The DOJ Didn’t Legalize Diesel Deletes - Here’s Why
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Fleece Performance
Fleece Performance makes parts that help improve the power and efficiency of diesel engines, especially in trucks. They focus on making vehicles perform better than they do from the factory.
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ATS Diesel
ATS Diesel makes parts for diesel trucks that help them run better and more efficiently. They are known for their upgrades that increase power and improve performance.
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diesel engine
A diesel engine is a type of engine that runs on diesel fuel. They are often used in trucks and larger vehicles because they can produce a lot of power and are more fuel-efficient than regular gasoline engines.
Company
Duramax
Duramax is a type of diesel engine made by General Motors. It's often found in their trucks and is known for being powerful and efficient.
Term
ISO 9001 2015 standards
ISO 9001:2015 is a set of rules that companies follow to make sure they provide good quality products. If a company meets these standards, it shows they are reliable and care about their customers.
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Powerstroke
Powerstroke is a type of diesel engine made by Ford. It's used in their larger trucks and is known for being very powerful, especially for towing heavy loads.
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Cummins
Cummins is a company that makes diesel engines, which are used in many trucks and heavy vehicles. They are known for making strong and reliable engines.
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OEM engine
An OEM engine is the engine that comes with the car when you buy it. It's made by the same company that made the car, so it's designed to fit perfectly and work well with it.
Company
DFC Diesel
DFC Diesel is a company that makes and sells parts for diesel engines. They help people find better engines and parts to improve how their vehicles run.
Term
torque
Torque is the power that helps a car move. It’s what makes a car able to pull heavy things or speed up quickly.
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fuel economy
Fuel economy tells you how well a car uses fuel. If a car has good fuel economy, it means you can drive further on less gas, which saves you money.
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diesel fuel
Diesel fuel is a special type of fuel used in certain engines, especially in trucks. It's different from regular gasoline and is known for being more efficient and powerful for heavy vehicles.
Term
lubricity
Lubricity is how well a fuel can help parts of an engine move smoothly without causing damage. It's important for keeping engines running well, especially in diesel engines.
Company
Hotshot Secrets
Hotshot Secrets is a brand that makes special products to help diesel engines run better and last longer. They create solutions for common problems that diesel engines face.
Term
DEF fluid
DEF fluid is a special liquid used in diesel engines to help clean up the exhaust and make it less harmful to the environment. It helps the engine run cleaner and meet pollution standards.
Term
catalytic converter
A catalytic converter is a part of the car's exhaust system that helps clean up the gases that come out of the engine. It makes the air cleaner by changing harmful gases into less harmful ones.
Term
EGR
EGR is a system in some vehicles that takes some of the exhaust gases and sends them back into the engine to help reduce pollution. It helps make the engine cleaner.
Term
NOx
NOx refers to nitrogen oxides, which are gases that can be harmful to the environment and our health. They come from car engines and are regulated to help reduce air pollution.
Term
particulate matter
Particulate matter is made up of tiny bits of solid or liquid that can be found in the air. These particles can come from car exhaust and can be harmful to breathe in.
Term
SCR
SCR is a system that helps reduce harmful gases from diesel engines. It adds a special liquid to the exhaust to turn dangerous gases into safe ones before they leave the car.
Term
DOC
DOC is a part of the exhaust system in diesel cars that helps clean up the gases before they are released into the air. It makes the exhaust less harmful.
Car
Ram TRX
The Ram TRX is a powerful version of the Ram 1500 truck designed for off-road driving. It has a strong engine and special features that make it great for rough terrains.
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Ford Raptor
The Ford Raptor is a special version of the Ford F-150 truck that is built for off-road driving. It has a powerful engine and features that help it handle rough terrain.
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GPFs
GPFs are filters used in gasoline cars to catch tiny particles in the exhaust, making the air cleaner. They help cars meet pollution rules.
Car
Ford F350
The Ford F-350 Dually is a large truck designed for heavy loads. It has two wheels on each side at the back, which helps it carry more weight and stay stable when towing.
Term
OEMs
OEMs are companies that make parts for cars or the cars themselves. When you buy a car, it's often made by an OEM, which is the original maker.
Term
deletes
'Deletes' are when people take out parts of a car that help reduce pollution. This can make the car perform better, but it's often against the law because it harms the environment.
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Welcome to the Diesel Podcast presented by DFC Diesel.
Stuart, I'm looking forward to chatting with you today.
You've been highly requested to come back on the podcast with the recent announcement
from the Department of Justice where they had talked about no longer pursuing criminal
cases against either individuals or companies that have been doing diesel deletes or emissions
tuning.
I know it's a pretty big umbrella.
That'd be great to have you on and get the truth of it because there's a lot of information
out there that either conflicts or is just blatantly wrong that I see on social media
or other platforms talking about bleach illegal, go ahead and buy on Sella and build your business
around them.
And I know from just reading the DOJ announcement, that's not what they said.
So welcome back.
I look forward to getting the details from you.
Yeah, absolutely.
