America’s Lawyer E22: A massive sting operation uncovered several victims of human trafficking in Florida, while also exposing deviants in the school and police systems in the state. We’ll explain what happened. Employees at CNN are scared that there’s a PURGE taking place as the network tries to become more neutral. But it may be too little too late for the network to save itself. 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. A massive sting operation uncovered several victims of human trafficking in Florida, while also exposing deviants in the worst kind, of schools and police systems all over the state. We’ll explain what happened. Employees at CNN, well, they’re scared that there’s a purge taking place as the network tries to become more neutral, but it might be too little and way too late for the network to save itself. All that and more it’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Victims of human trafficking were identified during a major prostitution sting in Florida recently. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins joins me to talk about it. I saw this story, I don’t know that it’s a human trafficking story. It’s more, you know, they arrested, they arrested a lot of working girls. They arrested a lot of Johns. And of course, in there they found that a couple of them were involved in trafficking, which is very typical. I mean, I just, just wrote a book, Inhuman Trafficking and I, I put, I took part of the time to talk about the connection. There is a connection, but this, this headline that came out of WFLA, it’s just not, just not, it’s not correct.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I, I feel like the local media down there in Polk county where this happened, tried to hype it up to be something much bigger than it actually was.
Mike Papantonio: I wondered if it was a DeSantis effort, you know.
Farron Cousins: Possibly because, you know, yeah they, they’ve identified at least two human trafficking victims, which is wonderful that they have now, you know, gotten these girls. They think there could be several more among the individuals they’ve arrested, which again is, is great. But I think a lot of what this is, and based on the, the sheriffs involved kind of gave a lot of snarky, sarcastic remarks in their press conference, making fun of the people they arrested.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: It doesn’t seem like a very serious event.
Mike Papantonio: It was, it wasn’t.
Farron Cousins: They weren’t serious people.
Mike Papantonio: It was like they were proclaiming victory on human trafficking and it’s not. Look, if you wanna proclaim human trafficking in any kind of victory, you’ve gotta really trace the money to Wall Street. You know, we, we’re involved in handling those cases as you know. And what we have figured out is a lot of the real organized traffickers they literally get their money from Wall Street. So we’ve started bringing Wall Street into those cases. But, you know, Farron, what about the characters that, I mean, school teachers and Disney employees and police chiefs that were caught up in this. Talk about it.
Farron Cousins: You had police chiefs and police officers, not just from Florida, they had some that were coming down from Georgia, to get some Florida prostitutes, I guess.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Two people, one who was a contract photographer with Disney, he got busted. One of them works in a Disney hotel. He was busted. Several teachers also got busted approaching, you know, these undercover officers as part of this, they call it the Fall Haul.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: They do it pretty much every year to, to catch the Johns. But, two teachers, one of whom I guess, was trying to offer ’em a bag of Sour Skittles.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: In addition to a little bit of cash.
Mike Papantonio: Come here little girl, I’ve got some Skittles and some cash for you.
Farron Cousins: Well, and speaking of that, that’s actually one of the terrifying things because one of the individuals they did catch.
Mike Papantonio: 15.
Farron Cousins: Was out on bail. Yeah, because he had allegedly been with a 15 year old girl.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: So you had somebody who was accused of predatory behavior out there free engaging in this kind of behavior again. And that of course is a very terrifying thing to think of.
Mike Papantonio: Well, look, you know, I, I look at a story like this and really the thing that really concerns me the most is, is human trafficking, but I don’t think they accomplished that here. All they, they, they arrested some working girls and they addressed, you know, arrested some Johns. And I guess they do this every year, did you say? This is like the Fall, what’s it called?
Farron Cousins: The Fall Haul.
Mike Papantonio: The Fall.
Farron Cousins: They even have a name of it. And then they make a big spectacle of it. But look, if you found the victims of human trafficking, that is now where the investigation has to go.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. That’s a victory.
Farron Cousins: You don’t get to do your press conference and then say, we’re done. You now have identified a problem and you’ve got to follow it.
