There’s never been a better time to be a white collar criminal in America, as prosecutions have hit a new low under the Biden Administration. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: There’s never been a better time to be a white collar criminal in America, as prosecutions have hit a new low under the Biden administration. What a surprise. I remember, I remember again, this isn’t politics, God forbid I’m not a right wing conservative. I’m simply making a statement that tells you what are the balls and what are the strikes. Under the Obama administration, right, his promise was Wall Street has stolen $8 trillion from us. I’m gonna do something about it. Remember the campaign? I, I was actually on talk shows telling people that, that, that vote for this guy because he’s gonna do that.
Farron Cousins: Get the handcuffs ready. I remember.
Mike Papantonio: And get the handcuffs ready was, get the handcuffs ready was my pitch when I’d go on MSNBC, wherever I went, I was all for it. I was so excited about it, man. This guy’s really gonna do something. How did it end?
Farron Cousins: It, it didn’t happen. And then of course, you know, because during the Obama years, we did see a decline in these corporate prosecutions. Trump came along, the decline went even further and every year of the Trump administration, you and I did a segment when this same report came out.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: I think Public Citizen is the one who does it. They’re phenomenal with it. And we talked every year, they’re down from the year before, Trump’s not prosecuting these people. Okay. Well now we got a full year of Biden under our belts. Same report comes out and says, hey, guess what? As bad as Trump was.
Mike Papantonio: 1%.
Farron Cousins: As bad as Obama was, things have somehow gotten even worse. Only 90, 90 not even prosecutions, you could call them.
Mike Papantonio: No, they, they’re investigations. Not prosecutions.
Farron Cousins: 90, 90 deals really.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: To, to let you off with this corporate leniency as they call it.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Why again, I’m gonna throw this out there again until you’re tired of me asking this questions, why? It, isn’t it the same issue that the politicians are afraid that they’re gonna, they’re gonna lose money if they go after the people that have the money. Regulators are looking for jobs, they’re never gonna do what has to be done. Corporate media, most of the time is totally asleep at the wheel or they have some big advertiser who can.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: Advertisers spending a gazillion dollars on NBC or CBS. They’re not gonna do a story like this. So how do, you know, where, where does it stop, unless we have, unless we have a Department of Justice that takes it on themselves and just goes after these folks, right?
Farron Cousins: Well, the problem with the DOJ is, is usually even much worse than we see at these other agencies because it gets stacked with these lawyers who come from these law firms that, oh, you were just my client, you know.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: Last year I was in court defending you.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: And now, now I’m supposed to, I’m not gonna go after you.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: You’re my buddies. We went golfing after I won your big case for you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s so true. Remember the HSBC story we did?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. HSBC, washing money for terrorists. We’re handling that case. You know, we, we, we are the people handling that case where the, the banks were washing money for terrorists. HSBC signs a 16 page document. In there they say, yes, we did wash money, billions of dollars. Yes, we knew that human lives were at risk, contractors lives from all over the world, soldiers from all over the world at risk. We knew what we were doing. We understood where the money was going. It’s right there in 16 pages, they admit all of it. Do you know what was done? Eric Holder under Obama, you know what happened? Nobody was even criminally investigated. Nobody, nobody went to jail. They fined ’em a hundred, they fined ’em $1.6 billion. What did they, who paid for that $1.6 billion?
Farron Cousins: Most of that gets shifted back onto the taxpayers through all of these loopholes and ,you know, clever accounting methods. And of course they made way more than $1.6 billion.
Mike Papantonio: Oh yeah.
Farron Cousins: Off of the money laundering. So they profited from it. Nobody goes to jail and that $1.6 billion fine just becomes a fee at that point.
Mike Papantonio: The number was a hundred, a hundred, a hundred million dollars.
Farron Cousins: Billion.
Mike Papantonio: A hundred billion dollars is what they made.
Farron Cousins: So 1%.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, 1%.
Farron Cousins: That’s your 1% fee basically for doing crime.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. So, so here’s what is happening now. We have bid rigging going on from Wall Street, insider trading, lying to investors, spying on American citizens, big tech is outta control and this administration is asleep at the wheel. Now Biden in his mind, he might think something’s happening. Who knows? I don’t know what’s going on in the guy’s mind. But nothing is happening.
Farron Cousins: Right. And, and it all comes back to Merrick Garland, which of course is why many, many, many, many years ago, I think on free speech TV, you and I sat here doing segments about why Merrick Garland is a bad pick for the Supreme Court.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, yeah, he was terrible.
Farron Cousins: Because he’s a big friend of corporations, terrible on environmental issues. And he’s no different, even worse actually, as attorney general of the United States.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. It’s happening right as we speak.
