May 29th, 2025: Justice was finally served. It’s crazy to say that the President of the United States granted me a full pardon, officially wiping away my felony conviction and restoring my freedom. I never got the chance to speak my truth in court, nor here online. “What you say will be used against you” so I’ll share it now. They say depression is unresolved anger… and I carried a lot of it for years. This case began on August 10th, 2020, a day I was only trying to do the right thing. Captain John Moore and I cut sharks off a long line we genuinely believed was illegal. We called both FWC and NOAA, seeking answers, trying to understand why a long line was set across our dive site. Neither agency had a clue it was there. So we acted. And if there’s one thing I’ve always done, and will always do, it’s take action when I believe it’s the right thing to do. Today, I’m finally a free man. The weight of a felony no longer hangs over my head. I can travel freely again. I feel like a contributing member of society again. And for the first time in years, I feel joy. The system wasn’t built to protect the innocent, it was built to assume guilt the second you step into a courtroom. The judgment in the eyes of the jury, the political agenda behind the prosecution, none of it felt like justice. Thomas Watts-Fitzgerald: shame on you for ever taking this to trial. You wasted taxpayer dollars on a case that should’ve never seen a courtroom. To my appellate attorney Andy Adler, and attorneys Ashley Litwin, Marc Seitles, Ian Goldstein, thank you guys for fighting with everything you had. Words will never describe how much you now mean to me. To Clark Neilly and the Cato Institute: thank you for making sure our story was heard. You are the reason this happened. You helped restore my faith in justice. The good guys won.