America’s Lawyer E17: Court documents that were recently obtained show that the Mormon church has been covering up disgusting acts of sexual abuse for years. We’ll explain how they got away with it for so long. The fallout from Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan is adding up, and the United States may have permanently endangered our relationship with China on many issues. We’ll bring you the details. And the FBI has raided Donald Trump’s golf resort in South Florida – we’ll tell you what this means for the former President. 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. Court documents that were recently obtained show that the Mormon church has been covering up disgusting acts of sexual abuse for years. We’re gonna tell you the story behind that story. The fallout from Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan, well, it’s adding up and the United States may have permanently endangered our relationship with China on many issues. We’ll bring you the details. And the FBI has raided Donald Trump’s golf course South Florida mansion. We’ll tell you what that means for the former president. All that and more it’s all coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Unsealed court documents reveal a massive sex abuse cover up inside the Mormon church. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins joins me to talk about that and many other issues. Six years of sex abuse for a five year old, the Mormon church was told this is going on and what do they do with that material?
Farron Cousins: Uh, nothing. They did absolutely nothing with it. And this is just one of many instances.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Now that we’re finding out. But this particular story is so disturbing, because not only was the father molesting his five year old daughter, eventually his wife got pregnant again. And then when the, the baby turned six weeks old, he began sexually assaulting that baby as well.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. All, all of this, all this story is it’s just a way in to talk to you and everybody about how dysfunctional, now I call ’em a cult. People can get mad at me. It’s a cult. I mean, if you really look behind this, the fact that these folks even got a tax right off to be a church is as ridiculous as the Scientologist getting a right off like that. But it’s a church of latter day saints. You had a, a, a man who was being treated as a pornography addict, goes to the Bishop, says Mr. Bishop, I have been molesting my, my, my five year old child. Spills the beans. The, the, the Bishop then goes to the lawyers, the national lawyers, not the local lawyers, but the lawyers who are calling all the shots and the lawyers says, whatever you do, don’t tell the police. Whatever you do, don’t report this to child welfare, where they can go in there and save that baby. That is the most disgusting. And you know what, when this case develops, they need to sue that lawyer right along with the church. That, that’s it’s, and, and, and he’s part of it. And from the other side, the church needs to sue that lawyer for malpractice, because this is blowing up like crazy right now.
Farron Cousins: It is. And, and what the church did was they had set up a tip line for their, you know, clergy members or even their regular members to report sexual abuse. So I mean, they knew the problem was bad enough that what they did was they set up this tip line. They said, hey, if you hear anything, you call the tip line. You don’t call the police, like you said. You don’t call authorities or DCF. Call the, call this tip line for us here and we’ll, we’ll handle it. Don’t worry about it.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. You know, you and I have done this story before about what the tip line is all about. The tip line is keeping it quiet. It’s like what you see universities doing right now.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: College uni, colleges, universities all over this country, when a woman is raped, they take ’em first to a committee and that person then has to sign off to where I’m going to live with what the committee decides. It’s worse than arbitration because here you have the university that’s running the program. That’s the same thing that’s happening here. And you know, for, and, and first of all, there is no clergy, there’s no clergy privilege in Arizona. There’s about 20 states in the union that same thing. There’s no clergy privilege. So first of all, the lawyer committed malpractice, they need to be sued and they certainly need to be brought into this lawsuit as a necessary party.
Farron Cousins: Right. And, and another thing about the tip line that was really shocking in this massive report that’s come out was that they revealed that at the end of every single workday, the tip line workers were instructed, take all the records you took from that day, destroy them.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: You do not keep anything. So basically at the end of the day, every day, it’s a clean slate. There’s no record of who you talked to. There’s no record of what was reported to you. There is nothing. And unfortunately this leads the people who call the tip line to think, okay, I did what I’m supposed to do. They’re gonna handle it. This guy’s gonna go to jail for a long time. I’m good to go.
