America’s Lawyer E16: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Asia this week has caused global concern, as fears about an attack from China continued to escalate. We’ll tell you what’s happening. Bank of America is hoping more people lose their jobs in the coming year – and they admitted this in a recent memo. We’ll bring you the details. And there have been some major legal developments in human trafficking litigation in the past week – Attorney Carissa Phelps will be here to tell us what this means. All that, and more is coming up, so don’t go anywhere – America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Hi, I’m Mike Papantonio and this is America’s Lawyer. House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Asia this week, well, it caused global concern as fears about attack from China continue to escalate, as we speak. We’ll tell you what’s happening. Bank of America, well, they’re hoping more people lose their jobs in this coming year and they admitted that that’s what they want. They said it in a memo. We’ll bring you the story. And there have been some major legal developments in human trafficking litigation in the past week, attorney Carissa Phelps is gonna be here to talk about those developments. All that and more, it’s all coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Nancy Pelosi took her ill-advised trip to Asia this week and all the war hawks, they’re very excited about it. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins joins me to talk about it. I don’t know what your take is. I mean, you know, she’s landed. There’s, you know, we’ve got warships, the Ronald Reagan, one of our biggest ships in the, in the sea there. We, we’re taking an entire armada so she can take her trip. This is a crazy story for so many reasons. Give me your take on it.
Farron Cousins: It, it is. And you know the footage of right before the plane lands, you’ve got the tanks rolling through the streets in Taiwan.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: Everybody was prepared for this massive military attack, just because for some reason, Nancy Pelosi and her delegation said here, this is a good time of the year to go travel Asia for, for no real clear, apparent reason. You know, we’ve heard like, oh, we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk about the pandemic. We’re gonna talk about trade.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: But I think there’s something bigger here and it has to do with something you and I have talked about recently, and that is the microchip legislation.
Mike Papantonio: Wow. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Taiwan is the world leader in producing semiconductors and microchips. In fact, nearly all of them across the planet are coming from one plant in Taiwan.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So Nancy Pelosi obviously wants to go there, butter things up, get these semiconductors rolling. And as we all know, Pelosi’s husband just bought a ton of stock in, in semiconductor companies in the United States. So there easily could be a financial benefit to her basically stoking World War III with this trip.
Mike Papantonio: I love your, I love your takes. I always do. I think you’re right on. Look, here, here’s the, here’s the things that have been suggested as this story develops. Okay. First of all, the war hawk deal, you know. Why, why is Fox news, oh, what a wonderful idea, Nancy go. Every war hawk on CNN and MSNBC, yeah, she has the right to travel if she wants to travel. Nobody ever really talks about the fact, why is she going? I, have you heard a good answer of why she’s going? And, and you suggest one that makes perfect sense, but I haven’t heard anything, any legitimate answer. They, you know, the, the, the weapons pals, her weapons pals who she gets a lot of money for, they’re crazy about this. Show of strength through the midterms. That’s one reason. Cover up for hus, for hubbies, insider trading, cover up for hubbies drunk driving stories. These are, these are all being suggested. So, so as I look at this story, the thing I’ve looked for is for somebody to say, why are you going? Have you had a clear answer on that?
Farron Cousins: No. And in fact, just so everybody is aware, like you and I actually, we sat on the phone talking about this story. We’re both looking at different articles, going through multiple, trying to find anybody that can offer an explanation as to why this is even happening. Why right now? It’s not like we need to go over there and work on any kind of diplomacy, you know. So it didn’t make much sense for her to even do this, especially it’s August.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Everybody else in the House is going back to their districts during the break. They’re gonna be campaigning.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: But she doesn’t have to do that because she’s in a safe district. So she knows, well, I guess this is a great time of year to go, go travel and, you know, freak out the entire planet because of this threat from China.
Mike Papantonio: And she’s freaking out the UN, okay. The, this statement from the UN. UN warns, one miscalculation and we’re in a nuke annihilation. Now they make that statement the day before she goes, almost like Nancy, you dummy, look, what’s getting ready to happen. What are you really accomplish? First of all, she has no authority to do anything.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: She’s an 82 year old legislator who’s on her way out. And she makes this trip and everybody’s scratching their head. And the only people that seem to love it is Fox news, every war hawk, every GOP war hawk on the planet says, yes, this is a great idea.
Farron Cousins: Well, and even the Biden administration said, well, you know, we, we don’t think it’s a good idea, but we’re not gonna tell her she can’t go.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And it’s, no, you absolutely can tell her, do not do this. You are in a position where you can tell her, this is a bad idea.