As always, it's good to be here.
I'm happy to educate the listeners to the degree that I'm able to do that.
So why don't you just let me know what your questions are and I can answer any questions
that you have that you think the listeners might be interested in hearing about.
Okay.
Let's start with the announcement the Department of Justice made.
What exactly did they say?
So a couple of weeks ago on Wednesday, I think it was exactly two weeks ago this coming Wednesday,
the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, which is Todd Blanche, made an announcement
that they were directing the U.S. attorneys in the United States to dismiss all investigations
and all ongoing criminal cases where the alleged crime was a Clean Air Act tampering, okay?
And the Deputy Attorney General is Todd Blanche.
He is sort of the main law enforcement officer in charge under Pam Bondi, who is basically
responsible to actually execute the desires of the president and the executive branch, the Attorney General.
And the reason that he issued this announcement was because there's been a lot of pressure
from people like me and other lawyers in the community and other influencers in the diesel community
and other people who are big, they're very much in favor of deregulation and not weaponizing the U.S. criminal justice system.
There was a lot of pressure from people like us to advance our theory that we've been espousing for years,
which is that Clean Air Act tampering is not a felony.
It's a civil violation.
And so what happened was the U.S. office of the Deputy Attorney General issued a memo.
And the memo said that they are no longer, they, meaning the U.S. attorney's offices,
are no longer to treat Clean Air Act tampering as a criminal conduct and it is only civil conduct,
meaning it is only a violation of a civil statute, which means lawsuits are involved and things like that,
but is no longer considered by the administration to be a felony.
So the reason that that's really important is because, number one, we've been saying that for years,
that the Clean Air Act didn't have criminal provisions for mobile source tampering.
But it's also really important because there were a lot of cases that are in process right now
that have either been dismissed or are going to be dismissed.
So there was a case in Dallas, Texas that I was involved in.
My client was guided by the name of Colby Honeycutt.
The main defendant in that case was a person named Philip Waddell.
And last Friday, the Northern District of Texas, Northern District of Texas,
U.S. Attorney's Office dismissed that case in its entirety.
So now there's no longer felony charges for any of the defendants in that case.
And this has been happening around the country.
It happened, a case that I was involved in, Alabama.
And very importantly, it stopped the current investigations into criminal conduct
that were also happening.
So there's a case in Idaho where the investigation stopped.
There was a case in Georgia, case in Virginia.
I could go on and on.
But basically all the U.S. attorneys have been directed to stop investigating
and prosecuting criminal charges for Clean Air Act tampering.
I think this is where the information could be so tough to understand what it means
from the outside looking in or just casually seeing it pop up on a social media feed
or something like that, because we see that announcement.
And then like what you just mentioned with the dismissal of these cases.
And we think, well, it's a free for all now.
Can you tie in how the civil aspect can still be part of it?
Because for a long time, I think probably in the beginning of the enforcement
with this way back when wasn't most of it civil through maybe the first 10 years or so.
And then it switched to being criminal cases that you would see from clients.
So in Clean Air Act tampering has always been a civil violation.
You are it is illegal to remove emissions controls on vehicles.
It is illegal to install defeat devices on the vehicles,
defeat devices are illegal and you are not allowed to tamper with emissions controls on diesels.
Here it is.
The question was really whether or not this was a civil matter that could result
in a fine to your business or to you individually.
Or whether or not the government could pursue criminal charges.
The government has said that they are no longer going to pursue criminal charges.
Civil charges and civil cases and civil enforcements are now the vehicle,
the only vehicle by which the EPA and the administration can pursue a remedy
for tampering violations or for the sale of aftermarket defeat devices,
not only tampering.
OK, so if you are selling defeat devices, if you are installing defeat devices,
if you're manufacturing defeat devices, if you are causing them to be sold,
if you're marketing them, all of that is still a violation of the Clean Air Act.
But the only thing that the government can do under the Trump administration is pursue
administrative lawsuit against your company or theoretically a civil lawsuit in District Court.
And the ultimate punishment for that is a fine.
And it is a substantial fine.
It's still $5,000 per part that you sell or offer for sale or install.
And you can get discounts on that fine based on your inability to pay a penalty under the Clean Air Act.
But what you cannot do is you cannot continue to sell or install aftermarket defeat devices.
They are still illegal.
Emissions tampering and the sale of aftermarket defeat devices is still against the law.
It's just that you can no longer be charged with a felony or misdemeanor for that conduct.
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You can mention to me once when you first started down this path of representing clients against the EPA was 2007 or 2008 or 2009,
sometime in that range.
So you've seen this change through three to four different executive or presidential administrations.
So is it it can flip flop between depending who controls the executive branch and whether it's civil or criminal,
or how hard they go after particular industry or how hard that they don't or how it how it focuses.
Is that something we should keep in mind with this?
Excuse me, as well.
During this, since it's since it's not necessarily codified or it's not necessarily a law that goes through Congress.
Yeah. Yeah.
So that's that's a great point.
