Last Friday USCCA Chairman Tim Schmidt released a YouTube video responding to varied criticisms of that organization.

In particular, Tim spoke to criticism of how USCCA managed its legal defense obligations to two of its members–Kayla Giles (later found guilty of murder at trial and sentenced to life) and Alan Colie (found guilty on a mixed verdict, and ironically sentenced the day prior to the release of this USCCA video).

Full disclosure–some of that criticism has come from me, and can be found here: https://lawofselfdefense.com/uscca

Having watched Tim’s video, however, I can’t help but note that it fails to actually address key concerns about how USCCA handled the Giles and Colie cases, and therefore fails to address concerns about how much trust USCCA members can confidently place in the organization to “have their backs,” as USCCA marketing materials proclaim.

Today’s Law of Self Defense Show will be a response to this USCCA video, explaining my remaining concerns and where I see Tim’s explanations of the Giles and Colie cases to fall short.

Resources

USCCA Video:  “They Are LYING To You (USCCA CEO Confronts Deceptive Claims)”

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Transcript

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NOTE: All LOSD video/podcast transcripts are prepared in rough form, provided solely for our members’ convenience & documentation, and are not thoroughly reviewed for accuracy. Refer to the original video/podcast for the authoritative form of this content.

BEGIN

Welcome everybody welcome to today’s episode of the law of self defense. Come on in, make yourselves comfortable. I am, of course, attorney Andrew Branca for the law of self defense. Thank you. Thank you so very much today. We are going to be talking about you. S. C. A. 1 of the most prominent. Of the self defense insurance companies, they’re not really insurance companies.

They’re hence the scare quotes, but that’s commonly how they’re referred to. Simply for. Ease of reference, I’ll wrongly, but conveniently refer to them as 1 of the variety of self defense. Insurance companies purport to do amongst other things. Is to cover your legal costs if you’re charged in a use of force case, and your use of force is claimed as self defense.

They also provide some civil liability protection. But I focus mostly on the criminal part of it. They have a magazine, they have training materials. And they’ve been getting some criticism, including from me. And how they handled a couple of cases recently involving their members. And the appearance is that they’ve simply declined to cover the members who were involved in a use of force event charged with very serious crimes.

One of those members was convicted at trial. And sentenced to life, plus 30 years in prison, initially covered that member, but cut off coverage before the trial even began. So that member went to trial without the backing of got convicted life, plus 30. And then more recently, another 1 of their members was had a mixed verdict after trial.

They were acquitted on. Some use of force charges and convicted of firing a gun inside a building, even though they were acquitted of the actual shooting itself they were just sentenced this last Thursday to a time served on that conviction and U. S. C. A. Apparently did not cover that member for their trial either.

And so they’ve been getting quite a bit of criticism about this for me and other places. By the way, the banner on the bottom there is an aggregated. Web page where my various critiques over these two cases involving U. S. C. A. Members blog posts and videos. You can read them there if you like law of self defense dot com slash U.

S. C. A. So they’ve been getting critiqued by me and others independent of me about their handling in these cases and I guess it got to a point where they felt compelled to issue a response to these critiques and that response came in the form of a video. Recorded by U. S. C. A. Chairman Tim Schmidt.

And released last Friday on their YouTube channel, and I presume elsewhere so today’s show is going to essentially be a response video to U. S. C. A. S. explanation of these cases and U. S. C. A. S. characterizing these critiques of. Them as lies. And so they want to clarify what they’re characterizing as lies.

All I can do is share with you their claims in this video released last Friday, my own perspectives of these cases and let you decide for yourself what you think about them as an organization that Proports to cover their members if they’re involved in the use of force event and are brought to trial on criminal charges.

With that out of the way, let’s go ahead and launch the formal start of today’s show. Here we go.

Okay. So if the audio was messed up before, it should be better now. Sorry about that, folks. I had forgotten to change a setting. Hopefully it wasn’t. Too bad, but we should be on the correct settings now. All right. Yeah, I thought it was a little odd, too. I see in the comments here on the law self defense member dashboard that the the U.

S. C. A. Decided to drop this video on a Friday night Christmas weekend, but whatever. I don’t know how much exposure they’ll get. I guess we can look right. We’ll see it 42, 000 views in the last 5 days. That’s quite a lot. For those of you by the way, I’ll put a link to their video in the description of today’s show.

So you can, have the opportunity to look at it yourself. I’m certainly not trying to hide anything. It’s relatively short. If you do look for it the thumbnail they used was, let’s see, is it this? It’s this. Make that bigger. So that’s the image you want to look for. There’s Tim Schmidt, but the video itself is just Tim talking to a camera For 7 and a half minutes.

That’s what we’ll be looking at. Let’s see, that should be that’s their video there. Before we jump into that, I do, of course. Have to mention the sponsor of today’s law of self defense show, which is none other than law self defense itself. In the form of a free copy of our bestselling book, the law self defense principles, your handbook to being hard to convict.

If you’re ever compelled to defend yourself, your family, your property with force against another person, check out the book on Amazon, it’s five star rated bestseller in its segment on Amazon, but don’t buy it on Amazon. Amazon will charge you for the book and shipping and handling. We only ask that you cover the cost of shipping the book to you, the book itself, we give you for free and you can take advantage of that at law of self defense dot com slash free book or scan that QR code there on the screen.

It’ll take you to the same place. Law of self defense dot com slash free book. Can’t make it cheaper than free folks. And it’s a real physical book. It’s this is it. This is what you’ll get. It’s not some PDF download, hence the shipping fee. All right, so let’s talk a little bit about the Kayla Giles case and the Alan Coley case.

Those are the ones I referenced before. Tim talks about a few other things in his video, but that’s really the heart of my critique of USCCAs is those cases. By the way, I should mention, I do a lot of partnering with one of USCCAs competitors, CCWSAFE. I think they’re a great organization. I’m personally a member of CCWSAFE.

I used to be when they, when USCCA had this, I was a I guess a founding member of their legal advisory board. I left the board some years ago. I don’t know if it’s still, I don’t believe it’s still. Operating, but I don’t know for sure. I’m certainly I’m not a part of it anymore. And what else should I say about that?