Mike Papantonio: If this was just one story, we, we, we’d be reporting it, but this is bigger than one story.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: They turned off 12,000 pages in a West Virginia lawsuit that is OMG kind of material because it shows you that the infrastructure of the Mormon church not only covered it up, but what they would do is they’d make it disappear and not, I mean like you’re talking, they destroyed documents. And the tip line is simply the way, it’s a hook. Get this person into the, to the church, handling the problem and we’re gonna make it go away. This story has just started. A matter of fact, you know, we handle these kinds of abuse cases. We’re getting calls from all over the country, primarily Mormons that are saying, hey, this happened to me too. This is, this is the beginning. And I promise you I’ll bring in any law firm that’s given that church the advice not to report this, I’ll bring ’em in as a necessary party. Part of a RICO if I have to.
Saudi Arabia is setting a new record this year by beheading more victims, more criminals. Okay. The thing that struck me about this is here. What do, what did we just, how many billion dollars did we, did Biden just say we’re gonna send to, we’re gonna send to the Saudis? How many billion? Was it 20, $23 billion?
Farron Cousins: $23 billion, yeah.
Mike Papantonio: $23 billion. We’re gonna give ’em $23 billion in aggressive weapons, not defense weapons, but in aggressive weapons that are things like, well, they’re, they’re, they’re F 35. It’s the top, it’s the top of our technology, high tech drones that are used for aggression, not support, not defense, excuse me.
Farron Cousins: Well, yeah. And, and you know, this is again, one of the biggest human, human rights abusers on the planet and we’ve known this for decades. Every administration, you know, for the last, well, pretty much my entire life has said, we’re okay with your human rights abuses. You have that thing we love so much, oil, so we’re not gonna call you out for any of this. And we have 120 people that have lost their heads in Saudi Arabia so far this year in just the first six months. And it’s for things like participating in pro democracy.
Mike Papantonio: 41 of them.
Farron Cousins: Demonstrations.
Mike Papantonio: 41 people beheaded for participating in democratic types of protests, 37 for non-violent events to where the government won’t even release what they beheaded that person for. These are the same people that Biden called ruthless pariah. It’s this psycho, it’s this psycho self appointed, unstable prince that’s in charge of everything. And, and this is, this is what we’re agreeing. Yeah, this is a good idea. Let’s, let’s give him $23 billion in weapons. Now you talked about oil. You, you’ve done some great stories, where you said it’s not really just about oil. It’s also about the weapons industry. That’s where the big money is here. When we send $23 billion to say, look, we’re gonna send you all the, the people who make the money on that is people like Raytheon.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: You know, they, they, they love this. They, they don’t mind that this guy’s a ruthless psychopathic killer, do they?
Farron Cousins: No. No, absolutely not. In fact that, that works a little bit in their favor because they know, okay, this guy’s unstable. He’s gonna go attack everybody he can out there. The more missiles he uses, the more he has to come back and beg us to buy from us.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So we continue to make money. So we’ll look the other way when you line up 30 people who were protesting, because they want actual rights in their country.
Mike Papantonio: And beheads them.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. You cut their heads off with a sword. That’s what they call put before the sword.
Mike Papantonio: But how, how do you go from saying these are ruthless pariah to say, okay, ruthless pariah, we know you’re psychopaths. We know Israel is right next door. We see what you’re doing in Yemen. You are just leveling Yemen. But we’re gonna give you more, not defensive weapons, these are aggressive attack kinds of weapons. This is a story I go, you see in the, you see in corporate media? No, of course not because MSNBC, CNN, you look at their, their, their shows at night, they’re advertising Raytheon. Like, you know, let’s go buy a missile. You tell me. All that is is they’re buying access to MSNBC’s talking heads. That’s why they put all those war pimps on there. People who would go to war with entire world if we let ’em.
Farron Cousins: Well. And we actually, you know, found this story in the British media, I think it’s important
Mike Papantonio: Interesting.
Farron Cousins: To point out to people. So.
Mike Papantonio: Interesting. You, you found this story. Good find.
A powerful energy company in Florida has been running a secret lounge used to lobby politicians. Wow. Okay. Let me lay it out a little bit. It’s 3000 square feet. It’s hidden from the public. There’s no way that you even know that the Florida Power and Light or NextEra who owns Power and Light, owns this. And this is, this is a, it’s been described by the politicians who go there and the lobbyists who go there as the nicest venue in Tallahassee that some kind, people call Tallanasty because there’s not a lot of venues like they’ve built here.