Mike Papantonio: You know, we have a couple of, we have a lawyer here that was, that was trafficked at 14. She made it out of there by the time she was 17, went on and got her, her, her MBA at UCLA and then got her JD at, at UCLA and the stories that she tells about law enforcement’s inability to even understand what happens in trafficking. She says most of the time when she was on the street, they would figure out ways to arrest her rather than, she would tell this story, well, you know, here’s where I’m living. They would do nothing about that because there’s just such a, there’s such an impasse where it comes to their understanding of really how human trafficking takes place. But anyway, Fall, every.
Farron Cousins: The Fall Haul.
Mike Papantonio: The Fall Haul. Okay.
CNN wants to become more neutral, but the network might be too far gone to save itself. Where in the hell is that little Zucker guy that ruined it? I remember, I remember being in a room with, I mean, you know, anyway, he, I, I just, just remember thinking this Zucker guy started out as a producer. I mean, he was, did, you know, he did produced a couple of big shows on CNN and all of a sudden they put him in charge of this. And then he says my goal, he builds it around his preference.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Hell with the shareholders. Hell with the, the, the, the network that’s been a responsible network for so many years and he makes it into something that’s not even recognizable. I mean, pick it up from there.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. He, what Zucker did was he came in and he said, y’all need to start throwing out more opinions.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: You know, get, get a little more fiery. He wanted that crossfire type atmosphere of yell at each other, be bombastic, you know, give your opinion on things instead of saying, look, we’re a news outlet. Let’s talk about the news.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: And the network look, Fox news had the formula and it worked for them. And Zucker came in and said, well, what if we do that?
Mike Papantonio: Try it on the left.
Farron Cousins: But then you got people that really didn’t stand for anything. They didn’t have real opinions that anybody cared about unlike what Fox has on the right. So it was a total flop. So they bring in new guy, Chris Licht and Licht is, you know, getting rid of people left and right. Some who absolutely should have been let go years ago.
Mike Papantonio: Oh my God. I mean, look, I look at this Stelter.
Farron Cousins: I mean, Toobin should have been,
Mike Papantonio: Oh, Toobin. Can you imagine fondling himself on live, on the air and, and they, they keep him around? First of all, he’s, he’s, he’s, he’s really a very marginal lawyer where it comes to giving opinions. He, he’s one of these, he’s ivory tower lawyer. You know, he can talk about the intricacies of the constitution, but where it comes to really everyday advice, he was awful. Brian Stelter, they should have understood immediately that this guy was on some kind of jihad that was alienating everybody that was in the middle. If you weren’t, if it wasn’t extreme left, this guy had no appeal. But that kind of became the whole Zucker plan. Zucker destroyed this network. That’s what I’m trying to say.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I looked it, I looked up the other day to trying to find where the hell is this little guy. I mean, is he gonna move on? Are they gonna, somebody else gonna hire him in the media to destroy their network? It’s, it’s a weird situation when you, when you get into this system, this system that exists in, I don’t even call it news anymore. It’s cause news entertainment. But it, the way it perpetuates itself until the very point of destruction, and that’s what happened with CNN.
Farron Cousins: Right. And it is interesting now because you have a lot of people at the network who think, oh no, we’re going to the right. And you know, people who say, oh no, it’s going more to the left. The network doesn’t know where it’s going because they’re already too late to fill either one of those niches. You’ve got MSNBC that’s got the left. Fox and Newsmax now that have the right. CNN no longer fits in. You’ve got CNBC and Fox Business for the business side. CNN, even though they originated this, they got nowhere left to go.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Who are we?
Mike Papantonio: Okay. That’s right. Who, who are we? Now a long time ago, you and I, we, we used to work at something called Air America. I mean, I, it was, it was me and Bobby Kennedy had a show. It was Janeane Garofalo. It was, what was it, anyway a whole lot.
Farron Cousins: Al Franken
Mike Papantonio: Al Franken, a whole lineup of people. And we knew then, I mean, we were, all we were, were progressive. We, that’s all we talked about was progressive. And we understood then, we saw it within a period of two years, that it wasn’t sustainable. I mean, we would have people that would just, this is all they listened to. They loved it. And they loved to hear our attacks on the right. They loved to hear all of that stuff every day. But we saw that it wasn’t sustainable as a business. And we stayed in business two and a half years. But the, the point is to, to operate at the level of CNN and, and understand that what they were doing was not sustainable. It’s like we do on this show. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: When people get mad that we move to the middle, I tell you what I’ve started doing, I’ve tell, I tell our folks, get rid of ’em. If they, if they don’t watch the show, tell ’em to go somewhere else. I don’t really care. I mean, do you?