Oh, Tim. So I’ve met Tim. And I have to say in person, he’s a very congenial guy. He’s a nice guy. He presents his. Someone you’d want to hang out, have a beer with. So I don’t have any personal animus towards Tim at all. And I don’t have any animus towards USCCA as an organization, except for their handling of these two cases that I find very troubling.

But I’ll explain my reasons for that in today’s show. And it’s pretty clear to me, or at least I perceive Tim’s video statement that we’re going to be watching is something that was almost certainly scripted with the assistance of legal counsel over at U. S. C. A. I would hope that’s what they did.

And it’s carefully, it comes across as carefully crafted to appear to address some of the critiques of U. S. C. A. without actually doing so because my concerns remain. Even after this video, so just some kind of, foundational context there for how I approached it. I’ll just do a quick summaries of these 2 cases.

Kayla Giles was a woman who shot and killed her husband. She was either divorced or they were going through the divorce. It was a child. Custody transfer swap in, I believe a Walmart parking lot. And she during that process, she says she was attacked by her husband and she shot and killed him.

No doubt that she shot and killed him, for sure. And she was charged with murder, and she called USCCA. And USCCA paid the first 50, 000 of her legal defense and then stopped paying and her defense attorney kept running up charges. They were, they exceeded the pretrial expense of her trial exceeded, I believe, even the cap that USCCA would have been obligated to pay.

I think they were at that time, the maximum they would have been obligated to pay for her defense was 150, 150, 000. And the defense counsel had already. Reach that before trial even began. But in any case, U. S. C. A. As I recall, paid the 1st 50 and then just stopped and never really provided a substantive explanation for why they stopped.

Except for saying in court documents, because they were sued by Kayla Giles lawyer in federal court for not having continued to pay the legal defense. And all they ever really said in the, in their response documents in that civil filing was, we don’t think we have an obligation to pay. That’s it, so they didn’t feel like it essentially is their position and Kayla Giles would go on to get convicted.

Okay. And in Tim’s video, he presents this as C, it was murder all along. She ended up convicted of murder and sentenced to life plus 30 years in prison. And we shouldn’t have a moral obligation. In fact, we have a legal obligation to not compensate people for criminal acts. And this was determined to be a criminal act.

Of course, there’s some reasoning problems there, right? Now, we’d all like to believe we live in a country where how much money you can bring to a legal defense doesn’t affect the outcome of the trial, right? That someone who’s got 100 to their name should get the same justice and due process of law and legal defense as someone with a million dollars to their name.

But we don’t live in that world, folks. The money matters. The resources you can bring to that legal war in a criminal courtroom matter. It makes a difference. And and the people who are deciding on a verdict, everyone who’s evaluating a use of force event in the aftermath with perfect 20 20 hindsight, they don’t actually know what actually happened.

In any absolute sense, the jury doesn’t know. They weren’t there. They weren’t eyewitnesses to the shooting. All the jury knows is the narratives that they’re hearing in the courtroom, the narrative of innocence being put on by the defense and the narrative of guilt being put on by the prosecution and the more resources you can bring to a defense, all other things being equal, the better your prospects for getting acquitted and the fewer resources you have, the greater the risks of getting convicted because the state has effectively infinite resources.

To bring against you so Not having this coverage by U. S. C. A. Having it cut short by U. S. C. A. Can only be interpreted as being extremely damaging to Kayla Giles defense team’s ability to secure her an acquittal. We’ll never know if she would have been acquitted or even perhaps convicted of some lesser offense.

Who knows? But we’ll never know if she would have been convicted if she’d had the legal resources that USCCA and its marketing materials say they’ll provide. To say, hey, she got convicted, that proves we were right by USCCA, it strikes me as a circular argument. First of all, you didn’t know she’d be convicted when you cut off the money.

You did that before the trial even started. So there, there was no finding of criminal conduct at the time you made the decision to cut off our resources. So you didn’t know that moving forward. And I suspect what happened is that I suspect that USCCA looked at the shooting after they provided the first 50 grand, it was covered in the news.

There may be, have been discovery available to them and they looked at the facts and they thought to themselves, this doesn’t look like self defense to us. USCCA. And therefore we’re just not going to cover her anymore. Now, Kayla Giles was permitted to argue self defense by the court. There are circumstances by the way, in which a court can tell you, no, self defense is not on the table.

There is no reasonable interpretation of these facts. That could possibly qualify as self defense. So an example might be like an active shooter scenario. Someone goes into a school and just starts firing. There’s no self defense narrative there. And the court would not allow that shooter to claim self defense.

And if a court doesn’t allow someone to claim self defense, I would agree that none of these self defense insurance organizations should be obliged to cover their criminal defense. It was not a self defense case. If no reasonable interpretation of the facts could conclude self defense, On the legal merits, but that’s not what happened with Kayla Giles.

The court allowed her to argue self defense. There was a narrative of self defense presented by her lawyer, supported by facts. And my view has always been if a court’s allowing a defendant to argue self defense, then these companies should cover that legal defense for their member. They’re paid in full member in good standing that it should be the court that decides whether or not self defense is a permitted legal defense in this case, Not U.

S. C. A. U. S. C. A. doesn’t have the legal expertise to make that decision. I don’t believe. But in any case, that’s not U. S. C. A. Never said that at the time I asked them why they weren’t covering Kayla Giles and they wouldn’t give me an answer. So it felt to me like U. S. C. A. Just decided we don’t like this shooting.

It doesn’t look like self defense to us. We’re not going to cover her. And by the way, there were their reasons. Was there evidence to support that perception? And there was and yeah. I should make clear, too, in every criminal trial where self defense is being argued as a legal defense, there’s always a side that’s the anti self defense side that this was not self defense, right?

The prosecutor is arguing. It wasn’t self defense. So every member of any one of these organizations. That goes to trial on a use of force charge. There’s always a narrative of guilt. There’s always someone with legal expertise who’s saying no, this was not self defense. That’s the state. That’s the prosecution.

If you’re not going to cover a member simply because somebody is saying it doesn’t look like self defense to them there’s always somebody saying it doesn’t look like self defense to them. That is the prosecution’s argument. And if that’s the basis for denying a member coverage, what’s the member paying for?