Farron Cousins: Well, and, and it is, you know, the, the media did describe this very aptly as this is as close to the smoke filled back rooms that, you know, we’ve heard legends about as you’re ever going to get, because that is exactly what this is. They bring in lobbyists. They bring in the politicians from right down the street at the Capitol.
Mike Papantonio: Regulators.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. They bring in the regulators and they say, hey, come on in, have a couple drinks on me. Look at this nice plush place. You have to have a special employee who has a key card access to even get in. There’s no signage on the outside of the building. So nobody even knows what this place is. But it’s so they can basically rub elbows and tell people, listen, you gotta give us this legislation. We’ll put money in your campaign. We’ll schmooze you. We’ll wine and dine you. Everybody goes home happy.
Mike Papantonio: And what does it accomplish? It accomplishes in Florida right now you have people that are paying rates, you have, we get calls all the time. Unfortunately, we can’t sue them. They have this weird immunity that doesn’t allow us to sue ’em. Mother of two called couple of weeks ago, Mike, I can’t pay my bill and feed my children. Retirees who are living on a fixed pension that have gone, their bill has gone from $100 to $400 a month. And the regulators who, by the way, hang out at this really ritzy venue where they’re served free liquor, those regulators are the people who said, yeah, you can go ahead and raise your rates $10 billion. It doesn’t make any difference to us. Doesn’t make any difference how you load it. You confronted it, load it, however you wanna do it. And it, it’s just absolute pay to play. That’s what this is.
Farron Cousins: It, it really is. And just so people understand too, you know, my power bill was about $200. It jumped up the one I just paid yesterday, $540 a month.
Mike Papantonio: It’s not just Florida. You see this, this is NextEra. NextEra is honest to God, they have been caught with their hands in the tilt so many times where they’re clear influencing politicians. In Florida, the question is, are they violating our sunshine laws? Are they violating a, a law that says you can’t simply gift things like liquor and a venue like this to politicians. And you have to report when you’re going to meet with our politicians. That’s what this is. It’s a closed door meeting. And you know what? Taxpayers and consumers are paying for that.
Farron Cousins: Well, and what’s even more interesting too, is that even inside this secret floor of this building, where the room exists, there’s also a second secret room.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Talk about that a little.
Farron Cousins: So there’s another secret room and that is where the real, you know, back room deals are taking place.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Again, you gotta have a different key card to get into that one. And this is, I mean, my God, if you were to put this in a movie, people would say, well, that’s just too unrealistic.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: That’s way too on the nose. You’re exaggerating.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: But it’s happening probably right this second.
Mike Papantonio: Oh.
Farron Cousins: In Tallahassee, Florida.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Well, what we know from looking at documents, and again, people don’t understand, I can’t sue them. I get calls all the time. Can you sue them? No, I can’t because of the way the laws are written. But here’s what we do know from the documents we found. There’s a clear effort to influence state electors. They wanna set up news sites to go after critics. They’re doing that right now. They’re actually, they were caught having a private investigator follow a reporter who was critical of them, followed ’em around for months, took pictures. Were just right, you know, right in their front yard, following these, these reporters. They want to, they, they want to go about buying media outlets. They’re doing it right here in North Florida. As you know, we started a campaign against them talking about what bums they were and how they were stealing, you know, from American consume, from Florida consumers. And then what happens? Florida Power and Light comes in, spends a ton of money in the media to say, oh, we’re gonna make you a lot of money if you’ll just stick with us.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, and, and it’s the buying up, excuse me, of those media outlets that again, is so worrisome here because obviously when you have corporations that come in and buy media outlets, all you get is favorable coverage. So what they’re doing is they’re running a massive propaganda campaign to say, look at us, we’ve done nothing wrong. We’re the good guys in this. They go to their little smoke filled back rooms. They cut the deals with politicians, get everything they’ve ever wanted. I mean, this is mafia like behavior that we’re seeing here.
Mike Papantonio: And, and you know, we we’re, we’re seeing the stories firsthand. Like you’re, you’re, you can afford that $500, but what if you are a single mother raising two kids?