And the answer to your question is that we feel like we have a strong legal basis to argue that tampering devices for mobile sources are not or tampering with emissions controls on mobile sources is not a felony under any administration.
But that position is very unclear.
And because it's very unclear, there is nothing to that that is currently been passed legislation or been formalized or codified in a formal rule that says that mobile source tampering is not a felony.
OK, so in the next three years, at least while the Trump administration is still in power.
Or at least while the Republicans still control Congress, what we're really hoping is that we will get some some solid guidance and laws passed by Congress that specifically state that mobile source tampering is not a felony.
Because if that happens, and then new administration comes in, then the new administration would have to get Congress to make a new law that says tampering with mobile sources is felonious conduct for some reason.
And we that's a lot harder to do than it is to just say, oh, it's a felony to tamper with mobile sources.
So what we're really hoping and what we're really pushing for the industry in general, and you'll see posts by Corey Willis about this online, you'll see posts by diesel influencers like diesel Dave, other guys who have a really big footprint is a really big push to get a law passed of any kind, right?
That says that mobile source tampering under the Clean Air Act is not a felony, it is only a civil violation. As it stands right now, if a Democrat comes into Congress in 2028, and nothing happens with the law, then theoretically the EPA could start to reinforce the felony conduct.
Because the current administration is saying that it is not a felony and it is a civil penalty. That doesn't change what a new administration could do without some action by Congress in order to formalize the government's position that it is no longer a violation, a criminal violation of the law.
That makes sense. So I think it also helps to understand as well what we may see from people like you mentioned with huge footprints or allowed, you know, a big voice in the industry of what would need to take place first.
So every four to eight years, this isn't we're not doing the same episode like we did about criminal cases and felony cases, five years from now or eight years from now or something, it would need to change more.
I know this next question is probably maybe too soon to ask you. But with some of these cases that were criminal and the charges are dropped, do you anticipate some of them may turn civil or do you think they just stop right in their tracks right where they're at?
Well, that's great question. So there's a couple things that are happening on that front and it is maybe too early to say but first of all, there are US attorneys and US attorney's offices around the country that are disregarding the memo from the Deputy Attorney General and
And I'm representing a client in a case in Spokane, Washington where we got this news a couple weeks ago, we were excited that the case was going to be dismissed. And then we had a conferral with the US attorney up there.
And basically the US attorney said, well, we're just going to continue on with the other charges that are contained within the indictment.
And this is my client's guy by the name of John Owens. And it was a very confusing conferral and meeting for us to have because we believe that there's been very clear direction from the administration that all these cases are going to be dismissed and we expect all these cases to be
dismissed. And for us attorneys not to create a workaround for cases like that, because if they do that then they're going directly against the direction of main justice, which they're working under main justice so they're not really allowed to do that.
And so for cases like that where you have US attorneys who are decided that they are going to circumvent the spirit of the actual directive from the Deputy Attorney General, we're going to be approaching main justice.
We already have approached main justice to try to get those US attorney's offices to fall into line, because if they continue to ignore the directive from main justice then that's going to create bigger issues for everybody down the road.
Okay. So some of these criminal cases are still lingering around.
Like they are for my client is named as John Owens. And for people like that we still view these cases as weaponization cases where they're unfairly penalizing people for violating the Clean Air Act when this was a civil violation and not a criminal violation, not a felony.
But when we're talking about the cases being converted to civil or stopped in their tracks, we're not totally sure yet. And some of these cases will definitely turn civil because you have people who have been accused of either selling a lot of defeat devices or
tampering with a very large number of vehicles. But the claims that you have in civil court are not the same as the claims that you have in criminal court. And one of the criminal claims that we've seen is conspiracy to tamper.
Which is where you have an agreement with another person to tamper with motor vehicle with the admissions controls.
And it's not as though these people have necessarily had their hands on the vehicle. The allegation is that they've made an illegal criminal agreement with someone else in order to get the parts onto the vehicles.
So are the conspiracy to tamper charges going to go away?
There's a civil conspiracy that you can allege for civil cases, but it's not nearly as clean and it's not nearly as effective as the criminal tampering.
So we expect some of the conspiracy to tamper cases are going to result in some renewed civil actions or maybe new civil actions.
Because that's the only avenue that the EPA has now in order to actually be able to pursue the people who are selling aftermarket defeat devices or breaking the law.
Okay. But then there's some other cases that we've had, like the one I was telling you about in Dallas, where it's just not worth it.
It's not worth it to the government to pursue people who have been accused of selling 40 defeat devices or 75 defeat devices or 200 defeat devices.
To all of a sudden go back and initiate a civil lawsuit against those people or send out a request for information and say, how many of these did you sell?
Because they've already expended so much of the government's time and resources to pursue them on the criminal side.
Most US attorneys who are really listening to the direction of main justice, they're coming out and they're saying, you know what?
I'm going to call it a day and I'm not going to pursue any of these people anymore and we're going to listen to the direction of main justice and we're not going to do that.