Because that’s always going to be the case if you go to trial. But there were facts from which You could make an argument that this wasn’t self defense. Obviously the state that this Kayla Giles had purchased her gun only recently, I think a few weeks before she shot her husband. And it was when she purchased her gun that.

At a local gun store that I guess she saw a pamphlet or somebody gave her a pamphlet about U. S. C. A. and she decided to sign up for U. S. C. A. coverage at the same time and U. S. C. A. may have been of the mindset and I’m just speculating here because they’ve never told us they may have been in the mindset that this woman had just decided she was going to murder her husband, bought the gun for that unlawful purpose.

And at the same time picked up U. S. C. A. coverage so that her legal defense expenses would be covered. And that’s acting in bad faith. And we don’t like that. And maybe that was going through her mind. Alternatively, what was going through her mind is perhaps my divorce from my husband has turned really contentious, potentially violent.

So much so that I’m in so much fear of my safety that I’m person purchasing a gun or lawful self defense purposes. And by the way, if I ever have to use that gun, there’s a good chance I’m going to get prosecuted. Lawful cases of self defense get prosecuted. Look at Kyle Rittenhouse, look at George Zimmerman.

And if I’m going to get prosecuted, it’s really expensive. I don’t have a lot of money. USCCA in their brochure is saying, Hey, if I shoot someone. And I’m arguing self defense at trial. They’ll cover my legal expenses. Yeah, I’ll pay for that. I’ll sign up for that. And she did. So that’s the Kayla Gow’s case now serving life plus 30 years and her conviction was just affirmed on appeal, which again doesn’t really tell us much appeals are for losers.

The chance of getting meaningful relief on appeal is less than 1 percent and the appellate courts not re examining the facts and evidence in the case. That’s what a trial court does. The appellate court’s review of a case is very limited. It’s just, was there a technical legal error made and quite possibly there wasn’t.

That doesn’t mean that Kayla Giles might not have secured an acquittal if she’d had the resources that USCCA promised for her legal defense. And of course, listen, I don’t know if Kayla Giles committed murder or not either. I w I also was not an eyewitness. I was not there. I don’t know what’s going through her mind, but I think it shouldn’t be up to me to decide.

In her in the execution of her legal defense is just summarily decide what I think it was. That’s what we have courts for. And I don’t think it should be up to us to decide. I think we wait for a legal finding. All right. So that was Kayla guys. Now Alan Coley was a a door dash type food delivery guy.

He was in a a shopping mall food court. He picked up food to deliver to somebody. And he was confronted by one of these internet bully type personalities that. Prankster types that make videos of the pranks, they’re pulling and put them on the internet to get clicks and money or however that business model works.

And this prankster was sufficiently aggressive that Alan Coley pulled out his pistol and shot him. He survived the prankster, but Alan Coley was charged with unlawfully shooting someone some other offense. I don’t recall what it was and discharging a gun in a building and his case. Went to trial and one of the things the state wanted to present to the jury was the fact that Alan Coley immediately after firing this shot into the prankster called USCCA, which is what the USCCA membership materials tell you to do.

They give you a little card. Here’s our hotline number. If you’re involved in a use of force event, call us. So that’s what he did. And when the prosecutor found out about that, the prosecutor said I want to show this to the jury as some kind of form of malice that he wasn’t cared about the victim that he shot.

He just was calling USCCA to get his murder insurance coverage. I’m sure it’s how the prosecutor would have characterized it to the jury. Now, ultimately I think the judge excluded that request to put it in front of the jury. I think mostly because the prosecutor, not on the merits of the argument, but simply because the prosecutor had waited too long.

To make the motion. So it was no longer timely. But in any case, what that tells us is that Alan Coley was a USCCA member. That’s why he called them. And USCCA has never said he wasn’t a member.

Yet, in the news reports I read on that shooting, it turned out that Alan Coley had a public defender. You only get a public defender if you’re indigent. If you don’t have the resources for private counsel. Which suggested to me that Alan Coley’s legal expenses were not being covered. By U. S. C. A.

And some other lawyers I’m familiar with had looked more closely into this case. They actually called the public defender and spoke with him and the public defender said, yeah I’m reporting 2nd hand now. The public defender said, yeah, no, I looked at the U. S. C. A. paperwork, but it says it doesn’t cover criminal acts.

And my client was charged with a crime, so I assumed it was only civil. litigation coverage. It just didn’t cover criminal stuff. So I never pursued it. Now, Alan Coley ended up with a mixed verdict. He was acquitted for the actual shooting charge, but then convicted on the firing of a gun inside a building unlawfully charged, which is an insane mixed verdict because The only way he could have been acquitted on the actual shooting charge was on the grounds of self defense.

And if it was lawful self defense, then the shooting inside a building would also be legally privileged. So I can only assume it’s some kind of compromise verdict. I know the jury had difficulty coming to a unanimous verdict. So they may have compromised by acquitting him on the two more serious charges, but convicting him of the least serious charge.

And he was just sentenced last week to time served on that least serious charge. He could have been looking at five years. So time served. He’s convicted. I don’t remember. It must have been a felony with a five year maximum. So now he’s a convicted felon. Would he have been convicted? And by the way, we know because he was acquitted on the use of force charge that this was, as the court determined, the jury determined, this was lawful self defense.

And yet it appears that he was not covered by U. S. C. A. In his trial. And we’ll see in the video that Tim Schmidt never claims that they provided resources to him in the trial. He does say they’re gonna cover him on his appeal. I don’t know if that’s because they’ve gotten so much criticism about not covering apparently Alan Coley for his trial defense.

But again, as I mentioned earlier, the prospects of getting meaningful relief on appeal folks is less than 1%. So you really have to win a trial. It’s not like the appeal is a second bite at the apple. Oh, all the legal presumptions are against you now. When you’re at trial with a jury, you’re presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

But once you’re convicted by a jury, even if the appellate court reviews your case, you’re presumed guilty. You’re not presumed innocent anymore. It’s presumed that the jury verdict is correct. So overcoming that is. Extremely difficult. You don’t want to be trying to win on appeal. You want to be winning at the trial level.

So that’s the Alan Coley case. Some background there. And again, I have these my various critiques of this of on this. I’ll put the banner back up for just a second. You do need to be a U. S. C. A. Sorry, you need to be a law self defense member to access this web page. But you can do that at law self defense dot com slash U.