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: And you have to decide, can I buy food for my children? Can I put clothes on their back for school? Or do I pay this bill? And you know what? There, there is no compromise with these folks. You don’t, if you go show up at headquarters and say, I wanna talk to somebody, forget it, forget it. You’re not gonna talk to anybody. And they’re certainly gonna, aren’t gonna cut you any breaks. Here’s the good news. This is some good news. First of all, they’re the, the, you have investment groups that are downgrading the value of their stock. Okay. They’re doing that because they know this is getting ready to blow up. And my advice to people, do not invest into anything having to do with Florida Power and Light or anything having to do with NextEra, because it’s getting ready to get upside down, once all these stories really pick up momentum.
China is cutting ties with the US on many issues following Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. My God, you know, we did a story on it. We just asked the question, Nancy, what in the hell are you doing in Taiwan? What are you really trying to accomplish? And of course, all of her flying monkey friends, you know, oh, she’s, she has the right to go. She can do whatever she wants. We talked about the fact she went over there without a plan. We talked about there’s gonna be ramifications. So she’s, she’s palling around in her pink jumpsuit. I don’t know what she’s accomplishing. But at this point, we’re starting to see an absolute connection to what she did. Pick it up from there.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely. China has now come out and they said, listen, we are no longer working with the United States on the most important issue of the day, climate change. You know, we had been in negotiations with the United States. We had wanted to reduce emissions. The US was gonna do it. And if we cannot get China, the biggest polluter on the planet, to reduce their emissions to just now walk out of talks, because they’re mad at Pelosi, this planet is in serious trouble.
Mike Papantonio: It’s also.
Farron Cousins: But it, but it’s also military agreements we’ve had with them. Trade agreements. All of this is now going down the toilet.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Because Pelosi decided I want to go to Taiwan during my little vacation break here and it screws us.
Mike Papantonio: So, so you’ve got, they’ve already began military exercises just right off the coast of Taiwan that they weren’t doing. They’ve already fired missiles above Taiwan. They’ve suspended diplomatic ties. This is all because meddling grandma makes a visit to Taiwan because she wants to make it a statement about how tough she is. And by God China can’t tell me what to do. Really? I mean, and if you wanna support that, you better think it through, because this is a superpower we’re dealing with. This isn’t, this isn’t a third world country. This is superpower.
Farron Cousins: Right. You know, the Biden administration said, look, we, we don’t want her to go, but we’re not gonna tell her not to. The military was like, we don’t want her to go. Nobody wanted her to go there.
Mike Papantonio: Well, MSNBC, CNN, Fox news.
Farron Cousins: They did.
Mike Papantonio: They wanted her to go there. You know, oh Nancy, brilliant. You know, what a strong woman you are. And now we’re seeing the ramifications of it. The discussion seems to miss the fact that we owe China more than a trillion dollars, more than a trillion dollars is what we owe China. And when they start calling that in, that’s the next step they make, it, it’s, it’s, it’s I think it’s, they’re the, we owe them more than maybe Japan, but it’s real close. Japan and, and, and, and China. But as I watch this developer, it’s not getting any better. It’s getting worse. And God forbid, we should have brought it up and actually call balls and strikes. How dare you? How dare you go after the Democrats? We’re not Democrat. I’m not a Democrat. I’m not a Republican. I call balls and strikes and I’m gonna continue doing that.
Farron Cousins: Well, and if anybody has an issue with that, then please feel free, send us an email, let us know what good came out of this trip because I’d love hear it.
Mike Papantonio: Better than that, un, just unsubscribe to us. If, if you can’t, if, if a viewer cannot take an intelligent discussion about calling balls and strikes on something as idiotic as this, they need to go listen to Huff post. You know, where everybody agrees with everything all the time. That’s not this site.
Nancy Pelosi: When I was a little girl, I was told at the beach, if I dug a hole deep enough, we would reach China. So we’ve always felt a connection there.
Mike Papantonio: The CEO of Pfizer is furious that Congress is about to pass legislation to lower the price of a few prescription drugs. You know, this is the craziest story. They made $22 billion, $22 billion just off the, just off the COVID vaccine. And they’re complaining that part of this bill, this energy bill, this inflation reduction act, which finally got passed and is gonna create some good on climate change. I really do believe that. So they said, well, you’re passing on too much of the, of the bill to us. Pick it up from there.