So I expect to see some new civil cases coming. I expect to see an uptick in civil enforcement because that's the only way that the government is able to enforce the Clean Air Act, at least under the Trump administration.
And I'm expecting to see all the criminal tampering cases be dismissed.
Prior to two weeks ago, was it worth it to go after that place that maybe did 40 of these or 20 or 60 because of the criminal charges you could pursue?
Is that why it was more prevalent or you saw it more?
It still wasn't more prevalent than civil cases in general.
The EPA and the DOJ have a factual basis to determine whether or not they believe there's been criminal activity and that factual basis is intent.
Did the person who was tampering with the vehicles, did they intend to break the law?
Did they know that this could be a felony and did they do it anyway?
Did they continue to sell defeat devices after such a time where they became aware that this was illegal and it was potentially a criminal violation?
So in this case, intent matters. Were they aware of other criminal cases around and they decided they were going to do it anyway?
The DOJ doesn't always necessarily understand intent the way that you and I might in our industry.
I think everybody in our industry knows that it's wrong to sell and install defeat devices and that they shouldn't be doing it.
The question is whether or not they have a reason to believe or they know it's a criminal act or a civil act and a lot of people don't have any reason to believe that it's a criminal act.
They think it is a civil act.
So whether or not people are going to continue to do this, I think there are going to be people out there that are going to continue to sell defeat devices and install them and I would encourage them not to do that.
But I think that with regard to the criminal aspect of it, the deputy attorney general's office has said, okay, we don't think it's worth it to pursue felony charges for people who have sold or installed 10, 15, 20, 40 defeat devices
because the punishment, which is that really you're guilty of a felony and you have to plead guilty to a felony because you don't have the money to defend yourself, a lot of people.
It doesn't really fit the crime.
What fits the crime is a civil violation and a monetary penalty and a consent decree where you agree with the government that you're not going to do this again.
And that's what I think we're going to see a little bit more of coming down the road.
I wanted to ask you a bit more about the civil side because we had some comments on some of your old episodes and where we were talking about this and they're kind of all over the place.
And I just think it's because people don't have the time or the energy to really do this or like who wants to become a constitutional scholar on a weekend or evening, right?
We're just not going to know.
But I've been around this industry long enough to remember civil penalties, ending companies and oh yeah, them going out of business.
And so I guess this next question is for maybe a shop owner who's listening to this who may be seeing some content out there that says deletes illegal go ahead and you know full steam ahead.
How have you seen civil penalties and businesses? Have you seen it destroy something that somebody's built for 10, 20, 30 years? How severe can they be?
Because I don't know unless you go through this, I don't think you know what that means or what kind of amounts we're talking about.
Like is it pennies on the dollar that you're charged? Is it tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars in civil penalties that happen?
How does that work?
It is absolutely ended businesses. It is absolutely ruined lives.
Being sued in civil court by the U.S. government is a terribly miserable experience and in many ways it's more miserable than being charged with a crime.
Because the burden of proof for the government is lower than it is to prove that you're engaged in some kind of felonious conduct.
And you can negotiate resolutions to these cases and those resolutions can be really favorable.
But the only reason that they would be favorable and you would get a low fine is because you don't have the ability to pay a higher penalty.
So the government is going to pursue what they believe within a 75% certainty you are able to pay and still remain in business.
The problem with that is that the government is assuming in many cases that you can afford to pay way more than you can actually afford to pay.
So I just had a client email me the other day from a business in I think was Maryland and he said, I can't afford to pay you to defend me in this civil case anymore.
And we're not making enough money to continue down the road of the on the criminal or on the on the negotiation.
So I'm just going to close the doors.
And he laid off three employees and he had to go out and get a new job on his own and their business is over.
Now, does that happen commonly?
I don't know, maybe 10 to 15% of the cases that I see people are forced to shut down the business.
And it really depends on the number of deletes they're doing.
If they have a robust business where they have robust work that they're doing a really good company like an ATSD sole or a fleece performance or worldly custom that those guys, they've got a very, very large amount of legal business.
Now it's 100% legal business, right?
But when the EPA comes and they do a civil enforcement on them, it hurts and they get penalized for that.
But they have enough underlying business and enough underlying legal parts and legal business for them to be able to sustain that and move forward on a completely legal path and continue to make money.
When you're dealing with a mom and pop truck shop based in East Texas or Arkansas or Florida or Idaho or somewhere like that and their margins are really based on people coming in and saying that they want defeat devices.
People saying they want defeat devices, they don't have enough business necessarily to be able to sustain that.
So my recommendation is if you're doing deletes, stop doing them because eventually the EPA is going to come after you on the civil side.
Then you're going to have to pay me $600 an hour to defend you against that enforcement action.
And then you're going to have to pay the EPA what you can allegedly afford to pay them on top of it.
And at the end of the day, you're going to be spending more money than you ever made doing deletes.
I mean, financial stress is a horrible stress and especially combined with a business that you built with blood, sweat and tears over years or maybe even decades.
I imagine that whole situation is entirely overwhelming and frustrating.
