"Governor, we have a massive problem," Pier said, hanging up his phone and slamming his palms onto the table. Chief Harrison didn't resign. He doubled down. He panicked and went rogue. David's eyes narrowed.
Explain. Harrison thought he could beat us to the punch and control the narrative, Pierce said, bringing up a video file on the room's primary monitor. At 4:00 a.m., Harrison's office leaked dash cam footage to the Oak Haven Tribune and a right-wing syndicated radio host named Charles Montgomery. The headline they are running with is, "Governor Caldwell resists arrest in late night altercation. " Pierce hit play on the remote. The video on the screen was grainy, showing the rainswept gas station, but it was heavily and maliciously edited.
It started exactly at the moment Mercer grabbed David by the hoodie and slammed him against the SUV. The audio was distorted, muffling David's calm citations of the law, but amplifying Mercer's shouts of, "Stop resisting, and put your hands on the vehicle. " To the untrained eye of the general public, "It looked like the governor was belligerently fighting a lone police officer in the dark. They cut out the entire first 5 minutes of the stop," Pierce said, his voice shaking with rage. They cut out Mercer demanding your ID without cause. They cut out you identifying yourself.
Harrison is trying to paint you as an anti- police thug who used state troopers to bully a local cop simply for doing his job. It's airing on local networks now. And CNN's Anderson Cooper just picked up the feed for the morning broadcast. It's going national. A heavy, dangerous silence fell over the executive suite.
Pierce expected the governor to explode. He expected shouting, demands for immediate retaliation or a scramble for damage control. Instead, David Caldwell smiled. It was a cold surgical smile. He looked over at Captain Pendleton.
Arthur, when your troopers seized the precinct servers last night, did you mirror the raw data before you locked them out? Yes, sir, Pendleton replied, stepping forward with a silver USB drive in his palm. State Cyber Crimes Unit bypassed their local firewall at 11:45 p.m. We have the unedited timestamped master files. Both dash cam and Mercer's bodywn camera, which he thought he had turned off, but only put into standby mode.
It captured everything, including the audio of him calling you boy. David stood up buttoning his suit jacket. Chief Harrison just dug his own grave and he decided to jump in on national television. Jonathan call a press conference full press corps. I want every microphone in the state in the briefing room at 10 a.m.
By 9:45 a.m. The James Madison briefing room was standing room only. The air was thick with the frenetic energy of a 100red journalists scenting blood in the water. The edited video had been looping on cable news for 3 hours, sparking a firestorm of controversy, partisan shouting matches, and demands for the governor's impeachment. At exactly 10:00 a.m., the side door opened.