Farron Cousins: No.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, genuinely. I, I genuinely don’t care because we try to call it in the middle and you do the, you know, you go after the Republicans with vengeance every day and we have one segment or two segments or three segments, four segments a week where we say, let’s just talk about the middle. And to me, this is my attitude, if they don’t like it, we don’t need ’em. Who the hell cares?
Farron Cousins: Well.
Mike Papantonio: You know, that’s, that’s really my attitude. They should have taken the same attitude.
Farron Cousins: Right. And, and that’s, the problem is part of it is CNN can’t do that. CNN can’t do what we do because we go after the people that are advertising on CNN.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: So they’ve got no way to talk about these lawsuits. They can’t talk about the corporate problems. They can’t even really go after, you know, the, the tax cuts that these corporations get.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Because, okay, well, now that we’ve said that let’s go now to Monsanto for ads.
Mike Papantonio: Well, full disclosure, we, you know, if somebody attacks you because personally, if they attack me personally, our guys have the marching orders. They, they’re no longer invited to this network. And the whole idea is we want to talk about the middle. We’ll get rid, I, I think we probably get rid of a hundred a month that come in, rather than wanting to talk about issues like you and I wanna talk about, they want to talk about, well, Farron’s too left, Papantonio’s too middle, you know, I don’t really care anymore. I, I really don’t. That should have been the attitude that CNN took. But instead they catered to that crazy, crazy fringe and they, it just, it put ’em outta business. Do, will they make a comeback?
Farron Cousins: I don’t see how they can because there’s no place ideologically left for them to fit. If they wanted to be a straight news network, well, the country doesn’t care anymore.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: We, we need a straight news network.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: But people, people want.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I, I tell you this and I say it on the show all the time, I think you’re the best and I, I don’t mean this just because you and I have known each other for 25 years, I think you’re the best progressive commentator in the business. I really do believe that.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: But you still understand that we still have to do stories that move to the middle and we call balls and strikes.
Farron Cousins: Oh yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And I hope you have the same attitude I have. My attitude is if they can’t take it, go to Huff Post. Go to some of the other fringe sites that all they do is talk left. That ain’t this. That’s just not us. And I just think they could have stayed in business if somebody was said, Zucker, you idiot. Look at what you’re doing to us. You’re collecting nothing but crazy fringe. And you know what, when time’s change, you’re gonna be outta business.
Present Biden is tapped John Podesta to head up his clean energy program, a move that has progressives fuming. You’re fuming about it aren’t you? How many, how many Podesta stories did we do when he was the guy that lost an election for Hillary Clinton that was impossible to lose? How do you lose against a crazy man like Donald Trump? We, everybody understood he was crazy then. But him and his brother have been Democrat, they’ve been hangers on for so long. Hillary Clinton has protected this guy for some reason. I don’t know why. But Podesta has been brought along. He, he, his lost, his, his win to loss ratio is deplorable. He’s, he has lost more political races probably than anybody in the business. Now this is his new payoff. Tell the viewers what it is.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. President Biden, as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRA, it has those big, you know, funding mechanisms for clean energy here in the United States, which is wonderful. But then he says, now I’m gonna pick this guy who’s just been hanging around DC since the nineties with the Clintons. Obama had him on board for a couple things where there were some big issues with his conflicts of interest. I’ll just bring him back.
Mike Papantonio: They should have a big L right there on his forehead. The guy is, he’s been a loser in the political game forever, but he’s still here. Now, what about his background in energy? Talk about that little bit.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. It’s this company, Joule.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Is what it’s called. Not to be confused with the other bad company Juul, but it was a company that was basically funded by Russian energy interests.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: And Podesta goes, gets on the board, get tons of shares of this company. They’re working with diesel fuel. They’re also doing a little bit with biofuels, but that’s kind of the window dressing. It’s really just a diesel fuel.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Company.
Mike Papantonio: And they were using Podesta to move into American politics and raise money. Okay. They raised a lot of money while he was running Clinton’s campaign. They lost. What happens after they lost the Clinton campaign? It, money dries up. They go outta business. This was not a warm and fuzzy company that he was in charge of.