S. C. A. It has my most recent post about Alan Coley and a couple on Kayla Giles and her civil suit against U. S. C. A. In an effort to get them to cover her legal expenses, as they promised her.

All right, so that’s a law of self defense dot com slash U. S. C. A.

Now, before I jump into the video, Tim Schmidt’s video from last Friday, let me just quickly go through the comments and questions on the law of self defense. Dashboard. And by the way the only place we answer questions and comments is on the Law of Self Defense member dashboard. You need to be a member.

The good news is it’s dirt cheap to be a Law of Self Defense member. You can try it out for two weeks for just 99 cents, folks. Unlimited full member access to all our content, including our live streams. We do most days of the week and you get all your questions and comments answered for free. You can take advantage of that two week trial for 99 cents that law of self defense dot com slash trial or scan that QR code.

And after the two week trial, it’s still dirt cheap. It’s only about 30 cents a day, less than 10 a month. Be a law self defense member. So check it out for 99 cents law of self defense dot com slash trial.

Okay, let’s take a look, catch up on the questions and comments before we dive into the video. Jeffrey asked question. Can you do an evaluation of attorneys on retainer? Critic. Of ccw safe, I have a gut feeling against a or, but I’d like to hear your thoughts. I think every one of these organizations is subject to a certain degree of.

Of criticism or doubt, none of them are perfect. They all have strengths and weaknesses. I do a lot of partnering with ccw safe. I chose them as the best fit for me. I’m a ccw safe member, but that doesn’t mean they’re the best fit for everybody. You have to look at each one of these offerings.

And by the way, the attorneys on retainer guys. I haven’t looked closely at their program, but I’ve spoken with them, communicated with them and they strike me as two smart lawyers. I would be perfectly satisfied having them represent me in a use of force case. So they strike me as sharp, savvy lawyers who would do a good job at a legal defense.

Does that mean they offer everything that USCCA offers or CCWSAFE offers? These are all different flavors of these things, folks. You can only look at them and see which one is the best fit for your circumstances. Your best fit may be different than my best fit. I would encourage you to look at the attorney on retainer stuff.

It’s another view. It’s another perspective on these types of products and services. And I only urge people to make an informed decision. So more information is generally better information. Let’s see.

Member says if a member is paying for legal services for self defense and the court says you can argue self defense, how does the math come out to not pay for the defense? Yeah, I don’t get it. I don’t get it either. I think it’s a terrible. Yeah, Kelly Giles was in Louisiana, right? Alan Coley was in I don’t remember.

Was it Minnesota?

Quick Google search.

Loudon. It says Dulles.

These local news reports, they just presume you’re in the in the area. North Virginia, I believe, is where it was. Yeah. Yep. North Northern Virginia. So the state of Virginia. All right. So let’s get the Tim’s email now, and I’ll be stopping and starting as I go through this, of course.

And again, I’ll include a link, so you can see it all for yourself, but it’s not very long. It’s only a 7 and a half minutes long. One other thing I should mention, I’m going to disagree. Or and or add some context to some of Tim’s comments here. I don’t mean to be suggesting that Tim’s lying or fabricating or being necessarily disingenuous about some of what he says.

He’s not a lawyer, so I’m going to be explaining some legal realities here that he, frankly, may not genuinely personally may not be aware of. Now, the organization should be aware of it. They’re providing a form of legal services, but Tim, I believe his background is as an engineer and, of course, running U.

S. C. A. And so it’s pop. It’s possible that he believes some of this stuff or, and, or he believes it’s a full and adequate explanation. I don’t agree with that on some of these points. He may not know that himself. So of course he doesn’t hesitate to come out and say say everyone else is lying to you.

That’s the headline of his video. They are lying to you. USCCA CEO confronts deceptive claims. So I would be interested. I am one of the critics on these two cases. I’d like to be told where I’m lying or where I’m being deceptive. Frankly, this is best hashed out. I think if people really care about the truth in a debate kind of format, like a Q and a type of format, but I don’t think USCCA is interested in doing that.

All right, let’s take a look and go ahead and start the video. A wise business mentor once warned me that any leader of a big movement must be prepared for unjust criticism, false accusations, and fraud. Expect the best, prepare for the worst is important advice for self defense and for whatever your god given mission is in life.

Now recently some people and organizations have launched several attacks on the USCCA ranging from outright lying to deceptive half truths. I’d like to know what the lies and deceptive half truths are. To spin up a false narrative. Now look, I love comedy. What’s the false narrative? He never tells us these things, so I don’t really know what he’s arguing against in this video.

It’s all very kind of amorphous, ambiguous. I love the free market. The USCC intentionally makes our membership better every single year while our competitors continuously try to make a product that compares to ours. You know who wins in a situation like that? The marketplace. The end customer. Every one of us wins.

But outright lying and complete intellectual dishonesty? Those are the practices of cowards. I can’t remember now. He’s going to tell us what the outright lies are. What constitutes cowardice on the part of his critics? I don’t remember him doing that. You cannot sell their product on its own merit.

They are a disservice to the marketplace. They’re short sighted, and frankly, they’re dangerous. So please allow me to address a few of the obvious lies coming your way. Okay, maybe he does put it out. I will say in this first one minute, so far nothing he said addresses concerns about USCCA’s reliability in covering their members.

He does go on to talk about Kayla Giles and Alan Coley, but so far, nothing substantive. These lies center on the self defense liability insurance covering the USCCA and its members. So for the purpose of this video, we’ll not focus on all of the other good stuff inside USCCA membership, like expert training, education, our magazine, the 24 7 critical response team, and so on.

By the way, I’ve seen years ago, I saw USCCA’s What they were using then for training materials. And they were very good. They were better than the stuff I got as an NRA instructor from the NRA. And the magazine’s very high quality. So no critique about those things. My only critiques are can you trust them to cover you if you’re a USCCA member?

Okay, here we go. One crazy lie is the USCCA and the insurance carrier that issues a self defense liability insurance policy will drop you if you’re charged with a crime. This is absurd. This policy absolutely covers criminal charges. That’s the whole point. You’ll likely never even need this insurance, unless you didn’t cover Kayla Giles and Alan Coley.