Farron Cousins: There’s 10 drugs, 10 drugs that in this bill, you will be able to negotiate the price of only of course for people on Medicare. But even the slightest reduction for Pfizer in that profit, even if it’s just, you know, $200,000 a year, it’s not okay. So the CEO, Albert Bourla, comes out and he says, oh, I wanna say, it’s very disappointing that they’re choosing to single out one industry.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Now, well, no, you’ve been screwing over American consumers for two decades or more at this point. It’s time for you to stop that. And I think that’s what scares him is that again, even though it’s only 10 drugs and not all of them are Pfizer drugs, he’s worried that people are gonna see that they have the ability to lower the prices.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And that’s gonna scare him.
Mike Papantonio: That’s it exactly. That there’s some infrastructure in place that says, you know, we’re gonna take a look at the, well, here’s what I looked at. Medicare paid $7.3 billion in one year for one blood clot, blood clot medication, $7.3 billion. So, you know, finally Congress is getting it, well, we can get some of that money back and we can pay for things that need to be done. We can pay for energy changes and climate change issues that are important to, to, to this, to this world. And the, of course now the pharmaceutical industry who, oh, by the way, made $22 billion on just the COVID issue alone and their complaining. Even though we know, you’ve done stories, I’ve done stories where their markup on drugs is as high as 2000%.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: 2000% markup on a drug.
Farron Cousins: And, and most of that R and D is paid for by us already through tax dollars, the National Institute of Health. The only money they’re really spending is on advertising.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And they make all of that back within the first 18 months of the drug.
Mike Papantonio: President Biden wants to run against Donald Trump again, but Florida governor Ron DeSantis is the one he needs to be worried about. I don’t know why people are missing this. I don’t think they’re missing it. DeSantis, you know, I, I, here you wanna hear long term prediction? DeSantis versus Newsom out California. Newsom’s gonna take the East Coast and the West Coast. DeSantis is playing to middle America. He has a real chance to win the presidency. I don’t really think that Trump wants to run. I think all along Trump is, if you look at the way they’re interacting, he’s, he’s the guy behind DeSantis. He thinks DeSantis can deliver on a lot of his ideas without being Donald Trump. What do, what’s your take?
Farron Cousins: Well, the, the reason DeSantis is obviously a, a scarier opponent than Trump, which is what Democrats are trying to warn Biden. Like, hey, start paying attention to this guy.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: DeSantis, even though I disagree, by the way, with all of his, you know, legislation he’s pushed, he doesn’t have any scandals. You know, bad legislation is one thing, but there are no scandals involving this guy. There are no skeletons in the closet that we know of right now. And he’s not stupid.
Mike Papantonio: He is a very boring guy.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: He’s a very boring guy. He is not, he’s not, he’s not Pence boring, but he, the difference between him and a Pence is he will push back.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I think the guy’s smart. He’s strategic. He’s deliberate. I think he poses the biggest threat to the Democrats. I think in a, in a lineup between him and Newsom, he wins because you’ve got this, this angst that everybody has about the whole California scene, you know, that it’s just, it’s a problem that Newsom brings with him. I think Newsom would be good politician. I think he’s gonna run a good campaign. And I think it’s gonna be him when it’s all over. It’s gonna be a tough fight. But you know what they don’t understand, Florida is firmly a red state.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: And you have Newsom doing these ads in Florida as if it’s gonna change voter’s idea about the difference between Newsom and DeSantis. I, I don’t think.
Farron Cousins: Well, well, and Newsom’s doing that right now in Florida. Do you know what DeSantis is about to do?
Mike Papantonio: Tell me.
Farron Cousins: He’s about to go to Arizona, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Ohio to campaign and hold rallies for Republicans.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: So what this is, which is coming up in just a, one or two weeks now, this is DeSantis’, basically his audition.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So if he can go to these places where you’ve got some Trump backed candidates, because everybody is endorsing or rallying for Trump backed people, if he does well and he plays well on those stages, again, these are swing states he’s going to.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: He, this is his audition. This is his big chance and if he proves he can do it, that’s a big, big problem for the Democrats in 2024.
Mike Papantonio: Well, you heard it here first, DeSantis versus Newsom. DeSantis takes middle America. He takes the West. He takes the South. Newsom picks up the two, the, the two coasts. It, it’s gonna be a, it’s gonna be a tough race. This guy is, he’s a real, he’s a real campaigner.