Farron Cousins: Right, right.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. This was a company, as you say, had real, it’s nothing but a fuel company. And they were extracting every bit of fuel wherever it was. They were promoting the same kind of fuel drilling that every one of these fuel companies have been promoting. But nevertheless, Biden doesn’t seem to understand that or nobody’s told him about it or maybe he knew it one time and he forgot. I don’t know. But he’s the guy that he’s put in charge of climate.
Farron Cousins: Right. And, and when Obama appointed him to basically do the same thing with his administration that Biden’s chosen him for, there was a big issue with the conflict of interest with him and the energy company.
Mike Papantonio: Huge.
Farron Cousins: And so what they say is no, no, no, don’t worry. He got rid of all of his shares of the company.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, I forgot that part.
Farron Cousins: And then we find out he actually didn’t. He just gave it to his kids.
Mike Papantonio: Right. I forgot that.
Farron Cousins: So he still got the money from it and was pushing, obviously the policies they wanted while in the White House with Obama.
Mike Papantonio: All the money, all the special interest money is still moving into the Podesta estate by way of the kids.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And he’s telling the public, well, I divested myself of it. It’s just, it was total utter lie. I even forgot that. Thanks for.
Farron Cousins: Look, there, there’s a hundred thousand, there’s 500,000 people in this country that could have done the job that Biden just picked Podesta to do. He picked him to return political favors. I could do the job. You could do the job.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And we would be a thousand times better than this idiot.
Mike Papantonio: You could do the job.
A major corporate law firm helped cover up the fact that infants were getting brain damage from contaminated baby formula. Now, let me tell you this Jones Day, I have worked against Jones Day on more corporate conduct, I mean the ugliest of the ugliest, Farron. And these folks, it seems like they seek out, they literally seek out the worst clients that they can possibly represent because those worst climates, clients always pay the biggest bout of money, amount of money. But this Jones Day, I, I wanna spend a second on this. People don’t understand when we talk about some of the appointments that Democrats make that are no different from Republicans, they don’t understand what we’re saying. Jones Day is the kind of law firm that defendants, that Democrats go to, to put on court appointments. That’s always gone on and when we talk about how crazy the Democrats appointments are, that’s what we’re talking about.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: We’re talking about stuff like Eric Holder, for example, coming from Covington Burling in, in, in, in Washington DC, where all he did was represented corporate criminals. And no corporate criminal went to jail when he was in charge, no matter how bad the conduct was. But Jones Day is the kind of place they get these people. And I’m not, I’m not exaggerating. These people, it’s, they’re, they’re, it’s a scorched earth attitude. They, they don’t care. They will represent Satan if Satan pays enough money,
Farron Cousins: That, that is absolutely the best way to put it. And with this particular case here, and I’m really kind of shocked that New York Times went after them as, as tough as they did in this piece they put out, but we’re talking about infants. We’re talking about babies that were left with permanent brain damage from contaminated baby formula put out there by Abbott. And what Abbott did, they hired Jones Day and Jones Day essentially flooded the plaintiff’s lawyers with documents, huge boxes.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, millions of millions of useless documents.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And the reason they do that, the useless documents of course is the most important part is they say, okay, you gotta go through every one of these now. We’ll wait. We’ll sit here and drag this out for seven or eight years if we have to.
Mike Papantonio: Well, it’s not just that, it’s not, it’s not just, every one of these silk stocking corporate big firms do this.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: They don’t just give you a bunch of useless documents. I mean, it takes the staff around here, this is all we handle are these complex cases and so we have to staff up and go through 10 million documents. But the truth is they destroy so many documents. We catch ’em because there’s always a pattern. I mean, it’s a very distinctive pattern that we always catch ’em, but they want, they don’t think a thing about destroying documents to say, yeah, we knew this stuff was killing people. Yeah, we kept it out there anyway. And yeah, we made a lot of money. They would think nothing about destroying that document. And unfortunately the federal courts don’t punish ’em enough every time we catch ’em and we catch ’em all the time. And you say, judge, really, you’re just gonna let this go? You’re gonna what, hit ’em for a hundred thousand dollars? These, these people should lose their license to practice law.