Mike Papantonio: Don’t, yeah. And this delegation of lightweights. I mean, why don’t they just take a trip to Disney World? If she wants a vacation, it’s cheaper. We don’t have to call out the warships. There doesn’t have to be pandemonium all over the globe because of something stupid that she’s liable to say. You, you tell me.
A memo from a Bank of America executive shows that the bank warns that more people need to lose their job. That’s their memo. It’s better if more people lose their job, because then there’s competition. And, and you see, if you have, if, if you, if you have one job and you have five people competing for the one job, who’s that’s better, is better for the Chamber of Commerce, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Because we can hold down wages. We can hold down benefits. That’s what this is all about, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. It really is. And, you know, you, you hit it on the head there because what Bank of America wants is five people for every job opening, not one job open, or, or five job openings for every one person.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Which is what we’re looking at in an economy right now. Not necessarily that ratio, but there’s more job vacancies than job seekers, which means the job seekers can be choosy. They can say, I don’t wanna go work for Bank of America. You pay horrible wages. I’m gonna go work for this other company. So Bank of America loses out. They, they have a position still needs to be filled. So what do they have to do? They have to raise their wages and increase their benefits to attract more people.
Mike Papantonio: But if you got five people going after the one job you say, I’m sorry, Mary, and I’m sorry, Joe. We just don’t pay that much. We don’t pay minimum wages. You know, we pay, we pay slave wages. We don’t give you insurance. We don’t give you any benefits. But you know what? If you don’t want the job, there’s five people right behind you. That’s what this memo is about.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And I, you know, I love the Intercept. I don’t think there’s a better, to me that organization, the reporting there is excellent. And they did another excellent job here and they just got it right. They talked about something, you had to take, you know, economics. We had to study Adam Smith. I had to study Adam Smith. And I, I forgot that what he said until I saw it in this article. But I, I remember this issue coming up in that course. And he says, look, it’s not high wages that are the problem. That’s what he said. Because an economy builds from the bottom up. That if you give people high wages, it improves the, it improves the entire economy, GDP, everything. He said, the problem is high profits. He says, because high profits is where things go wrong.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely. And Bank of America is still making money, hand over fist, as most Wall Street banks are and they want desperation. They want somebody so desperate for a job, because there’s no other options.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: That they’re willing to go and work for these horrendous wages, the horrible conditions, the long hours with no overtime, whatever it is. But we don’t have that right now. And, and even economists these horrible economists that we have in this country are telling us, no, we need more unemployment to help with inflation. No we don’t. We have to get to the heart of it, which is this corporate greed, to address that issue.
Mike Papantonio: Bludgeon the worker back in line. That’s what this is about. Bludgeon the worker back in line. And the economy doesn’t benefit because there’s no money coming in at the bottom of the economy to build from the bottom up. Adam Smith was right. That’s what he was talking about when he talked about this very thing.
Dozens of child laborers were found working in, in a metal plant in the state of Alabama. Well, it’s 50. I mean, you know, at least 50 and if it’s, if they found 50, there’s probably 300. This is such a victory for the US Chamber of Commerce, isn’t it? Don’t you see them high fiving, drinking champagne, by God, we’re bringing in all of these child labors from Guatemala, Nicaragua, Mexico. They’re coming over the border in droves. If they lose an arm, no problem. We’re gonna ship ’em back to Guatemala. If they lose their life, we’ll ship the body back. There’s no worker’s compensation for these people. There’s no social security for these people. All of them are working minimum wage. But this on top of that, it’s child labor. It is child slavery that’s taken place. And the US Chamber of Commerce, this is exactly what they wanted.
Farron Cousins: Exactly. And, and to me, this is also a media story. How many times have you seen this story other than published right here in Business Insider? You know, I, I happen to come across it on a message board, somebody posted it there, but beyond that, it hasn’t been covered as far as I’ve known on any cable news outlet. I haven’t seen other people on YouTube talking about this. We’re talking about child labor.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Some under the age of 10 years old in Alabama. This isn’t happening in Sipan. It’s not happening South of our border or over in the diamond mines in Africa. It’s happening.
Mike Papantonio: Well.
Farron Cousins: Right down the street from us in Alabama.