Unless you’re being charged with a crime after defending yourself. There are thousands of members who have had their legal fees covered after they were charged with a crime. Thousands of members. I don’t think there’s another company out there who could boast that same level of success in helping responsible Americans protect themselves.

Is there another company out there, any of your competitors that similarly. Decline to cover their members. Tens of millions of dollars of legal fees have been paid out on behalf of USCCA members. We’ve added this unique benefit in the first place because good guys wouldn’t get through the legal system until after a long and very expensive legal battle.

That’s also why the self defense liability insurance policy includes no limit on defense expenses. Unless you’re Kayla Giles and Alan Coley, then the limit’s zero. 50, 000 for Kayla Giles, a third of, What she’d been promised and apparently nothing for Alan Coley at trial for a situation where the insurance company could decide to not cover a claim rather than focus on the truth That thousands of people have been charged with everything from brandishing to murder and have had coverage because of their status as uscca members Oh, no, instead our detractors like to focus on the few rare occasions where a claim was not covered So yeah, of course because it feels like you’re abrogating your obligation And if we don’t know if we’re going to be picked to not get covered what are we paying for in terms of membership?

The fact that thousands of people are covered doesn’t make the service reliable. If for arbitrary reasons. You might not get covered that then it’s not a reliable service anymore. And by the way, there are good reasons not to cover people. I already did the school shooter type of scenario where even a court would simply not allow the self defense argument to be made in court under those circumstances.

But all of these programs also have. Conditions and exclusions. One of the conditions is you have to pay your member fee, right? So if USCCA had said, Hey, Kayla Giles and Alan Coley, they’d allowed their membership to lapse. Get it. Then you’re not covered. Or if there was a particular exclusion, we don’t cover, I don’t know, machine guns even if legally possessed and one of them had used a machine gun and therefore triggered that exclusion of coverage, so long as the member is informed.

Of that exclusion provision before they become a member while they’re a member. It can’t be something that happens after the fact that you impose an exclusion that nobody was aware of at the time. You can’t just make up new rules after the client has been compelled to defend themselves. But there are rational reasons why any of these organizations might choose not to cover a member.

I just don’t hear any of them in the case of Kayla Giles or Alan Coley. So I’d like to set the record straight on how that works. The insurance company could make the decision to not cover a claim if there is clear evidence that the member did not act in self defense. So who decides that? Because there’s always the If it’s going to trial, the prosecutor is always arguing as far as they’re concerned, there is clear evidence this was not self defense.

The prosecution is going to have to disprove the claim of self defense beyond a reasonable doubt. They’re not doing that unless they believe they have clear evidence it was not self defense. So by Tim’s own statement here, he’s saying, hey, we may not cover if there’s clear evidence that it wasn’t self defense.

There’s always somebody arguing there’s clear evidence it was not self defense. That’s the state. And that happens in every criminal prosecution of a self defense case. So this is a simply, this is effectively an eject handle for USCCA to inject, if they feel like it, from any criminal prosecution.

Because there’s always a viable claim that it was not self defense. That there’s clear evidence it was not self defense. If 100 percent of the evidence was in favor of self defense and there was no contrary evidence, the charges would be dismissed. Because the state has to disprove self defense beyond a reasonable doubt.

They need evidence to do that. So the main question is, who’s deciding if this threshold of clear evidence has been met such that USCCA is going to tell you’re not covered? It could be, we could say the trial judge is going to decide. He could decide to not allow self defense as a legal defense at all.

And I would agree if that happens, USCCA should be freed of any obligation to pay for the legal defense. You might argue that the jury’s verdict does that, that once a jury returns a verdict of murder, that the self defense insurance company would be free of further obligation. There’s been an adjudication.

It was not self defense in the case. Others don’t do that. CCW say, if you’re convicted, a trial will continue to cover you on your appeal. Even after you’ve been convicted, but I would understand that would be a rational argument for us to make, assuming, of course, they told their members that, hey, once you’re convicted your coverage ends, by the way, convicted also means if you take a plea deal, that’s a conviction.

If conviction is the trigger, then even if you’re not found guilty by a jury, but the state says, tell you what we could charge you with murder. Instead, we’ll charge you with simple battery, a misdemeanor. You only time served, so you won’t have to go to prison. It won’t be a felony conviction.

That can be a pretty sweet deal. And you take that deal, you plead to the battery. Now you’ve confessed to having committed a criminal act. And U. S. C. A. Then reserves the right to recoup all the legal coverage. It’s provided you that can be

very common on murder and manslaughter cases. I consult on for those cases to run up 150, 000, 200, 000 in legal expense before the trial starts. So what happens on the eve of the trial? If suddenly you get a sweetheart plea deal offer misdemeanor time served, not even a felony, And if you know that if you take that plea deal, which is extremely advantageous to you from a legal perspective, you’re going to have to cough up 200 grand to give back to U.

S. C. A. Do you have that kind of money sitting around because your lawyer doesn’t have to pay it back? He provided the legal services. U. S. C. A. Wants you to pay them back. Would that deter you from taking a really nice plea deal? Would that lead you to risk going to trial on the felony charge rather than taking a sweetheart plea deal?

Is that a good place to be in? Does that feel like USCCA wants you to be in the most advantageous position possible? It doesn’t to me. By the way, those competitors all have a similar ability to decide if your self defense argument is valid or not. The insurance company would not decide to do in theory any of their competitors has the ability to do that.

But has any of them ever done that and under what circumstances, because I’m not aware of anybody. Except USCCA taking cases that are being argued to self defense at trial with permission of the court being denied coverage. Any of them and I coverage to someone on a whim. Think of it like this. If the facts of the case can at all be construed as potentially being a covered self defense incident, the insurance company has to provide coverage or else they’d be in breach of contract.

Heck, if that ever happens, they’d be inviting a lawsuit to remind them and us what we’re here for. And that’s exactly what happened with USCCA. Tim, you paid the first 50, 000 of Kayla Guy’s legal defense, then you cut her off. And you got sued. Her defense counsel sued you in federal court. And we know this is true because he’s going to mention the Kayla Giles lawsuit in just a moment.