Just to interrupt you for a second, the ENRD, which is the Environmental Natural Resource Division of the EPA and the Department of Justice in the Southern District of New York are still pursuing a civil lawsuit against EasyLink.
And EasyLink, I've been working with their lawyers over the course of the last few months. Their lawyers are absolutely fantastic, a guy by the name of Andrew George and a guy by the name of Alex Borelli.
And they are fighting tooth and nail on behalf of EasyLink to deal with this civil lawsuit in New York.
They've won a ruling at the trial court level that basically dismissed the case, didn't dismiss it entirely, but it basically dismissed a big portion of it.
And then that ruling was overturned on appeal and now they're back in discovery in the civil court in the Southern District of New York, in New York City.
And it is an absolute mess, this case, because the government is not stopping their weaponized pursuit of EasyLink and they continue to pursue these civil cases.
And I think at the end of the day, the government is trying to put them out of business and it is not a reasonable, they are not acting in a reasonable way.
So if you think that a civil lawsuit, any of your listeners think that a civil lawsuit is not that big of a deal, or you know, it'll be okay, we'll just pay a fine and we'll move on.
That's really not always the case. And the government can be just as aggressive or more aggressive in civil court than they can be in criminal court.
Because that bar is lower, as you mentioned too.
Okay.
The burden of proof that what they have to prove in order to get civil liability prevail on one of their claims is what's called a preponderance of the evidence, which means more likely than not.
And in criminal court, you have to prove someone's criminal guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
So the actual burden of proof in a civil lawsuit is easier to prove and it can be just as damaging to a company.
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This next question might be outside your wheelhouse if it is, let me know.
But with these different U.S. attorneys that aren't listening to the memo, what ultimately happens?
Does it just, does it come down to the political side of the executive branch or the Department of Justice saying,
you know, you are going to do this and they handle it how they handle it politically?
Is that the only recourse for offices that aren't listening?
Well, it's not outside my wheelhouse. It's, you know, goes to sort of the criminal justice system and the, you know, the inner workings of the DOJ.
I've never worked for the DOJ, but I work with a lot of attorneys who have been AUSAs or U.S. attorneys.
And the way that they describe it to me is it's just like being in the military. You were in the military, you understand the chain of command.
And the chain of command is that if you are going to disregard what main justice says or you're going to disregard basically what a colonel or a general says,
then there's going to be consequences for you. It could result not, not, you know, criminal consequences or anything like that when you can lose your job,
you're, you could be demoted, you could be put into a position where you're working in cases you don't want to work on because you're not following the chain of command with the DOJ.
And I think for the most part, U.S. attorneys, the experiences that I've had with them has been really good.
Most of the U.S. attorneys that I've worked with have been very reasonable and they're just basically trying to do their job.
It's like people who are working for the EPA. They may not share the same beliefs that you and I have or we may disagree on beliefs,
but they're trying to do their job and, you know, we all like clean air and we all like clean water.
And so, you know, to a certain degree, their job's really important.
But for most U.S. attorneys that I've dealt with, they are going to follow the chain of command and they are going to listen to main justice
and they are going to advance the desires and the wishes legally that are coming down from the Trump administration.
And if they don't want to do that, they usually just resign.
There's been hundreds of U.S. attorneys and assistant U.S. attorneys around the country who have resigned because they don't agree with the priorities of the Trump administration.
They've gone into private practice. They've taken state government jobs. They've taken other jobs as lawyers in various different places.
So what happens to those guys? You know, I think it depends on how blatant their disregard is for what main justice wants.
They may just get reprimanded or they may be told that they have to do it. They may get demoted. They may quit. They may get fired.
You know, but at the end of the day, you have to follow the chain of command and you have to listen to what your bosses are telling you to do.
But if you're trying to find workarounds and you're trying to advance either legal or political agenda that does not line up with the Trump administration,
then President Trump has ordered his U.S. attorneys to take action on that and I think that they have.
I'm thinking of how everything has changed through the years with these podcasts that we've done.
I remember doing them about civil cases way back when and then about the focus of enforcement changing and then all of a sudden for a while,
we were doing them about criminal cases. I think that's the big elephant in the room question I have for you next is,
what about the people that were convicted of felonies? And then it changes two weeks ago.
Yeah, I mean, it's a great question and it is really, really important and really complex legal type question.
So you've got a couple avenues that you can go.
One avenue that you can take a look at is to try to get the U.S. attorney who prosecuted your case to agree to stipulation to vacate a judge.
Okay, which means, hey, we prosecuted this, the defendant pled guilty, but now we both agree that this felony or this conviction is no longer appropriate.
So we're going to go back to the judge and we're going to say, in essence, we made a mistake.
It wasn't a mistake at the time, but we realize now that it's not something that we should have prosecuted and we want the judge to either vacate the judgment,
which means get rid of it or amend the judgment to change the judgment from what it was.
Okay, and those are really tricky because what you're asking a judge to do, a federal judge to do, is to go back and change a judgment that they made and change it in such a way that it gives relief to a defendant.