Farron Cousins: Well, and I think a lot of people need to understand too, this is why when you have these very complex cases and the story points out too, these are little local lawyers, you know, they run their little local commercials. They have a staff of five people.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And then suddenly at their doorstep they end up with 20 million documents to go through. They can’t do it for their little local client. And it’s, it’s so heartbreaking that these families who now have a child that is gonna be dependent on them for eternity.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Because this tainted baby formula, or maybe it’s from a different, you know, agricultural issue or fossil fuel issue, whatever it is, it’s the same pattern all over the country.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, can you imagine being the silk stocking law, lawyer at Jones Day, okay. You’re getting paid your money. They give your little cubicle somewhere in New York or LA. You’re sitting in your cubicle. You come home and it’s a victory. You proclaim victory because you kept that mother from, from, from, from getting paid for the loss of her child or for the brain damage that that product called the, caused the baby where the mother has to take care of that child the rest of your life. And you are so, you’re so upside down. You’re, you’re, you’re, you’re just so shallow that you go home with your family and you proclaim you had a good day. You had a victory. What in the hell goes through the mind of somebody like that? We work, we work right across the table from ’em all the time. The good news is we usually do pretty good.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I mean, you’re talking about people that go home and say, honey, it’s great. I might make partner because this woman whose baby we killed didn’t get any money.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, yeah.
Farron Cousins: That’s, that’s what they celebrate.
Mike Papantonio: And, and I come back, let me full circle. This is where Democrats go to get their federal judges. This is where Republicans go to get their federal judges. And nobody understands why we’re so critical of that system. This is a good example of it right here.
E-cigarette company Juul has agreed to pay out $438 million for marketing their products to teenagers. Okay. Have we ever done a Juul or an e-cigarette story where people don’t go crazy? Where they, they don’t lose their ab, absolutely lose their mind and just cover us up, cover us up with crazy. Comments, crazy, comment, crazy.
Farron Cousins: You know, it’s funny because we get, you know, the tribalists from both sides left and right who love to go after us. Nobody goes after us more than the, the vapors. We, we them off so much and I love it because they’re so diluted to think that, no, this is a safe alternative. We’re getting away from big tobacco. Who do you think owns these things, you idiots? This is big tobacco. You’re just giving ’em more money. Oh and by the way, because this was the wild west when these things came out, they’re marketing these things directly to kids and teens.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And now they gotta pay up for it.
Mike Papantonio: The, as a lot of the viewers know, the tobacco case originated with my law firm. We started the national tobacco litigation right here in this little town. It went all over the country. And what, so because of that, we got all of the documents early, you know, we have a whole room of, vault of documents. If I look at the documents from the just traditional tobacco, Marlboro Man tobacco and the documents that come from Juul, it’s exactly the same thing. Here’s their game. They understood that in order to have a lifelong sale of their product, the Marlboro product, whatever it was, a Camel product, whatever it was, they had to hook the child by the time they were 14 or 15. Okay. So all of the advertisement that traditional tobacco did was centered around that. Now people that smoke these things actually believe that they’re, they’re doing themselves a favor.
Farron Cousins: They do.
Mike Papantonio: We’re gonna, what we’re gonna see is, oh, I couldn’t stop smoking without Juul. I couldn’t stop smoking without vaping. Well, really? You haven’t stopped smoking. This stuff that you’re breathing in your lungs is even worse than some of the nicotine that’s come, the nicotine combinations coming from traditional tobacco.
Farron Cousins: And you’re getting higher doses of nicotine, which means you are now more addicted to this substance that is as addictive as heroin. And you’re not doing, like, you’re not doing your body any favors because a lot of these liquids and things like that, we don’t even know the long term health effects because they haven’t been out there long enough. But what we do know so far from 10, 12 years of this, it’s bad.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, it’s terrible. It’s terrible. I mean, and you know, we’re gonna hear, well, I couldn’t stop. This is the irony. I couldn’t stop smoking without vaping. What in the hell are they talking? They’re still smoking, only they’re bringing in worse things into their lungs. And so I, I don’t know. It’s, for a long time, we would see the vaping companies actually hold, they, they would pay, they’d pay $10,000 to go to a school. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Then they would tell, they would talk to kids about how to stop smoking and oh, by the way they would end that process, would bring up vaping. They even had summer camps. You did a story on this, didn’t you?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, they did. They had, they would sponsor the, it’s, it’s not funny, but it’s funny because it’s so diabolically evil that you think it’s not real, but they would sponsor summer camps and they would talk about this and they would, oh, casually mention that vaping is a safer alternative. So, you know, this is something you could use to help get yourself off it. And we’re now in a country, thanks to marketing from companies like Juul, where you’ve got 15% of middle school kids, pre-teens.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: That have said, yes, I vaped in the last 30 days.