But we don’t need to. So obviously the fact that you could be sued doesn’t mean it can’t happen. It happened with you and you got sued. But it happened anyway. You still denied her that legal coverage. Reminder that we exist to serve you, the responsibly armed American. And if anyone out there tries to imply that we resent having to pay out, believe me, they’re dead wrong.

The massive checks involved with helping innocent people defend themselves in court are some of the happiest moments of our professional lives. But here’s the other side of the coin. The insurance company is required by law to not 100 percent crystal clear that they did not act in self defense in any way.

Again, who decides that? Because that’s the problem for me. If a trial court’s letting a defendant argue self defense, it’s not 100 percent clear that it wasn’t self defense. So the court expert, the judge is making that call, that there was a viable, rational self defense argument to make here. And USCCA is supplanting that judge’s professional opinion, so they don’t have to pay out money?

Does that sound like USCCA is prioritizing your legal defense? The court’s letting you argue self defense, but U. S. C. A. is saying no, we don’t care. We don’t care what the judge says. We’re going to decide whether or not we feel this is a viable self defense case. U. S. C. A. is going to make that decision.

Now, most of the time, this can only happen with that final, unappealable criminal conviction. What’s an unappealable criminal conviction? That’s not a legal thing. So you’re convicted at trial. You always have a right of appeal. The prospects for winning meaningful relief on appeal are very poor, less than 1%.

But you have that right of appeal. There’s no unappealable conviction. Not as a matter of principle. I guess your trial could have been perfect. And and you got convicted and there’s no appealable issues, but who would decide that? Trials are complicated things. There’s almost always arguments that can be made.

If a judge excluded any piece of evidence offered by the defense that’s an appealable issue. If the judge disagreed with any jury instruction request from the defense that’s an appealable issue. If those things are, of course, preserved for appeal and blah, blah, blah. Until then, until that moment, they are fighting alongside you with the assumption that you’re innocent until proven guilty.

There was a time when it became very clear. So Kayla Giles was legally presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But USCCA cut off her coverage. Alan Coley was legally presumed to be innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. And you knew about his trial because he called your hotline the moment after the shooting happened.

But he had a public defender. And you And nowhere in this video does Tim say, Hey, there’s a misunderstanding. We actually covered his legal expenses. And you think he would be saying that in this video if that had happened? So I think the only reasonable conclusion to come to is that USCCA did not cover Alan Coley, even though he called them as instructed by USCCA in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

And perfectly clear that a member had committed premeditated murder. In fact, after originally paying a 50, 000 retainer to the attorneys of Kayla Giles, evidence including internet search history, witness testimony, attempts by Kayla to hide evidence, and surveillance footage was turned over that overwhelmingly demonstrated that this was an act of premeditated murder.

Kayla lost in court after a jury quickly determined that she murdered her husband. And again, I’ll just circle back to the point I made earlier in this show. Kayla Giles was convicted of murder. She’s sentenced to life plus 30 years. Her conviction was just affirmed by the appellate courts earlier this year.

But wouldn’t she have been convicted if USCCA had provided the legal resources? Tim just told us. The reason U. S. C. A. provides this legal coverage is because of how costly these defenses are. He can’t simultaneously pretend that denying of the resources to Kayla Giles didn’t influence her guilty verdict.

You can’t both can’t be true. The money can’t matter. That’s why you should become a member because we’ll provide you with all that money. But the money also doesn’t matter. Kayla Giles was convicted after all. It’s logically incoherent. And just so the timeline is clear, it is public record that Kayla Giles sued the insurance company during her criminal trial for terminating her coverage.

That case was dismissed and it demonstrates an important point. So this is really disingenuous. This is, and I want to be fair to Tim. He may not understand this, but if there’s a criminal trial and a civil suit involving the same matter, it’s very common for the civil suit to be paused. While the more important criminal trial takes place, that’s normal procedure.

When Kayla Giles is being criminally prosecuted, USCCA cuts off her coverage at 50, 000. Doesn’t give her the 150, 000, which is what I believe they were apparently obligated to provide. And she sues them in federal court. USCCA then makes a motion in federal court saying, listen, we should pause. This civil suit until the criminal trial is over, but look at the position that puts Kayla Giles.

And that means she can’t she cannot compel us. C. A. To provide the coverage. They promised her. Until she goes through the trial without the resources, they’re denying her and if they deny her the resources and that results in a criminal conviction, then you at CCA gets to say you’re criminally convicted guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

That’s a way higher burden of guilt than we would need to win the civil suit. And the civil suit gets dismissed. So U. S. C. A. Guarantees That the civil suit against them for denying Kayla Giles resources will be dismissed if she gets convicted and they’re fostering her conviction by denying her the resources that she’s suing them over.

You see the trap they’ve laid for Kayla Giles? It’s terrible. And I don’t know if Kim understands these legal dynamics.

Nobody can practically sue for failure to cover. Because if they sue to get the coverage that was promised, USCCA just says, no, civil court, we have to pause this until their criminal trial is over. And then you don’t have the resources for the criminal trial because they’re being denied to you, which is why you’re suing.

You’re much more likely to get convicted. And then when you get convicted, they have the civil trial dismissed. So they never have to pay you. They’re never found liable for breach of contract because it’s a moot point now. Terrible. That you need to understand an insurance policy is a legal contract and the USCCA’s insurer is legally bound in a unilateral, aleatory way to provide you with the coverage.

But it didn’t do that for Kayla Giles, did it? Even when they were sued to compel them to provide her legal coverage. They didn’t say, Oh, you’re right. You’re right, Kayla. We have a contractual obligation to do this. No, Tim, that’s not what your organization said.

No, the insurance company didn’t say, Oh my gosh, we’re being sued over this. Yeah we now recognize our contractual obligation. No, they responded and they said, No, we don’t think we have an obligation to pay. And we want this paused and we want it dismissed if she’s convicted. That we said we would.

There has also been a lot said about an ongoing matter involving U-S-C-C-A member Alan Coley. Now we, alright, so now we know there’s no doubt that Alan Coley was A-U-S-C-C-A member because Tim just told us. Can’t comment on an ongoing criminal matter, but Mr. Coley He can’t comment on an ongoing criminal matter.

When this was released Alan Coley had just been Sentenced to time served on that one charge on which he was found guilty And of course the guilty verdict was in some weeks before so tim can’t comment on an ongoing criminal matter But here he is commenting on what is it ongoing? Is it not ongoing?

