Brent Swadley is spending a lot of time on the phone since his conviction May 28 on six felony counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud against the state. He’s facing 10 years in prison but is currently housed at the Oklahoma County Jail awaiting sentencing.
Last week, Fox 25 and other media obtained a series of Swadley’s post-conviction phone calls with his family members, friends and attorneys, compiling them together in a five-hour YouTube video that starts with his most recent conversations and works backward in time.
Throughout the calls, Swadley can be heard complaining about the Oklahoma County Jail’s food, telling people he wants out badly, criticizing his attorneys and even pitching new restaurant concepts to his sons.
In one call, Swadley said President Donald Trump’s endorsement of Mike Mazzei to be Oklahoma’s next governor is “awesome.” Prosecutors from the Attorney General’s Office were monitoring the calls, however, and media who requested the transcripts and audio received them.
“We are working on some things behind the scenes,” Swadley’s wife, Melanie, said in one call. “I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.”
But one of their children, Keaton Swadley, continued.
“I’ll tell you this, there’s a lot of good things happening behind the scenes — I’m not going to talk about it too much — but there’s some superstars lined up that are going to be a game changer,” Keaton Swadley said.
Brent Swadley then expressed hope that Gov. Kevin Stitt “just does the right thing” and decides “to step in.”
I listened to some of the highlights and recalled my first comic about the Swadley’s Foggy Bottom Kitchen scandal back in 2022. At the time, legislators had noted how Swadley had named a double bacon cheeseburger with poblano peppers after then-Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department director Jerry Winchester, who ended up testifying in Swadley’s trial.
With much assistance from NonDoc reporter Matt Patterson, who covered the trial and listened to the five-plus hours of the Swadley phone calls, here are some highlights and lowlights of the conversations.
Family losing faith in the defense team?
In one call, Swadley implores his son, Keaton, to get back to work at the family’s chain of restaurants, rather than getting involved in selecting attorneys for his appeal. But the younger Swadley is insistent.
“I do need to be on it because y’all are the ones that picked out Peter (Scimeca),” Keaton Swadley said.
In another conversation, Swadley laments that his team of attorneys, including Peter Scimeca, J.W. Coyle, and David Smith, was not optimistic about a June 4 bond hearing, which Judge Susan Stallings ultimately continued until July 2 so she could review the phone call transcripts submitted by Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s office.
“Bunch of liberals,” Keaton Swadley sneered.
In another conversation with publicist Lisa Liebl, Swadley lamented that his defense team was “out-lawyered” and got “destroyed” by Assistant Attorney General Gayland Gieger.
In an apparent reference to defense team attorney Mark Stonecipher, Swadley tells an unidentified male that he will probably not continue using Stonecipher, who also represents Ward 8 on the OKC City Council, in the future.
“I’m probably not going to be using him anymore,” Swadley said. “He’s a ‘Yes’ man and comes back empty-handed, and he’s done that for years.”
Image concerns abound
In one call with attorney Peter Scimeca, Swadley expresses his fear of being photographed in an orange jailhouse jumpsuit for his June 4 bond appearance.
“I’d rather be in civilian clothes but, you know, only because there’s going to be a million cameras there, and I don’t want people’s last memory of me being this,” he said. “I’m just talking about protecting my company.”
In a conversation with his wife, Melanie, Swadley directed her into the couple’s closet and spent considerable time requesting specific wardrobe items for court, down to the color and pattern of his socks and belt. He also asked her to double-check the status of his Rolex wristwatch, which was being serviced at the time of his conviction. In the end, Swadley’s request to wear street clothes to his court appearance was denied.
The couple also discussed packing out the courtroom with backers. In one conversation, Melanie Swadley alluded to the fact that doing so had helped keep the media out of the courtroom for the June 4 bond appearance.
Fears for business, money?
Awaiting his formal prison sentence, Swadley has remained concerned about the sales performance of his eight restaurants, asking his sons, Koltan and Keaton, about staff attitude since his conviction.
In one conversation, Swadley implored Keaton to get back to work and begin visiting stores to check on sales and staff.
“I need you to get back on your feet,” the elder Swadley said. “I don’t want managers to start losing faith and strength in our family, and then they go ‘I’m just going to work somewhere else, this ain’t looking good.’ Without all of those people, we are nothing.”
In another moment, Swadley tells his son, “Go to work because I need my sales up.”
In a subsequent conversation, Swadley also bristles at the expense of appealing his case after being told by an unidentified male that it will cost in excess of $1 million.
“Wow,” Swadley said in response.
In a later conversation where Swadley discussed how his recorded statements wishing for a potential sale of his company and a move to Jamaica “broke the camel’s back,” Keaton Swadley discussed how he chose to wear Kanakuk apparel at the June 4 hearing.
“Don’t feel like a loser because the public saw the Soviet Union at work,” the younger Swadley told his father.
Bubba moment
In early calls from the jail, it’s clear Swadley is struggling to adjust to incarcerated life, but he praises jail staff for their kindness, while criticizing the lack of follow-through on requests for things like extra blankets and showers. In several conversations, Swadley praised the temperature of the water in the one-man stalls while commenting on their safety.
“It’s impossible for two of me to fit in it, so you’re not going to have a bubba moment,” he said.
Asked by his wife whether he is getting enough food, Swadley said he was “not eating the food that they bring,” but he said people keep giving him food items. He discussed the practice of placing a peanut butter cracker on the floor of his cell in an effort to keep mice away from his body while he sleeps at night.
“There is no dinner,” he said. “There is no logic. In most of what I’m going to tell you, there is no logic. They serve a — they call it a hot breakfast and a hot lunch, it’s not. And it’s not even warm, ever. And at least where I’m at you’ll get a spoodle now. Where I was at, you get a little piece of cardboard to eat with.”
‘Those people want to touch me and eat me’
Swadley was apparently placed on the jail’s medical floor when he was processed into the facility May 28. In one conversation, he tells his wife he has been moved from that spot to another inside the jail, but that it may be worse.
“Those people just want to touch me and eat me. These people here, they just want to kill me,” Swadley he said. “I’m with killers now. They’ve had murderers here and everything.”
In another moment, Swadley tells his wife he will never be the same.
“I’m really scared, honey,” he said. “They’ve got me in an area here where there are killers, and someone was just murdered here.”
Beans and franks
The phone call dump is more than five hours long and contains occasionally odd moments between Swadley and his family.
In one of the recording’s more amusing exchanges, Keaton jokingly asked his mother to pass along a question about whether his father has lost enough weight to see a part of his anatomy. In response, Swadley brings up that he has grown additional hair on his belly.
“Why don’t you work on counting all your hairs on your belly then,” Melanie Swadley joked. “That will give you something new to do.”
Oscillating between jokes and complaints, Swadley also extols the virtues of not wearing underpants.
“I’m kind of enjoying this commando thing,” he said. “My balls get to kind of relax and shake around.”
Swadley’s wife reminded him that others were listening.
“You are on speaker phone, and everyone is getting to hear you talk,” she said.
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