Mike Papantonio: They’re using the same PR companies. What we’ve started doing is we’ve started suing the PR companies now. Okay. Any, if even in a pharmaceutical case, my, my tendency is to figure out how can I bring in the PR company that, that promoted the lie. So there’s two things happening in the law that you’re gonna see developing more and more because we’re doing it. We’re bringing in the PR companies and we’re also bringing Wall Street money in that financed it. And it’s, it’s a whole new area of litigation that is going to make some of these people stop and think. But look, here, here’s, here’s what I’m wondering. The FDA suspended the ban. Talk about that a little bit.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. The FDA had come out and said, we, we’re getting rid of these things for good.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: Because they understand not only were they marketing to kids, they lied about the efficacy and the safety of it in their reports. They also knew that these younger users were getting these heavy doses of nicotine that was causing seizures and all kinds of things. So FDA says, we’re gonna stop it. And then they said, but we’re gonna stop the stopping of it because, you know, it’s a powerful, Juul is owned by big tobacco.
Mike Papantonio: No, there’s no question.
Farron Cousins: So you can’t fight these billions of dollars when they also control the regulatory agencies.
Mike Papantonio: And, and you’ll never meet one of these politicians, whether it’s in your state politics or national politics, that will say, no, I don’t want your blood money. I don’t want your dirty money. They, they, they pour more money into politics than you can ever dream. So the FDA, SEC, EPA, all of those regulatory agencies are affected by that.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And this is what’s happened here. There was a ban and then the EPA said, I mean, then, then the FDA says, well, no, we’re gonna suspend the ban.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Continue selling.
A Las Vegas reporter was murdered recently and all the evidence points to a local Democratic politician who is the likely killer. Okay. This, this, this is an awful story on so many ways. First of all, this, this, this man that was murdered. I mean, he was just absolutely murdered, Jeff German, probably one of the most respected investigative reporters, maybe in the country, but certainly in, certainly in that whole Nevada area. He uncovered mob, huge mob graph. He uncovered organized crime year after year. He was a superb, superb reporter. So this guy is in a Democratic primary and German is finding, the reporter is finding out that he’s a thug.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: He’s an absolute thug. He’s part, he’s no different than the organized thugs that, that he’s uncovered before. So he goes after him. What happened?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. It was Clark county public administrator has been accused of all kinds of things, bullying his subordinates, abusing his power, handing out political favors, all the typical things you would expect from a place like Las Vegas.
Mike Papantonio: And there was some money issues that were emerging too.
Farron Cousins: Right. And there was a lot more left to be uncovered and German was getting to the bottom of it.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: And so what you have here, Mr. Robert Telles comes out on Twitter, he’s like, oh, they’re doing another hit piece on me. This is conservative media smear machine at it’s greatest.
Mike Papantonio: It’s always the same thing. It’s, it is conservative media. I didn’t do anything. So he, he takes that storyline.
Farron Cousins: And then as his tweets kind of ramp up, suddenly Mr. German is found in his apartment with multiple stab wounds and he’s dead. He’s been dead for over 24 hours by the time they found him.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: This reporter murdered. And then this is where things get, okay, wow, you’re really bad at this. They found in Mr. Telles’ house, the shoes that they identified from a security camera on the footage of the murder, clothing that was identical to that worn by the murderer with little spots cut out of it so that he could destroy evidence, allegedly, of course he hasn’t been convicted, but he’s been arrested.
Mike Papantonio: He’s a Democratic darling in that area.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: They were trying to, they, there was such a Democratic darling, they even tried to keep it secret that he was a Democrat. I mean, did you follow that part of story?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. It, it took me four different articles to read. In fact, this one I have right here from the LA Times.
Mike Papantonio: No.
Farron Cousins: Doesn’t mention.
Mike Papantonio: Does not mention at all.