He says it’s ongoing He can’t comment and now he’s going to comment has not been, nor was he ever dropped by either the U. S. C. A. Or the insurance company. No, they didn’t cancel his membership. They just didn’t service the member. They knew he shot someone. He called the hotline after he shot that person.

And yet what was provided to Alan Coley for his criminal defense? By U. S. C. A. Tim never says they provided him with anything. They just say we didn’t drop him, but was one penny provided by U. S. C. A. For Alan Coley’s criminal trial, even though they knew he’d been involved in a shooting because he called the hotline and told them you think of U.

S. C. A. Had provided Alan Coley with even a penny. We would know about it right here in this video. So I think the only reasonable conclusion to draw here, the only reasonable inference is that, in fact, U. S. C. A. New Alan Coley was a member knew he’d shot someone. and provided him with nothing for his criminal defense and on appeal, he will be represented by an appellate attorney whose fees are being paid for by the insurance company as part of his U.

S. C. A. Member benefits. So this is completely contrary to what he was saying earlier before he was saying if you get a conviction that’s a final finding of criminal conduct, not lawful self defense, and we can’t cover you for criminal conduct. And now he’s saying in the case of Alan Coley we’re going to cover his appeal after his conviction, his appeal on, of that conviction.

Now again, the prospects of meaningful relief on appeal, less than 1%. You really got to be winning at trial. You’re not likely to win on appeal, period. But why would U. S. C. A. be saying now that they’ll cover his appeal? Post conviction when the conviction makes that a criminal act because they’re taking heat over having not covered any of expenses at trial, which is.

The forum, the legal forum, where you have the best prospects for victory as a defendant. Now, here’s one of the half truths being spun up. The insurance company does, in fact, have the right to recovery and recoupment in the case of fraud. After all, this is in the policy in the event a member attempts to defraud the insurer.

But I can tell you that to date, the USCCA’s insurer has never recouped any payments made on behalf of a USCCA member. All right. I don’t think anyone’s claiming that U. S. C. A. Is claiming we’re recouping money because we were defrauded. How might how much fraud occur in this context? You could imagine that.

Me and a buddy are walking down the street. He’s a U. S. C. A. Member. I’m not and we’re attacked and I shoot somebody in self defense. Not my buddy. But then my buddy tells the police. No, it was me that fired the shot to try to get U. S. C. A. To cover the legal expenses. That would be fraud because he did not, in fact, fired the shot.

U. S. C. A. Should not, in fact, be obliged to pay for Legal expenses based on that fraudulent claim, and they should be privileged to recoup whatever expenses they did pay for but we’re, what is this red herring? Where’s the fraud argument coming from? No one believes that any party to a contract ought to be held to the terms of that contract if they’re defrauded by the other party.

No one’s making that argument. Not once. Not one time in over thousands of cases. I know it’s hard to navigate. So they’ve never recouped money, but they insist on having that authority put in the contract with the members. Okay. It’s not there because they don’t want the option of using it, folks. The legal aftermath of a self defense case.

It’s something you don’t want to and shouldn’t have to think about. And I sincerely hope you never go through anything like this. But if you have to, please don’t do it alone. If you choose one of our competitors over us, so be it. But don’t make that choice because they’ve lied to you and misrepresented the benefits of USCCA membership.

I think I should point out a critical benefit available to USCCA members that none of the legal service contract providers can provide. We’ve all heard the horror stories. A good guy gets acquitted of all charges, but then gets sued by the attacker’s family. USCCA members enjoy the additional security of 2 million of indemnity and unlimited defense expenses in the civil suit that often follows an acquittal.

In fact, we recently had a member with a case exactly like this. The attacker’s family ended up receiving almost 500, 000 paid for by the insurance company. I can tell you USCCA membership is the best on the market. No one has invested more into creating the ultimate solution for responsibly armed Americans than we.

Alright, so I got to rewind this little part because he starts this little segment by talking about how nobody else, none of the other competitors in this space. This is something only U. S. C. A. Can do. None of these other companies or lawyers can do this. And that and then he starts talking about civil coverage.

I can tell you that c. W. Safe provides civil coverage. I think it’s a couple million dollars of civil coverage, something like that. Yep, 2 million. So CCW safe provides it. I bet if you talk to the attorneys on retainer, they would say they’ll, if you’re part of their program, there’ll be your criminal defense lawyers for your prosecution, and there’ll be your civil defense lawyers if you’re sued and they’ll cover all of that.

Now, I don’t speak for any of these organizations. So go read their terms of service. You’re yourself. But it wouldn’t surprise me at all. If generally speaking, the civil coverage was common rather than rare among competitors.

We have no one has helped more responsibly armed americans keep their families safe than we have No organization has helped more people who have actually used their gun in self defense than we have If you have any questions, please give us a call. Take care And that may be true. By the way uscca was early in this space and and they’re huge.

They’re a huge organization So they and purely quantitative scope they likely have been involved in more member cases of use of force than their competitors could be wouldn’t surprise me and stay safe. Give him a call. He says, what happened to Alan Coley when he called you? I don’t know what happened.

Maybe nothing happened. It looks like nothing happened. All right, folks. So let me go back to the member dashboard. Remember folks, you can be a law of self defense member. Get all your questions and comments answered for free in the member chat. If you’re watching this on YouTube or on Twitter, Or on rumble we don’t address questions and comments there.

You need to be a law self defense member sign up right now at law self defense. com slash trial. You’ll receive a for just 99 cents, folks, you’ll receive an email with a link to how to access your dashboard, this live stream, submit your questions and comments right there in the chat. And that’s what I’m going to review.

Now, again, 99 cents for two weeks. And if you stay after the two weeks, it’s only about 30 cents a day, less than 10 a month to be a law self defense member at law of self defense. com slash trial. All right. So let’s see,

get back here. Let me pull this over. So I’m not looking presenting sideways to the camera.

Let’s see.

Yeah. Someone’s asking about you, U. S. C. A. And insurance. So U. S. C. S. My understanding is that U. S. C. A. itself is not they that they are not an insurance company for sure, but they’re partnered with an insurance company, or they’ve acquired insurance coverage from an insurance company to reimburse them for the legal expenses they pay out for a member.

