Via America’s Lawyer: Following the 2019 terrorist attack at a Pensacola naval base which left 3 dead, families of victims sue the Saudi Arabian government for being complicit. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Plus, U.S. officials remain enamored by lucrative U.S.-Saudi arms deals while turning a blind eye to crimes of the Kingdom. Mike Papantonio and is joined by Attorney Chris Paulos to explain more.
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Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Well, it’s a regressive, obsolete, thuggish regime that only stays in, and basically what they’ve done is they’ve claimed all the natural resources for themselves. Now think about that. Who in the hell says, yeah, you’re entitled to all the oil, you do that through a dictatorship, a regressive dictatorship. Here’s the other part of the story that really gets ugly. They have this arrangement with the Wahhabi, the Wahhabi clerics, right? And the Wahhabi clerics allow business as usual. They are, they aren’t an uprising. It’s, they’re radical, crazy clerics. Like we saw affect us right here in Pensacola. Tell that story, I mean.
Farron Cousins: Right. You know, what was it? December of 2019, I believe, we had a shooter here at our local Naval air station. One of the largest Navy air stations in the country, from Saudi Arabia was here as part of, I guess you’d call it a bit of an exchange program. They send their people here to be trained by our military.
Mike Papantonio: Because we buy their weapons.
Farron Cousins: Right, and to learn how to use them, to take that knowledge back to Saudi Arabia, turns out this guy had spent years being radicalized by Al-Qaeda. Saudi Arabia completely ignored all the warnings they had on this. Let him come here anyway. Ignored his social media posts talking about the countdown is coming.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: Or the countdown has started, I believe. Waiting till this attack happened, kills several individuals, wounds couple dozen here in Pensacola.
Mike Papantonio: Alshamrani, okay, now here it is. He attacks US soil, Biden knows that, Blinken knows that, who’s over there negotiating with them right now. It’s, it’s the first successful attack since 9/11 on our soil. It’s done by a Saudi, a Saudi flight officer that’s only in this country because the Royal family allowed him to be in the country. He, it’s he’s their Trojan horse, Al-Qaeda Trojan horse, they unleash this rabid mongrel dog at our base right here in Pensacola, who ends up, ends up killing, you know, injuring seven plus people, killing three. And we don’t take any action. We filed a complaint. Let me disclose. We filed a complaint against Saudi Arabia about a week ago, and we’re going after the Prince. We wanted, we want to disclose and make it very clear what the relationship is between the Prince, the weapons industry and why we allow these thugs to train, to train these folks on American soil. Very, very concerned, big concern and as we tell the story in a couple of weeks, people are going to have more concern.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Now you’re, you’re handling terrorism cases, many different kinds of terrorism cases that connect up to the Saudi Royal family or Saudi Arabia in different forms and fashions. I don’t know anybody in the country that’s handling as many terrorists, terrorism cases as you are, to be frank. So as we look at this, we know that, this is, this is a long history of us just opening the door to the Royal family. A, because they got, they got oil. B, because the weapons industry demands that we train these free, train these folks over in the United States. We knew after 9/11, that something was really wrong here, didn’t we? We knew this crazy relationship we had with the Saudi Royal family was ridiculous, didn’t we?
Chris Paulos: Yeah, well, 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi, Saudi citizens. And there are pending lawsuits and even official reports, the 9/11 commission report, that have tied Saudi state support to those hijackers, even here in the United States, they sought refuge and received material support from Saudi officials. And so, you know, they’re, we’ve known for a long time about an extremist problem in Saudi Arabia and yet we tend to turn a blind eye when oil or weapons are involved.
Mike Papantonio: You’re the guy handling the case. No, no telephone calls from MBS. Round out MBS a little bit, Chris, I know, you know a lot about this guy. He’s a punk. I mean, that’s the only way I can describe him. He’s a royal, I call him the Royal punk.
Chris Paulos: Okay.
Mike Papantonio: The Royal punk has made his way into leadership in Saudi Arabia. How’s that happened?
Chris Paulos: Well, you know, he’s, he’s been picked by King Solomon to be his predecessor and it doesn’t appear to be any change in course, in that regard. He’s obviously tried to exert his influence. He’s, he’s held people essentially hostage in his own country. He’s extorted billions of dollars out of his own family members. He’s, you know, as we know, sent murder squads around the globe to attack dissidents. And is essentially aware of, and in charge of everything that’s happening in the, in the Saudi Royal family at this point in time, as well as everything that Saudi Arabia is doing extra territorially including sending pilots such as Alshamrani to the United States.
Mike Papantonio: Well, they’re, we, we know that this is not the first time we’ve caught the Royal family red handed, trying to attack the United States in some form or fashion. Besides 9/11, we know about a lot more, don’t we?
Chris Paulos: Yeah. I mean, we, we, we know that the Royal family and, well Saudi Arabia in general, has been supporting groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, that’s based in Yemen. They’ve been supporting a group of, of, of several groups there that are fighting Houthi rebels, including Al Qaeda. Now, you know, out of one corner of their mouth they say they’re fighting terrorism and doing things to stamp out extremism, but they’re turning a blind eye to all of the material support that’s being provided by members of the Royal family, members of the government, to these groups directly. They’re failing to prosecute financers of terrorism within their own borders.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. That’s important. Let me talk about that. You, that’s part of your case.
Chris Paulos: That’s right.
Mike Papantonio: Is you have followed the money all the way to Saudi Arabia on hundreds and hundreds of people who have, who have directly or indirectly been murdered by the money that comes from the Saudi family. Correct?
Chris Paulos: That’s right.
Mike Papantonio: And we know they’ve washed it through banks. We know they’ve taken it through UBS, a lot of huge banks, throughout, throughout the world. And we know that you’ve been able to trace Saudi money the whole. But we ignore that, don’t we? We just, we just say okay, well, that’s okay. We’re going to allow it to happen. It continues to happen, doesn’t it?
Chris Paulos: It does. I mean, they, they, the, the Saudi family and Saudi Arabia is a prolific supporter of, of Al Qaeda, of Al Qaeda and the Arabian peninsula and they have been for years. And they promote the Wahhabi, Salafi jihadist ideology that those extreme groups subscribe to. They use the words of that particular ideology as motivation and basis, and to justify their terrorist goals.
Mike Papantonio: It doesn’t seem to be getting any better, maybe a little bit. It looks like the administration, Biden administration gave the Royal family another free pass on murdering Khashoggi. I mean, just absolutely, they knew all the facts. They even understood, if you watch The Dissident, that MBS was actually watching the murder take place on a video screen. But nevertheless, they have free pass here, don’t they?
Chris Paulos: Yeah. I mean, it’s certainly disappointing to see the, the tact that the Biden administration has taken now that they’re in charge compared to what his words were during the campaign. It’s clear that MBS is not going to suffer any ill consequences directly because, because of his involvement in the attack. Our hope is that our court system, lawsuits like ours, are going to be able to hold them to account more so than it looks like the administration is at this point in time.
Mike Papantonio: Chris, good luck on this. Okay. This is the biggest case, one of the biggest cases in the country, maybe on the globe right now to get the Royal family under control, just a little bit. Thank you for joining me. Okay.
Chris Paulos: Thank you, Pap.