Farron Cousins: That he is a Democrat.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. They, they went out, that’s part of the story. The organization, the organized Democrat organization said, whatever you do, you know, if he had been a Republican, yeah, we can talk. Don’t talk about the fact that he was a Democrat, there was a Democratic primary and that this guy was an, he was supposed to be an emerging talent in the Democratic party. Let’s keep it quiet. The bru, the murder was brutal, wasn’t it?
Farron Cousins: It, it absolutely was because again, we’re talking about a stabbing, which as investigators will tell you, is a very personal crime.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: So typically a, a hit on somebody, had this been one of the mafia people that German went after, it would’ve been a gunshot. It would not have been a, a personal, angry vendetta, which is typically what stabbings get associated with.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: This was personal. It was slow. It was brutal. It was anger.
Mike Papantonio: Multiple, multiple, multiple stabbings.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: It wasn’t just one time in the throat. It’s after the guy’s dead, they suspected he continued stabbing him after that.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, which of course kind of fits with somebody who’s super mad at the guy because he just exposed your whole career as corrupted.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Again, he’s been arrested. He hasn’t been convicted. So we can’t say he’s definitely a killer.
Mike Papantonio: He’s a, the guy’s.
Farron Cousins: But.
Mike Papantonio: Come on, come on. They got blood all over his house and blood all over his clothes.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. It’s his house.
Mike Papantonio: Blood on his shoes. I mean, this guy.
Nearly three quarters of Americans want to have age limits for politicians. Oh this, this to me was such an uplifting story. Wasn’t it? It was just so great to hear across the demographics, young people, middle aged people, old people, they all agree on one thing, the politicians are so old that they’re senile and they’re doing a terrible job. So pick it up from there.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, it is great because again, you’ve got more than 70% of Democrats, of Independents of Republicans, it’s one of the few issues that unites everybody in this country is let’s get rid of the aging gerontocracy that has been ruling this country for decades.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: We all agree.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And we do need that. I mean, look, you and I have sat here many times and talking about this very issue of people like Dianne Feinstein, who doesn’t know who she’s talking to anymore.
Mike Papantonio: That’s not. Okay. People might think you just made that up. You didn’t.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: There’s report after report where Feinstein is talking to somebody she’s known her entire life.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, for decades.
Mike Papantonio: And does not know who she’s talking.
Farron Cousins: She will stop and introduce herself in the middle of a conversation with somebody she’s known for 30 years.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Or whether it’s Pelosi or, I mean, just go down the list. It’s, it’s for some reason and I, I think it has to do with the way the political, the Democratic organization works, it’s worse in the Democratic organization. The numbers are much, much worse because they, it’s like the story we just did on Podesta. You just hang on. Yeah. You just, all you gotta is hang on. Hang on and we’re gonna run you for president. Hang on and you’re gonna be Secretary of State. It’s, it’s, it seems to be, well, it’s statistically worse with the Democrats. Not to say that Republicans don’t have a bunch of old codgers. But I mean, Maxine Waters, Pelosi, Schumer, Feinstein, you know, our president, it goes on. We’re talking about people in their eighties.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: We’re talking about people that are way, way overdue to go home.
Farron Cousins: Well, exactly. And, and the Republicans have actually been doing, to their credit, a good job of getting younger people. Like who are the rising stars in the Republican party today? Dan Crenshaw, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene. These are all people who are under middle-age.
Mike Papantonio: You might not like ’em.
Farron Cousins: Right. I hate ’em, personally.
Mike Papantonio: But what. Yeah, yeah. You, every day you do a story that exposes them. But your point being is it’s long game.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Right. It’s long game.
Farron Cousins: Like with Trump’s judicial appointments, he was putting people in their early thirties on the bench, they’ll serve for 50 years.
Mike Papantonio: Completely, completely.
Farron Cousins: But they understand it with, in a way the Democrats do not.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. And I mean, when they drill down, they’re just, it’s not that they’re just old. They think that people are old, they’re senile, they’re ineffective and they’re doing this country harm. That’s when you read those numbers, that’s what we’re, that’s what we’re talking about here, right?
Farron Cousins: And I agree with ’em a hundred percent.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, thanks for joining me. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: 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 has been America’s Lawyer, where we tell you the stories that corporate media won’t tell you every week because their advertisers don’t allow for it or their political connections don’t allow for it. We’ll see you next time.
