Today we launch my new podcast, which we’ve creatively decided to call The Watch with Radley Balko. The first episode looks back at the murder of Garrett Foster during a 2020 racial justice protest in Austin, Texas — and Gov. Greg Abbott’s craven decision to pardon Foster’s killer. I interviewed Whitney Mitchell, Foster’s fiancée. Whitney is a quadruple amputee, and Foster was her primary caretaker. This is the first time she has spoken at length about the incident, Abbott’s pardon, and the aftermath. Mitchell endured a flood of harassment and death threats after Foster was killed. She’s incredibly brave to do this interview, and I’m proud to be able to provide her a platform. Abbott is now in the closest campaign of his career. Polls have shown a virtual dead heat between him and challenger Gina Hinojosa. This is the first election in which voters will have the opportunity to hold Abbott accountable for his pardon of Foster’s killer, Daniel Perry. But the issue has largely been absent from the campaign. Abbott’s pardon was a cynical, nakedly political attempt to curry favor with far-right personalities like Tucker Carlson, Andy Ngo, and other MAGA influencers, who began pushing for Abbott to excuse Perry before he had even been tried. As we’ll see, Daniel Perry conducted searches on killing protesters. He boasted to acquaintances about how he hoped to kill protesters. He fantasized about killing protesters. He debated people online about when killing protesters would be justified. And then he killed a protester. Perry was also marinating in a toxic online swamp of racism, extremism, and hate created by the very sorts of people Abbott tried to appease with his pardon. The pardon was part of a larger, alarming trend on the MAGA right of excusing and even glorifying political violence against protesters, activists, and their perceived political enemies. Foster, meanwhile, was doing precisely what gun rights supporters like Abbott claim to champion — he was defending himself and someone he loved from harm. He was also defending his constitutional rights and those of the people around him. Yet after his death, the far right immediately went about smearing Foster with lies about who he was and what he stood for. One other thing: Mitchell’s disability was caused by a misdiagnosed and mistreated urinary tract infection that caused sepsis and nearly killed her. I learned this from her mother, because Mitchell herself is barred by an NDA from discussing the mistakes doctors made that caused her to lose her limbs. Abbott of course is disabled himself, the result of a tree falling on him when he was in his 20s. When he was Texas attorney general, Abbott led the charge to impose caps on damages for medical malpractice. Because of that law, if Mitchell had sued the doctors and hospital responsible, she could not have won enough to pay for the care she’ll need for the rest of her life. In order to get the money she’d need, she had to sign an NDA. Abbott continues to receive payments for his injuries, decades later. And because his own injuries weren’t the result of medical malpractice, cases like his aren’t subject to the limits he helped impose on cases like Mitchell’s. I hope you’ll give the episode a listen or watch. And if you like what you hear and see, please help Mitchell spread her message by passing it on to friends, acquaintances, and on social media. We hope to have the podcast up on all the platforms soon. So I’d also be grateful if you give it a like, a subscribe, and a positive rating. Transcript: Whitney Mitchell: And I was freaked out. So I had the flag like pointed like this, like toward it because I was afraid like he was gonna get out of the car, whoever this was. And I remember Garrett like going in front of me and bending over and be like, go like to leave, like basically telling him to go, like to just drive off. And then I, and all of a sudden I hear gunshots Boom, boom. And I see him fall over in front of me. I actually see him fall over in front of me as the car is speeding off. He falls over in front of me. Everyone goes down like this once the shots start. I jumped out of my chair. I have to throw myself out of the chair. I thought I was shot. I didn’t know. And I was on the ground. And I looked over and I see him on the ground. And he slumped. Over the flag that I was holding and he’s just limp. Radley Balko: That’s Whitney Mitchell describing what she saw in July of 2020 as a man named Daniel Perry shot and killed her fiance, Garrett Foster. Perry had just driven his car into the racial justice protest Whitney and Garrett were attending. Whitney, who was a quadruple amputee, says that Perry nearly struck her. A jury would later convict Perry of murder for Foster’s death. Whitney Mitchell: I can, it’s like what flashes like is his hand just like, like his, it’s just like slumped over the flag. And I scoot, I scoot myself and everyone starts surrounding him. And I, and I, and I realize it’s him like, like, like it, like it, and I start screaming and it’s like, and I, and I can’t describe this, but it’s like this, like when I’m screaming, it’s like a scream that I can’t describe, like it, Like it’s guttural, like it’s something, like I couldn’t recognize my own voice when I was screaming and I grabbed onto his leg and they start pulling him over and yeah, his eyes were just like, just open. They’re just open. And they start, everyone starts trying to like get to him, like cause he’s bleeding and I’m just holding onto his leg. And this, I remember this cop was like trying to get me off and I’m yelling into . . . Radley Balko: Daniel Perry told friends about how he wanted to kill Black Lives Matter protesters. He was obsessed with other people who had tried to kill them. He did internet searches to see how he could get away with killing them. He posted on social media sites that protesters deserve to be killed. And he even fantasized about killing them. Then Daniel Perry got into his car, drove into a group of protesters, pulled out his gun, and killed one of them. The day after the jury’s verdict, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that he wanted to pardon Perry. He did. And now Daniel Perry is free. I’m Radley Balko, and this is The Watch. [Music] Welcome to the first episode of The Watch, the podcast with Radley Balko. I’m a longtime investigative journalist who has worked at the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, and Reason Magazine. You can read my current work at my newsletter, The Watch, radleybalco.substack.com. When my producer and fellow journalist, Matt Stroud, first approached me with the idea of starting a podcast, I had to think about what I could add. What would people actually want to hear that I could offer? And I decided that I wanted to do a podcast that would amplify the people and the ideas that I think are undervalued and deserve to be heard. So when I started thinking about a first episode, a lot of people and topics came to mind. But then the podcast project got delayed by a couple of months while I finished up another project. And then once I finished that and returned to the podcast, the midterm elections were heating up. Polls started showing signs of a big swing toward the Democrats, and in particular, the Texas governor’s race looked to be unexpectedly close, and still does. Recent poll ranges show a virtual dead heat between Greg Abbott and the Democrat Gina Hinoosa. Greg Abbott has previously been a Texas Supreme Court justice, the state attorney general, and has had three terms as governor. He’s never won an election by less than 10 points. So the fact that this election is so close is pretty significant. And so that’s kind of when it hit me that the first episode really needed to be about Garrett Foster and Whitney Mitchell. Because what Abbott did in this case is really one of the most cynical and shameless displays I’ve ever seen from a politician. And this election coming up in a few weeks will be the first opportunity for T… Get full access to The Watch at radleybalko.substack.com/subscribe
