by In case you’re wondering what disgraced comedy legend Bill Cosby is thankful for this Thanksgiving, his gratitude list does not contain any hint or morsel of remorse.
Cosby, speaking on the phone with National Newspaper Publishers Association’s BlackPressUSA.com in his first major interview from behind bars in a Pennsylvania state penitentiary, said he expects to serve his full prison sentence of 3-8 years, handed down following his rape conviction in September 2018.
“I have eight years and nine months left,” Cosby stated. “When I come up for parole, they’re not going to hear me say that I have remorse. I was there. I don’t care what group of people come along and talk about this when they weren’t there. They don’t know.”
He said his trials were a sham, unjust and not fair.
“It’s all a set up. That whole jury thing. They were imposters,” Cosby stated.
Cosby initially avoided conviction by paying off Andrea Constand’s civil lawsuit. Years later, when upward of 60 other women accused the comedian and actor of drugging them before sexually assaulting them, Constand came forward with a criminal complaint. The first trial ended in a hung jury. Cosby told BlackPressUSA that a potential juror for the second trial overheard one of his actual jurors already ready to convict him before his new trial. Hence, his belief he was set up.
He further believes he’s a political prisoner, rather than a serial rapist.
“Sixty-five years from now, they will be quoting what you’ve written about your fellow journalists. [Wyatt] has information on how these people have rejected the truth. You have the information too because you were in that courtroom,” he told BlackPressUSA. “I’m a privileged man. You talk to [NNPA President and CEO] Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., and he will tell you that there is a history of Black political imprisonment in America, and it’s repeating itself in some kind of way.”
The publication also talked to some of Cosby’s fellow inmates, who have heard him speak at weekly gatherings of SCI-Phoenix’s “Mann Up” reform program.