And if judges do that without a really good legal basis or they do that too often, then what happens is that everybody wants them to do it for all their cases, right?
So you have white collar criminals or you have maybe people who were convicted of marijuana possession, which I know has been big in the news, or maybe people who have been prosecuted for dealing marijuana that didn't have a large volume of it.
And all of a sudden, people are flooding the US Attorney's offices and flooding the judges with requests to change a decision that they already made.
And judges don't want to do that. In fact, it's very, very rare that they will do that, that they will even consider doing that.
So that's one avenue that we've been investigating very carefully. Certain cases it might be appropriate, most cases it's not appropriate.
The second avenue is a pardon, right? And did you have Troy Lake on?
No.
Okay. Well, we're going to have to invite him on. I've been talking to Troy a lot. He's a great guy.
Troy got a pardon. He got a pardon for his conviction and he's no longer a felon.
And I've gotten a lot of people reach out to me for pardons, for pardon applications to approach the Trump administration.
I'm working with a guy in Wyoming, his name is Jeff, who helped Troy get his pardon. He helped on the Levi Fresh case get the dismissal.
He's a consultant. He's a great guy, a strategist. And we work together to try to fill out these pardon applications and convince the Trump administration that a pardon is appropriate for diesel violators.
And the reason that we're saying that a pardon is appropriate for diesel violators is because this never should have been a crime in the first place.
And the Clean Air Act is not clear as to whether or not this is a crime. And the people who were prosecuted this were victims of a weaponized government.
And President Trump is coming in and he's cleaning all that up and he's saying, I'm going to give pardons to people who were victims of a weaponized government because it was not fair that they were charged and convicted with felonies.
So I've done a few pardon applications. I have not gotten one all the way through yet because they're a brand new.
Jeff has gotten his all the way through with Troy Lake and we're fielding a lot of calls for pardons for people who want to get pardons.
Pardons are really expensive legally for the lawyers because we have to fill out the pardon application and then we have to utilize a lot of our political capital in order to convince the Trump administration or whoever is in charge of the pardon office that this person is deserving.
And as you can imagine under President Trump, everybody who was a victim of the weaponized government is going to try to get a pardon.
So you've only got a very slim margin and very limited face time with the Trump administration to try to get these through.
And if you have a very good case and your cause is just and your client is somebody who is truly a victim of a weaponized government, then you'd have a chance to get it through.
But I don't know how many pardons President Trump has done so far, probably like three or 4,000. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the number of people who are victims of a weaponized government, either under the Biden administration or another administration before that.
So the people who have gotten convicted of felonies, there is a path forward with the possibility of a pardon.
If you are interested in talking about me with that, then I can, you know, talk to you about that. And, you know, it depends on what your case is like.
But it's just it's very expensive for the legal work. It's very expensive for the political capital.
It is a possible avenue, but that's kind of what I've been working on right now.
I think that I'm working with Andrew George, who I mentioned before, he's an easing links lawyer and he's also Tracy Coyote's lawyer.
Oh, we should talk about the Coyote case while we're on that. The Coyote case went up on appeal and the appellate brief was prepared by Andrew and Alex, their law firm out of DC.
And then after the directive came down by the ODAC's office, or maybe it was right at the same time, the government made a motion to withdraw what I'm going to blank on the process.
They basically made a motion to dismiss the appeal and they requested that the Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit remand the case to go down to the trial court level to be dismissed.
So as of that occurring, which is happening in conjunction with the US government, Tracy will no longer have a felony conviction on a record.
Hers is the only one that actually went to an appeal. So she's in a really unique situation. She's one of the only people who actually got the, was able to get the relief that she wanted without having to get a pardon.
But it is possible to do that way if you're on an appeal right now.
So anyway, back to what I was saying, I just wanted to inform your listeners about Tracy's case because I know lots of people follow her and she's really, she's really great.
Back to what's going on on the pardon application. We are in the process of taking a look at these pardons and filing some of these pardons. I filed some already.
We are going to try to file one for Sean Coito or his attorneys are going to do that.
And we're all working together as a group of lawyers in this space to try to get as many people pardons as we can or who can afford to, you know, move forward with the process because that's the right thing to do.
And we want to try to get as many people pardons as possible.
What makes one where it.
It doesn't make sense to pursue it like say you have the money to pay for the legal services to attempt it.
What would be an example of saying you're not going to get this because of these other parts of the case like they're just not going to.
If you were disparaging the President Trump.
If you are not a conservative, I think in the diesel community, people are going to be for the most part eligible for pardons.
It used to be before the before the memo came out saying that this was not criminal conduct by Todd Lynch's office.
It used to be that the people who were applying for pardons, they had to fit fit a very narrow criteria to get a pardon.
And the narrow criteria really had to do with whether or not they were unfairly prosecuted.
For tampering charges or, you know, they were in a situation where it should have been a civil case.
That changed when the memo came out because the memo says now that these that clean air act tampering this administration that has not considered that to be a felony.