The FBI carried out a raid on Donald Trump’s resident at South Florida golf course resort this week. And everyone on both sides of the political aisle have lost their minds about this event. Here, here are the arguments, you know, they, they’ve weaponized the DOJ, probably some truth to that. That it’s going to cause such a surge in GOP interest for the midterms that anything the Democrats gain with the abortion issue is now lost because you have so many Republicans, even moderate Republicans, very angry, willing to show up at the polls. So, so take it from there. I see a boatload of issues here, but we can talk about this a long time. Why, why don’t you take it from there.
Farron Cousins: I, I, I don’t disagree that there are obviously some political ramifications the Democrats are gonna suffer from here, but I’m, I’m personally glad that this happened.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: And, and I do think I, I wanna throw this out there is, I don’t think, you know, everybody says this is, oh, it’s the National Archives, the documents that he had had there. I don’t think that that is exactly what we’re looking at.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: I think it’s more likely this has something to do, because again, we don’t even have confirmation about what it’s really about.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: I think this is more about the fake elector scheme, where they’ve already gotten John Eastman’s cell phones. They’ve gotten Rudy Giuliani’s materials.
Mike Papantonio: Well, Okay. Talk that out a little bit, because a lot of the viewers may not know, talk about that issue.
Farron Cousins: So, so this is of course, you know, Trump’s attorneys and as far as we know, Trump himself were attempting to get by the states, send us alternate electors so Mike Pence can verify them.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: That is the one thing we know the DOJ has been investigating. They’ve been very aggressive with it in the last couple weeks.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: So for this to suddenly happen now versus the National Archive story, which came out way earlier this year.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: The timing seems to lend more to the fake elector scheme to me.
Mike Papantonio: That’s, that’s a good point. I think you may be onto something there. The way I see this is the, the downside to it. We’ve talked about the Church hearings a lot.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. This is being shaped up like the same kind of argument that was done in the Church hearings. If you think about it, the Church hearings really started with the idea that maybe the IRS, well, it started, it started with a Phoenix program that a guy named Colby was running in Vietnam where he was assassinating people unnecessarily. And it was an ugly, ugly story. But then the other, the sub part of it began that the IRS they had added all these agents and they were targeting political opponents. It was part of the DOJ process. The DOJ themselves was, they were targeting political opponents. They were doing things like, you know, following journalists around, they were doing things like eavesdropping, bugging houses, bugging cars, and the, so it, it was, it was a really ugly time in history. And I, I think about this, this is being turned into that a little bit. This is being turned into, this is gonna be another example of weaponizing, you hear that term a lot, weaponizing the Department of Justice. You know, I don’t know, but I’ll tell you something, if it does go forward, what we’re gonna see is when the, when the Republicans are gonna take, they’re gonna take over at some point. And when they do the people that outta be really careful are people like Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden. They’re, and you know, the people that were behind this raid themselves, it’s gonna be another, I think it’s gonna be a parallel to the Church hearings.
Farron Cousins: Well, and we do have some interesting things here too, because Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, this guy Trump put up there.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So this is a Trump guy.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So far right now, we’re still trying to learn a little bit more about who the judge was. I think right now it’s.
Mike Papantonio: Rein, Reinhardt.
Farron Cousins: Was it Reinhardt?
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. A guy named Reinhardt.
Farron Cousins: Okay, so.
Mike Papantonio: He’s a magistrate.
Farron Cousins: Okay. So he’s not a political appointee.
Mike Papantonio: No.
Farron Cousins: At least. Okay.
Mike Papantonio: Well, there’s, they’re already starting to attack him. You know, they’re tying him up to the fact that, of the, his wrongdoing when he represented the people that were involved with Epstein that were raping kids.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I did see that. Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: So he, he represented these people, even though he had inside information from a prosecutorial standpoint, he comes out and he starts saying, I’m gonna represent these people that are caught up in the Epstein trafficking issues. He, he represented some people that are accused of trafficking. And so, so they look at it, they look at him and they say, you know, that’s where they’re gonna start their fight. First of all, the magistrate shouldn’t have even issued the subpoena. It, you know, it’s impossible for us to know. We haven’t seen the subpoena. We haven’t seen the search warrant. We know they’ve got into his, his safe.