Mike Papantonio: That’s the whole idea of this big influx of immigrants. Don’t you see?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: That’s why the reporting from the media is it’s a story of compassion. The media reports are, oh, these poor people. We have to let ’em in because they want a better life. What the, the better life comes for the CEOs of corporations who do this, who say, yeah, we’re gonna, we’re gonna get away with as much as we can. The better life is for the US Chamber of Commerce. Why doesn’t the media talk about the truth? This ain’t about compassion. It’s about cheap labor. We used to have to ship, what we’ve had to do in the past is ship jobs overseas, right? For ship, for cheap labor. Not anymore. Now we’re shipping, we’re, we’re shipping the cheap labor into the country and nobody seems to put this together. And we, we handle these cases. We see it all the time worker comes in, they’re blinded by some chemical. Ship ’em back home. They don’t have any rights.
Farron Cousins: Well, and, and what’s really telling about this story too, is, you know, these children are working in this metal stamping facility. So it, it’s not even a safe job to begin with.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: And these are parts that go to the local Hyundai plant right outside of Montgomery, Alabama. And Hyundai, of course, that’s a huge advertiser. It’s a huge advertiser in print media. Huge advertiser in, you know, linear media. So of course we can’t talk about Hyundai using a plant with child labor in Alabama. And so it is just failures across the board. But as you said, it’s exactly what the Chamber of Commerce wants. This is why we never see real movement on the immigration issue, no matter who’s in charge, because the corporations are really in charge and this is what they want across the country.
Mike Papantonio: President Biden’s polls, well, they keep getting worse, if you can imagine and now 75% of Democrats want someone else to run for president. You think? Okay, I don’t know. This story. I, I, I feel like we’re doing it a lot because the polls keep dropping every time we do this story. But as I look at this story, it’s a little more concerning than, than it has been because the, the, the story is really about, do you not want him because he’s old? That’s not the reason.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: We don’t want him because his policies are bad. We don’t want him because we think he’s a bad president. We don’t want him because the policies that he’s created are making their way down across the entire Democratic party. That’s what scares me about this story. And it should scare the hell out of Democrats, to tell you the truth.
Farron Cousins: It, it really should because I think the last time you and I talked about it, the number was about 60% of Democrats said no, and that was only two or three weeks ago.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So the fact that that number keeps jumping, you know, 5% per week, basically at this point, that’s a horrible sign for the Democrats. But what’s even more remarkable too, is that actually generic ballot polls right now show Democrats for the first time ahead in the midterm races.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: So he’s bad. But now that more Democrats are acknowledging that, it’s not dragging the whole party down.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: It’s just dragging him down. Which of course will cost him in 2024, absolutely. But, but he has to come out now or after the midterm, the day after the midterms and say, guys, I have two more years. I’m not coming back in 2024.
Mike Papantonio: The holdouts seem to be older, baby boomers for him. I mean, what is, what’s up with that The older baby boomers seem to wanna hold on to what they can and say, I’m an older baby boomer, I guess. But I, I’m looking at it, I’m going, no, I, I don’t want him to run again. The good news here is 55% of Republicans don’t want, oh, excuse me, 55, 55% of independents who identify more to the right say they don’t want Trump to run again.
Farron Cousins: Right. And, and it would be horrible if we’re looking at a repeat of Trump Biden in 2024, but the Republican party, they’ve got this big apparatus. They’re media outlets, especially Fox, they’re already starting to hype other people like Ron DeSantis.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Who, the Democrats don’t have people waiting in the wings. They’re trying to, to force Pete Buttigieg on us. They’re trying to force.
Mike Papantonio: Good luck.
Farron Cousins: Kamala Harris, who is even more unpopular than Biden.
Mike Papantonio: 6%. She has 6% for, 6% support, Harris does. Buttigieg has 17% in a, in a perfect setting.
Farron Cousins: And then, you know, another option that’s out there is Gavin Newsom, but you know, there’s a lot of problems over in California.
Mike Papantonio: We’re gonna talk about that. Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So we’re probably looking at Colorado’s governor maybe, or could be somebody that.
Mike Papantonio: How about somebody fresh?
Farron Cousins: Is just a sleeper right now. Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: How about somebody new? How about why don’t we stop sending fossil fuel to DC? How about we get away from Jurassic Park up in Washington, DC? How about we give millennials and Zs a chance to have an input in what they want government to look like? And these older baby boomers, again, I’m one, but older baby boomers say, you know, we’ve had our time. Z and millennial, they ain’t that, they ain’t that fond of baby boomers. They believe this is, you know, a lot of these problems we have had been brought on by them.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And so, I mean, I think we have to call it what it is. It, maybe it’s time to.
Farron Cousins: Well, and, and you know, it’s, it’s like Kennedy said, you brought this up last time we talked about this, Kennedy made it a point to say, we have to pass the torch.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Something.
Farron Cousins: And that’s what these folks are absolutely unwilling to do. Biden in his eighties, Pelosi in her eighties, Schumer’s in his seventies. We’ve got all of these.