So now in my view, anybody who is been charged with clean air act felony and they've been convicted, even if they were not necessarily victims of a weaponized government,
they could still be eligible to file for a pardon because it's no longer criminal conduct under this administration.
So to answer your question directly, it really depends case by case, but a lot more people are going to be eligible to file for a pardon and get a pardon now than they would have been before.
It all really comes down to whether or not the people who were advising President Trump believe that their client, or I'm sorry, that the convict, the felon, was a victim of a weaponized government.
If they do, then it's got a good chance of being granted. If they don't, then it's just going to die on the vine and that's going to be the end of it.
It seems like it would be a very popular topic for them because I saw him the other day talk about DEF fluid and I never thought that the President would say it's a talk about DEF fluid,
but it seems to be very much on the radar because of the cost and the burden that it puts on the economy and business owners and farmers and tons of different groups of people.
Oh, the EPA just made an announcement yesterday that said that American farmers have a lawful right to repair their farm and other non-road diesel equipment.
Did you see this?
No.
Can I send you a link in the chat? I bet it can.
You can post this on the podcast when it publishes.
I don't know exactly what this means yet.
I don't know if it means that it only relates to farmers having the right to repair their own equipment and they don't have to take it back to the OEM manufacturer,
or whether it means that certain emissions controls are no longer need to be repaired on a vehicle.
But the guidance says that it clarifies what the Clean Air Act already states that temporary overrides of emission control systems are allowed when it is for the purpose of repair
to equipment to obtain proper functionality.
So what I imagine that that means is that all the emissions controls are still required on farm equipment,
but certain temporary emissions relief is granted by the OEM so that the farmers don't have to have a bunch of downtime with their vehicles.
So this DEF, what you're talking about with President Trump referring to the DEF, that's already in process at the EPA.
I think overall, as a truck owner, not a business owner involved in this, but as a truck owner in tuning in to watch this or listen to this podcast,
they're looking for the same thing that they have for years, which is the ability to go out and buy a brand new truck.
And maybe it has an EGR, and maybe it has a catalytic converter on it, but you don't have these aggressive systems that can burden them with high repair costs,
or sometimes you can't even get the parts depending on the supply chain and what's going on.
And that's a lot of the content, the popular content surrounding this is, and it really started like early last year,
was there's going to be no emissions on diesel trucks, they're going to be emissions free, they're going to be like they were before,
which we did talked about emissions rollback on a previous episode.
And I don't want to speculate because we don't know when it's going to happen or when it's going to happen,
but I think that's ultimately what people are looking for and it changes so fluidly,
which I'm sure we'll do another podcast this year when something else changes.
Yeah, it is changing really fluidly.
We're seeing things happen that I wasn't sure were going to happen.
I was hopeful, but I wasn't sure it was going to happen if you look back at my old episodes,
you probably hear me saying things like, you know, this is a felony, the DOJ is treating this as a felony and that's changed.
I don't envision a scenario where new diesel vehicles are going to come from the factory without the aggressive emission systems.
And there's a couple of reasons for that. The first reason for that is money.
I think that the OEMs make a lot of money repairing and selling parts for those emissions controls.
That's a little bit conspiratorial, but when most OEMs and dealerships make most their money on repairs,
it doesn't make a lot of sense to get rid of mandatory emissions controls when you can make money on those repairs.
And I've had this conversation with several people in the industry.
The other reason is that the EPA under Lee Zeldin has not changed or otherwise modified the NOx and particulate requirements
that are mandatory under the Clean Air Act or under the federal rule interpreting the Clean Air Act.
And I don't know if there's a way to effectuate a reduction in NOx and particulate, I think is easier, right?
But I don't know if there's a way to effectuate a reduction in NOx without the SCR and the DOC and the DPS.
Well, not the DPS, but the SCR and the DOC.
I'm not an engineer, I'm not a mechanic, I'm not an engineer mechanic, I'm not an inventor.
I don't know the answer to that question.
But it seems to me like if there was a way to reduce NOx and get rid of those emissions controls, people would be all over it.
And OEMs, on any level, domestic manufacturers, foreign manufacturers, if there was a way to reduce NOx without having the SCR and the DOC,
I think that people would want that and it would be a top priority.
And I think whoever invented that system would be a billionaire, right?
So, you know, you know more about that than I do probably.
Do you think that there's a roadmap for us to be able to reduce NOx down to the level that the EPA is mandating it be at now without those emission systems?
I don't know. I mean, I think there's a lot of technology that's progressed a ton since like mid-2007 till now.
And I think when I look back at maybe the gas world and how emissions were in the 80s and the low power levels that they had,
and Gila County wasn't that great to what you can buy now, whether it's a Raptor or a TRX or some of the crazy performance vehicles you can get that are...
But those have GPFs. So the new ones have GPFs. Or at least they did. I don't know if they're doing that anymore.
But like, those have some good technology emissions controls on them, don't they?
Yeah, I haven't spent much time on the gas filter side, but I've had some guests on that have talked about that potentially being part of the future.