Farron Cousins: Safe, yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And it was empty, you know, and we do know this. We do know that, you know, the people who are constitutional lawyers, really good ones, say that they really got ahead of themselves there. That this is the last possible act the Department of Justice should have taken before they negotiated for these documents.
Farron Cousins: But if we do not know obviously which investigation this is about, this might be the last act. I mean.
Mike Papantonio: Could be.
Farron Cousins: This might be the final, you know, nail in whatever coffin it is they think they have. If it is the fake elector scheme, again, they’ve already gotten all of his associates, you know, all of the enablers, the lawyers, their cell phones, if they’re looking for the final missing piece of the puzzle. And another interesting thing that happened too, though, at the same time, right before this happens, we get the major bombshell from Maggie Haberman.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: Who sends out the photos like this man flushes documents down the toilet.
Mike Papantonio: Well, A. A, there’s always, there, there’s always ,already suspicion that that was a setup picture. You, you’ve seen that?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, yeah. I mean.
Mike Papantonio: There’s always already suspicion it doesn’t have anything to do with government. It’s his private. But so, so the point is there’s no turning back here. Okay. This is never been done to a pres, a past president in the history of the country, ever. And so the point being it’s like Axelrod said, they better be sure that this is a tight case. That’s an open and shut case. Because if it’s not, we’ve got a DOJ that’s gonna be on the ropes. We’ve got a FBI that’s gonna be on the ropes for might a long time. I think that’s gonna happen anyway. I think you’re gonna see the, I think you’re gonna see the Republican base in power and they’re gonna turn out in droves, man.
Farron Cousins: Well, and Republicans have already told us if we take back the House, guess what? We’re, we’re doing the Hunter Biden investigation.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Which the DOJs already investigating Hunter Biden right now.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So that is happening.
Mike Papantonio: Supposedly, yeah.
Farron Cousins: But they’ve also said, we’re gonna investigate Fauci. We’re gonna investigate, Pelosi. We’re gonna investigate everything.
Mike Papantonio: Merrick Garland.
Farron Cousins: So they can just add another one to the list now.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Which I think is gonna be a disaster for ’em. I mean, Republicans gonna do the same thing that Democrats did and spend too much time investigating and not time enough legislating.
Farron Cousins: Well that’s.
Mike Papantonio: And, and they’re gonna fall into that. It’s, it’s, it’s like a trap for ’em.
Farron Cousins: Well, and, and I will say, you know, bringing up the fact that this hasn’t happened to a past president before, it should have happened.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: To George W. Bush.
Mike Papantonio: Absolutely.
Farron Cousins: With the whole torture and all of that.
Mike Papantonio: Absolutely.
Farron Cousins: You know, we should have seen it back then and set that precedent.
Mike Papantonio: But they didn’t because they didn’t want that precedent. That, that’s what happened there, Farron.
Farron Cousins: Well, Eric Holder was a coward, as well.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Eric Holder, Eric Holder was a coward. Well, the, I, I think it’s early to say we’ve turned into a banana Republic, but this is something that you see in South America. One pow, one, one political powers in, they’re in power, that they’re then out of power and the investigations and prosecutions start. That is almost, that, that is the, the way that a third world country operates. So I, I think it’s too early to say that right now, although you have people saying banana Republic, third world countries. I don’t know. I think it’s too early. Yeah, we don’t know enough facts at this point.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And I, I think once we know what exactly this was related to, again, my money at the moment is on the fake elector scheme.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, I think.
Farron Cousins: I just, I just think that makes more sense.
Mike Papantonio: You may be right. Let’s hope it’s something that they can actually, because if you’re gonna threaten the king, you better kill the king.
Farron Cousins: If they, if they fumble this.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: That, that is not gonna look. I mean, there’s nothing that would look worse than that at this point.
Mike Papantonio: That’s true. Thank you for joining me, Farron.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week. But all these segments are gonna be available this week, this coming week, right here on this channel. You can follow us on Twitter @AmericasLawyer. I’m Mike Papantonio and this has been America’s Lawyer where every week we tell you stories corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers won’t let ’em and their political connections don’t allow for it. We’ll see you next time.