Mike Papantonio: Durbin, what, 82. I mean.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Feinstein, two, 200.’.
Mike Papantonio: Is Feinstein still alive? I mean, really. Okay. Well look, let’s hope for the best. It’s time to move aside and let kind of the next generation take over here, I think.
You can now add dangerously contaminated water to the growing list of horrors in California. Now the reason I think this is, this is a big story, but the reason I think it’s even bigger is because there is this mass exodus from California right now. What 400,000 people in the last year and a half leaving California. It’s not just about water. It’s about, they can’t afford to live there. The, the housing is impossible. The taxes are impossible. The, the crime, the crime of all things is really driving people outta places like LA and San Francisco. And there is this, I’m telling you, it’s this mass exodus if you look at these stories and they’re going to, they’re going to Texas and New Mexico and coming down here to Florida. And what the, the, the angle that you’re hearing, especially in Florida, is you can come here, but leave your politics back in California. And that, that’s what each one of these state, that’s kind of the, that’s kind of the hit on these folks that are making this exodus.
Farron Cousins: Well, in fact, that’s actually a lot of the reason a lot of people think that both Nevada and Arizona went blue in the 2020 election is because you had all the California transplants.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Leaving the states.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So it’s been happening for years. And, and trust me, look, I have talked to some of the most progressive people imaginable in California and they are saying the same thing. Okay. This, this isn’t a right wing talking point. This isn’t propaganda. The people that live there again, far more progressive than me, they’re saying the same thing. It’s really bad. And maybe, maybe it’s something in the water. I mean, we’re looking at this story too. You got a million people drinking arsenic contaminated water. You’ve got half the state on fire right now.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And then this horrible crime wave that is affecting everyone.
Mike Papantonio: The crime wave is a very real deal. I don’t know why they won’t, why they don’t say, yeah, it’s real. I mean, people are leaving San Francisco. I saw an article the other day, CEO one of the biggest corporations in America, gunpoint robbed at his front door of his home.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: He makes this, goes on TV and makes this huge statement says, it’s irreversible. We can’t solve the crime problem. So I mean, this isn’t, this is coming from a whole host of different areas. But back to the water. Water seems to be the last thing. It’s got arsenic in. It has nitrites in it. They’ve suffered from a drought, so there’s not enough water. And then it has PFAS in it as well. So you look at this whole picture and you say, uh, I don’t know, man.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. It’s.
Mike Papantonio: Maybe it’s time to get out.
Farron Cousins: It’s not exactly the picture of paradise or, you know, this LA high lavish lifestyle that we see on TV. The state’s got real problems. Not to say other states don’t too, but it’s, it’s really piling up really quickly in California.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. You used to be paradise. I can tell you, it used to be paradise. Farron, thanks for joining me. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: There were lots of positive developments involving human trafficking litigation this week and joining me to talk about this is Carissa Phelps. Carissa, you might not remember, but the first time you and I met and we started talking about human trafficking, my theory was you have to go to where the money is.
Carissa Phelps: Mm-hmm.
Mike Papantonio: I said, you gotta go to the hotels. You gotta go to Wall Street and you have to go to the credit cards that make all this happen. Big victory and you have been working this case for, you know, years now. And I, what I love about it is every now and then the good guys win. That’s the case here, isn’t it?
Carissa Phelps: Yes, it is. Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Tell us a little bit about what happened.
Carissa Phelps: Well, a judge’s ruling said, Visa, you’re gonna stay in. You’re gonna be accountable for your actions to a victim. And that’s Serena Fleites, I hope I’m saying her name correctly.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Carissa Phelps: But she’s, she’s not our client particularly, but we’re behind this case. We really support it. We have a, you know, common defendant and we’re, we’re really excited that the judge is seeing it too. That these businesses don’t exist alone.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Carissa Phelps: They need support.
Mike Papantonio: Right. In other words, porn, the, the, the, the, Mind, whether it’s MindGeek, which is one of the biggest porn distributors in the world, whether this is the girl do porn, okay. That’s the site. And they found out that they had just underage kids and they knew they were underage. They’re doing films in, in hotel rooms and the hotel that knew, that was, where it was taking all, was taking place. They knew the kids were underage. They saw cameras coming up. They saw lights. They saw they’re filming movies. And so Visa, and Visa pays for all this. They can’t, none of this happens unless somebody can use a transactional implement, which is Visa card.