I believe is how it’s structured. I think they have a sister company called Delta Defense that may be the one that’s actually insured by some insurance provider. But what USCCA is selling on the marketplace is not insurance. They’re not an insurance company. Therefore, they’re not regulated as insurance companies are commonly regulated at the state level and so forth.

They’re just a membership organization for which one of the benefits is that USCCA will cover your legal expenses. And I believe it’s USCCA who gets reimbursed for that. Something along those lines. CCW safe. I know is also backed by an actual insurance policy. They’re not selling insurance CCW safe. I believe is backed up.

Theirs is a captive. They own it, they own this insurance entity. It’s offshore. So it’s somewhat immunized from political influence. And so forth attorneys on retainer. I presume they just it’s they’re just running it as a kind of a prepaid legal services, just law firm type of thing. But again, I don’t speak for any of these organizations.

Folks let’s see.

Will Parker asked what did will Parker great firearms instructor up in Montana. I’m going to call you because I’m thinking of doing a motorcycle trip through British Columbia next spring. And if I do that, I’ll come through your neck of the woods, and maybe we can do a little writing in the Glacier National Park too, for a day or two.

But I’ll give you a call about that when I get my dates more nailed down. Will Parker, great self defense firearms instructor up in Montana, almost in Canada. The Kalispell area, Glacier National Park, a graduate of the law self defense instructor program. So I would check him out. Will, either you or Shane can type your link into the chat.

Into the chat, if you like, or on YouTube or wherever, let’s see. Yeah. He asks, what did Alan Coley lose after spending eight months in jail? Yeah, probably everything. And he didn’t have a lot, right? You’re a DoorDash delivery guy. You probably don’t have a lot of resources. And now he’s a convict.

Let’s see. Terry writes, I was a USCCA elite member for 10 years until September 2023. After hearing your law self defense program about Kayla Giles and learning of Alan Coley. I must be a typo or something. They’re now CCW SAFE members, he and his wife. I think, I suspect the only reason USCCA released this little video was because they must be feeling some pain from people who are beginning to question the reliability of USCCA services.

Let’s see.

Terry writes, USCCA is more interested in marketing. Just look at their website and giving away free stuff to attract members. Then they are providing legal coverage for their members. I don’t want to, I can’t read U. S. C. A. S. mind as an outside observer. I think a pretty good argument could be made that really what U.

S. C. A. S. is a very sophisticated, extremely competent. Internet marketing organization that just happens to sell this coverage in their magazine and their training as, that’s like the the product being fed through the Internet marketing machine. But there are very good Internet marketing company.

Let’s see, Jared writes insurance companies do this all the time. This is especially unconscionable because their victims have a much greater chance in a long prison sentence without. A good legal defense and probably not in a great position to hold them accountable. Yeah they’re basically helpless because if you’re Kayla Giles and USCCA decides to stop covering you, you can’t sue them.

You can sue them. She sued them, but then you get the civil suit paused until the criminal case is over. And now you’re defending yourself without the resources that they promised you. So your chances of conviction have exploded. And then you get convicted and they get the civil suit dismissed. So there’s no path to satisfaction there, unless you miraculously get acquitted at trial, even without the coverage they’re promising, but then why were you paying for the coverage?

Will writes, there are nearly 750, 000 USCCA members. Average monthly cost per member is 34. I’m, I don’t, I’m not familiar with those numbers, but I’ll take Will’s word for it. He’s a trustworthy guy.

Yeah, Freddie Merck’s gun works, fmgw. net, Freddie Merck’s gun works, fmgw. net. That’s Will Parker’s website. Yeah. USCCA is making a lot of money for sure. It’s a money printing machine which, it makes me wonder why would you not just pay if you’re making, 25 million a month?

In revenue, why not just pay even if there’s only a scintilla of evidence to support a claim of self defense of the trial courts, allowing self defense to be argued. The reputational damage that U. S. C. A. has done to itself with these decisions is unbelievable. What do you think it’s cost them and lost members compared to the 100 grand they would have paid Kayla Giles.

Maybe the 100 grand they would have paid for Alan Coley. They might have lost millions. And membership revenue from these decisions. It’s crazy. I just, from a business perspective, it’s crazy. I don’t know. I will say that while Tim Schmidt, when I met him was always a personable, very polite, nice guy, always came across as a very nice guy to me.

When I was working with USCCA, they often struck me as an organization that had grown, expanded at a much higher. Rate, then their early management team was capable of dealing with and that might explain some of these business decisions. I’m not, I don’t know, just speculating there. Let’s see, I think that might be

someone asked me, what do I know about Tom grief? Tom grieve is a lawyer. He’s been in some videos. I think he has his own videos to. I don’t know anything about him. I don’t know. I haven’t watched his videos. I just see the, YouTube feeds me the the thumbnail images as suggested content. So I’m aware he exists and I don’t have anything negative to say about him.

I just don’t know anything about

him. Let’s see. Northman firearms training and services rights. There’s a big fight on Facebook about this video as well. A lot of us CCA can do no wrong head in the sand instructors out there. Yeah, that happens. People get emotionally. Engaged, adopted emotional position. And you can’t reason someone out of a position.

They didn’t reason themselves into which is fine. I’m not trying to get anyone to not like USCCA. I’m just sharing my observations about these two cases and wondering what’s going on because it doesn’t make much sense to me. All right, folks. I think that’s all the questions and comments. We’re a bit over an hour.

So I’ll wrap this up for today. Tomorrow’s show we’ll cover a a store clerk. Who went to his gun in the face of a robbery, even though he knew the robber’s gun was fake, could be a little awkward. That’s the case we’ll talk about tomorrow. Until then, I’ll just remind all of you that if you carry a gun, so you’re hard to kill, if you carry a knife, so you’re hard to kill.

If you carry pepper spray, so you’re hard to kill. If you study jujitsu or any other martial art so that you’re hard to kill, your family is hard to kill. That’s why I do all those things so that me and my family are hard to kill. Then you also. Owe it to yourself and your family to make sure you know the law so you’re hard to convict as well.

Until next time, I remain attorney Andrew Branca for Law Self Defense. Stay safe.

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