UAP is excited to share the following excerpt from Clint Lorance’s new book Stolen Honor with permission from the author.
You can purchase your copy of the book HERE!
CONVERSATION WITH THE PRESIDENT
The excitement of Memorial Day weekend, 2019, was only the beginning of a long, frustrating wait that was fed by snippets of news that nourished my hope for a presidential pardon. While the wait was difficult, my faith never wavered that in the end, Donald Trump would come through.
But that weekend was an emotional roller coaster. Sitting in my room, I packed up all my stuff and marked the packages with directions for where each should go. My whole family started converging on Fort Leavenworth, even my aunt and uncle who I hadn’t seen in forever. On Memorial Day, my entire family was sitting in front of the TV listening for some word from the president.
Throughout the entire weekend, everybody in prison was telling me goodbye: “Bye Clint, take care. Make sure you fight for us. Don’t forget about us.” I didn’t run across anybody who was mad; everybody was very excited. Everywhere I went, people said, “Thanksfor everything you’re doing here. Don’t forget about us.”
As Memorial Day passed without news, I became a ghost. People would see me in the chow hall and get depressed. It was like they were sharing in what I was experiencing, so it was weird. “Man, he’s still here? The president must not give a shit about us after all.” It was like I was at a funeral that Monday on Memorial Day because I was the last person in the world they wanted to see because they wanted to see me on TV leaving. People were openly coming up to me and saying, “I’m so sorry you’re going through this bullshit. This is wrong. You should be out of here already.”
“Dude, chill. It’s alright,” I told them. “It’s going to happen. The president will do something.”
As the delay stretched into the summer, something else was happening. The enormous support I had in so many quarters was steadily increasing.
During the months between Memorial Day and Veterans Day, my attorneys were aggressively market- ing my case in the media. This was all in an effort to show the president he had support for intervening in my case. We knew the White House was considering it because from time to time they would ask my attorneys for more information.
Finally, on November 4th, 2019, Fox News contributor Pete Hegseth tweeted that he had personally spoken to the president and he was keen to pardon military prisoners before Veterans Day on November 11th. So, again, I packed up my stuff; I had everything ready just in case and started living out of packed bags. I even had little signs on all the bags to the guards that read, “Turn this into laundry” or “Turn this into supply.”
Life was a haze the week after Pete Hegseth’s tweet. I knew that he was very close to the president and he would not have posted that tweet if he didn’t know something. I knew it was going to happen. That certainty made those five days the most painful of my life, in terms of emotional turmoil.
But Veterans Day came and went, still with no official word.
Then, on November 15th, at about 3:45 in the after- noon, I was stretched out on my bunk listening to the Sean Hannity show. I had just been moved to minimum custody, so for the first time in six years, I was in a new pod and didn’t really know anybody in there. I got a knock on my door, and there stood a sergeant first class, a man I had never seen before.
“I need you to come with me,” he said. That’s all he said to me.
He took me down the main hallway without telling me what was going on; I’m pretty sure he didn’t know either. As I walked along, everybody was coming back from work. I was peppered with questions and comments: “Clint are you gone? Are you gone? Are you leav- ing? See you! Bye, Clint.” The whole prison had heard about the possible pardons, of course. I was able to tell at least 100 people goodbye as they walked by on their way back to their housing units. There were a lot of high fives.
But I did not know where we were going—or why. I hoped we were celebrating for a reason.
As we approached the main entrance of the facility, a civilian, Deputy Director of Operations Anthony Mendez, was waiting for us. “Hey, come with me,” he said. “You got a phone call.”
“A phone call?”
He told the sergeant who was escorting me that he could leave, and one of the soldiers unlocked the door to the legal office. Mendez took me to an attorney/cli- ent consultation room in the back.
There was a tabletop speaker phone on the desk; a light on the phone started blinking and it made a weird little beep. The deputy director pushed the button on the phone, and a female voice identified herself as being from the Pentagon. She wanted to confirm that I was in the room.
“Yes ma’am,” I said. “This is Clint.”
“Okay, hang tight,” she said. “Stay where you are. Keep this line open and stand by for senior defense officials.”
A couple of minutes went by and Mendez and I were just looking at each other. I think he knew something was up and that’s why he put himself on that detail because, really, the job should have gone to somebody with a more junior rank than he, but I think he wanted to handle it himself to make sure it got done right.
The phone started beeping again and Mendez answered it.
Another female voice came from the tabletop phone. She had a real country accent. “Clint Lorance?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay, stand by for the president.”
Immediately when she said that, Mendez took out a little pocket notebook and got ready to write notes down. He also logged the time the call started.
President Trump came ontheline.“Hello?”
“Hello, Mr. President. This is Lieutenant Clint Lorance.”
“Clint, it’s good to hear from you,” he said. “Here in 10 minutes . . . well, here in about two minutes, I’m going to sign a full pardon and expungement of your record. It will be like it never happened.”
TO READ MORE, PURCHASE YOUR COPY OF STOLEN HONOR TODAY!