Carissa Phelps: Well, I mean, we’re combining the two cases, but we have, we have this ecosystem.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Carissa Phelps: That exists.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Carissa Phelps: To support the industry of commercial sexual exploitation.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Carissa Phelps: Somebody doesn’t just get exploited and not get marketed without the help of so many businesses.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Carissa Phelps: Payment, processors, lighting equipment, like you said, location services, and then the web hosting and all of that too. So what this judge is saying in the Fleites case is, in the civil case is, you’re gonna be accountable. And, and not only that, but the more you know, the more you’re going to be accountable as it should be, right?
Mike Papantonio: And the cases that you’re working and you’re working some interesting cases where you’re, you’re handling part of the trucking case that was, got my attention initially, when you started talking to us about this law firm handling these cases. But that’s where they put girls in a, in, in, in 18 wheelers in California. And they bring ’em across the country. And they’re all along the way they’re stopping at truck stops and they’re saying, hey, we’ve got a carload full of underage girls, meet us at the truck stop, have sex with them and go home. That, you know, that’s pretty ugly stuff. And it, but the, the public doesn’t understand that in order for that to happen, there are, there’s trucking companies. There’s credit cards. There’s hotel rooms. There’s truck stops that allow it to happen. All of it is part, as you point out, it’s part of an ecosystem, isn’t it?
Carissa Phelps: Right. And the, and the really frightening thing is the, the data now, the way that we stream data and the way that trafficking is happening over this last two year period, with all the lockdowns and everything we’ve experienced. Traffickers have stepped up their way of exploiting and making money. And so we see victims contacting us that are on these webcaming sites.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Carissa Phelps: We won’t name all of them because they haven’t been named yet.
Mike Papantonio: But, but, but you’re getting ready.
Carissa Phelps: But exactly what you’re talking about is happening now over, over the internet. Over, and, and in a way it’s sometimes it’s more exploitive because it’s happening over and over and over again, over these videos, right? It’s not just one time being sold. Not that, that is bad enough. That is bad enough. Speaking from my own personal experience. It just, even one time being sold is bad enough. But to have that repeated again and again and again, on video, and to have, not have the ability to take that down or take that off of the web and not have people accountable is, is horrendous.
Mike Papantonio: Before you went to MBA school, before you went to law school and got your degree, you were trafficked. This is very, this is material that you’re really familiar with. And I know when you talk to me about it, the thing that strikes me most is this is a commodity that’s a use, reusable commodity. If somebody’s selling drugs, they sell cocaine one time. That’s the one time they can sell it. If they’re selling, if they’re selling 14, 15, 16 year old girls, they sell ’em again and again and again. So I, I, the other thing, I, I don’t think we can end this show without talking about MindGeek. I just have to.
Carissa Phelps: Right.
Mike Papantonio: The first time you and I talked about MindGeek, you had given me the connections to Wall Street. You had said, Pap, take a look at these connections. And we did.
Carissa Phelps: Mm-hmm.
Mike Papantonio: We looked at the connections and we found that a company like MindGeek, which is a Canadian company, they were, they were actually being investigated by parliament, right?
Carissa Phelps: Mm-hmm, yes.
Mike Papantonio: And they, they were the ones that were calling traffickers saying, do you have a 14 year old girl you can rape in a hotel room and then send us the film? Pick it up from there.
Carissa Phelps: Well, it doesn’t even require a phone call anymore. That’s the problem, is that this is exponential, right? They know what’s going to hit on their site and what search terms to use, not just to create more users so they could have more advertising revenue, but also because they want to develop these patterns of kind of addiction to the pornography, that they can then get more users watching more of the time and make more revenue for themselves.
Mike Papantonio: Carissa, when we, when we brought you on to, as a partner in our law firm, the thing, the vision that you had was we have to stop, we have to stop the trafficking issue by taking the money away.
Carissa Phelps: Yes.
Mike Papantonio: This Visa card issue is one of those steps. The hotel cases that you’re already winning. That’s part of the step. The, the Wall Street connections with some of the biggest funds in Wall Street. That’s the connection. It’s amazing what we’ve accomplished with your theories just in about two years. So.
Carissa Phelps: And there’s so much more to go.
Mike Papantonio: There’s a lot more to go. Thank you for joining me. Okay.
Carissa Phelps: Thanks. Thanks, Pap.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. That’s all for this week, but all these segments are gonna be available this coming week right here on this channel. And you can follow us on Twitter @AmericasLawyer. I’m Mike Papantonio and this is America’s Lawyer where every week we tell you stories that corporate media just refuse to tell because their advertisers won’t let ’em tell those stories or their political connections won’t allow for it. They’re too connected to a particular political party. So you don’t hear these stories. We’re never gonna have that problem. So we’ll see you next time.