I think technology-wise it would be fantastic. I just know from listeners like the biggest thing they're concerned with is their repair costs.
The cost to own these vehicles, especially once they're out of warranty.
And then the burden of that repair falls on them and they're like, this GPF is $6,000 or $8,000, or I can't get it.
And so I think that's most of the interest around this topic that I find is about price.
I mean, people are, look, the interest around it is that if you have a vehicle and it's been deleted, it's awesome, right?
Like, the interest isn't really around the repair costs if we're being honest.
The interest is really around being able to drive a truck that won't break down and also gets amazing fuel economy and amazing performance.
That's what deletes have always been about, always.
So like, are people really concerned about the repair costs on their $100,000 Ford F-350 Dually?
Probably not. They probably just want it to perform amazing and they probably just want to not have to worry about terrible gas mileage.
And I think that's okay. But I think that's great if we can make it work.
But I think that there are environmental concerns that even the Trump administration has been dragging its feet on.
And those primarily have to do with NOx and they primarily have to do with like the impact on the OEMs.
It was really cool to chat with you on this topic because when I saw the DOJ mention that and it was like a firestorm of posts and questions and content.
And I always appreciate how you approach this.
Yeah, deletes are not legal. Everybody, don't do it.
That's kind of the big question from it.
But after our last episode, we had touched on pardons when you were on.
And I had a lot of a good number of shop owners that have been through this process already reach out and say, how do I get one?
So I wanted to provide an opportunity on the podcast for you to give out your contact information so that they can reach out to you direct and be able to ask you because I know it's important to them.
And a lot of them have lost freedoms that they hold very dear and they feel that it was weaponized against them.
So how can somebody reach out to you and your team if they feel or want to pursue a pardon?
Yeah, you guys can go to our website at sassancables.com and you can look at my, my email is on there at steward at sassancables.com.
I'm more likely to respond to an email than I am to a voice message.
So if you can email me and they don't get back to you, then don't fret, I'll get back to you eventually.
But just send me an email, go to my website, you can just look up Stuart cables online and you'll see my website.
And you guys go ahead and look that up and then give me a call when we can talk about cost and we can talk about all that good stuff.
You know, I don't want people to get their hopes up too much about the pardons because it is still kind of a long shot.
It's a less than 50% chance, but the possibility of getting one is way higher now than it's ever been.
And so if you have the money and you are interested in pursuing that opportunity and you want to work with myself and my team, then please send me an email.
I do want to give a shout out to my co-counsel, Sarah Hall.
She's also based in D.C. and she's been just one of the most amazing, helpful people to me in navigating this, you know, DOJ world.
So she helps me with the pardons too.
And we've got a really good team and if anybody wants to avail themselves of our services or get our help, then we'll be happy to talk to them.
Very cool. Well, thank you for chatting with me today, Stuart. I appreciate your time.
I know it's just kind of short notice once this happened and lining everything up, but I really appreciate your knowledge and experience with it.
And hopefully next time that I have you on, it's something cool again that has progressed that we could chat about.
So it's great to talk with you.
Yeah, sounds good. Thanks, Patrick.
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They've got you covered with a bunch of different choices for blade steel, blade shaped, different handle designs, opening mechanisms.
We also get free shipping over $50. So we really appreciate them offering that discount code just for Diesel podcast listeners.
Also want to give a shout out to some of our Patreon supporters, Robert, John, TSW, Diesel, all of our other Patreon supporters, all of you who follow us on social media.
We appreciate all your support here in year 10 of the Diesel podcast and look forward to bringing you more of the content that you want to hear in 2026.
Until next time, keep the shiny side up.
Thanks for watching.
About this episode
The recent announcement from the Department of Justice regarding diesel deletes has sparked significant discussion in the diesel community. Experts clarify that while the DOJ will no longer pursue criminal charges for Clean Air Act tampering, civil violations remain enforceable. The episode delves into the implications of this shift, including the potential for ongoing civil cases and the historical context of emissions enforcement. Listeners will gain insights into the legal landscape and what it means for diesel enthusiasts and businesses involved in emissions tuning.
Original notes
The Department of Justice released a memo halting criminal charges for
individuals and businesses doing diesel deletes. So how and why are they
still being sued? Are diesel deletes still not legal? Lawyer Stewart
Cables joins us today to unpack the latest!
Stewart D. Cables is a founding partner of Hassan + Cables. Stewart
specializes in general business representation and a variety of trial
work. Stewart's practice areas include complex civil litigation,
employment law, criminal and DUI defense, transactional work for
corporations and LLCs, and counsel for non-profit entities.
Stewart Cables
E: [email protected]
P: 303-625-1025 ext.2
https://www.hassancables.com/stewart-d-cables
--------------------------------
Disclaimer: This video is for general information purposes only. It is
not intended to provide legal advice of any kind. No one should act, or
refrain from acting, based solely upon the information provided on this
podcast, without first seeking appropriate legal or other professional
advice.
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