situation?

OM: Luckily, a guy adopted me when I came through the door and he got me a seat in the seating area. So I was able to sit.

RG: What, what was, what was his story? How’d that work out?

OM: He’s a lifetime member of the jails and prisons of Florida. He goes out, he comes back, he goes out, he comes back. He just, he can’t stay off of drugs.

RG: Miller stated that conflicts occurred frequently.

OM: Every two or three days there was a major fight. In my time there, I saw two people I thought were almost killed.

One of them was choked into complete unconsciousness. Finally, the guards did come in on that one because it was in the frontal cell where they could see it. And they casually walked over to the guy and put their taser lights on him, and he saw the taser lights and he stopped choking the guy.

The other one, five guys beat the crap out of a guy. He was in bad shape, but he came to, and they drug him into the shower 15 minutes later, 20 minutes later, so he could get himself cleaned up. He literally got the shit beat out of him.

RG: Did you ever get roughed up?

OM: No.

RG: Or, how’d you, or how did you avoid the scuffles?

OM: I was called aside by one of the leaders of one of the gangs. By day two, he says, Oren Miller, you are protected in here because you’re a senior citizen. He says, but understand, don’t cross any lines. Don’t speak out of turn. Don’t do anything to ruffle anybody’s feathers. And he says, we’ll protect you if we can. So I minded my Ps and Qs.

RG: So when, when you went into court for sentencing how did you mentally and emotionally prepare yourself for the uncertainty of what the sentence would be?

OM: I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that this judge had it in for me. He told us at the first motion to suppress that we were guilty. He announced us guilty right then and there. So my fear was it was a class three felony. I could have gone to prison for five years, could have faced a $5,000 fine. Now my lawyer kept saying and some of the jailhouse lawyers — the guys in jail — well the guidelines say you can only get up to one year so you won’t go to prison. But that’s a guideline. That wouldn’t have stopped him from giving me a maximum sentence of five years. So I was scared to death until they told me I was going to be released of what my outcome was going to be.

RG: Were you able to even concentrate on what you were hearing from the character witnesses and from the judge or were you so zeroed in on just hearing what the sentence was going to be?

OM: I was so zeroed on the sentencing, I was not hearing much of anything.

[Starts crying] I broke down when I saw my wife because I hadn’t seen her in 74 days. I was trying not to break down, but I couldn’t help myself. We’ve been married for 35 years. I, you know, she’s my right arm.

RG: And I saw you tell her I love you as you walked out the door going back to be processed. What was that feeling like, knowing that at some point soon you were gonna be reunited?

OM: Probably the best day of my life since we did, since the day we got married because I was gonna get to be with her again.

On Monday, February 20th, Oren Miller will report to the landfill for his first day of community service, while his wife has successfully raised enough money through her Gofundme campaign, making his conviction somewhat appealing to him.

[Credits begin.].

In this episode, I was at George’s house to ride with my brother Greg to Angie’s house, to lift the sentence for Angie and to show my hospitality to Oren, based on Dough J’s recommendation. And it’s because of this episode.

If you ever find yourself in Webster, Florida, definitely stop and tell them that Oren knows you. The apple fritters are truly out of this world.

RG: Alright, we’re in Webster, Florida. Deep down south in Sumter County and there is Dough J’s. Huge yellow, what is that barnhouse looking? Looks like they make good donuts. Dough J’s Chicken and Doughnuts. A hole lot of soul with hole spelled h-o-l-e.

Clerk: Good morning.

RG: Morning.

Clerk: How are you?

RG: Wonderful. How about you?

Clerk: I’m good. No complaints, hun.

RG: We’re definitely going to get the donut with the chicken.

Clerk: Ok so you want either the J’s Glazed Donut Sandwich, which consists of egg and cheese [and] your choice of meat, whether it’s bacon, sausage, or chicken. [Laughs.] Or you can do the Glazer that has…

RG: I think we want that one, right?

GG: Wow.

Clerk: [Laughs.]

GG: I’ll eat another one of those.

Clerk: So one has egg and cheese and the other one doesn’t.

RG: We’ll get that second one.

Clerk: You want the Glazer?

RG: Yeah, and then I got to get the kids something too.

Clerk: Am I grabbing a box for six or more or six or less?

RG: I’m going to get some apple fritters too.

Clerk: OK.

RG: So, a big box.

[Paper crinkling sound.]

RG: Apple fritter. Yum, yeah. More apple flavor than you get in a typical apple fritter.

[The music of deconstructed credit is playing.]

The editor in chief of The Intercept is Roger Hodge. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. The show was mixed by William Stanton. Our supervising producer is Laura Flynn. Our producer is José Olivares. Deconstructed is the production company behind The Intercept.

The amount of your donation to Intercept The makes no difference — go to give.Com/giveinterceptthe to support the work of The Intercept and to support this podcast. I am Ryan Grim, the chief bureau of The Intercept.

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