There’s never been a better time to be a white collar criminal in America, as prosecutions have hit a new low under the Biden Administration. Also, Procter & Gamble is being accused of discrimination after it was found they are paying a Black-owned contract company far less than the white-owned companies. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: There’s never been a better time to be a white collar criminal in America, as prosecutions have hit a new low under the Biden administration. What a surprise. I remember, I remember again, this isn’t politics, God forbid I’m not a right wing conservative. I’m simply making a statement that tells you what are the balls and what are the strikes. Under the Obama administration, right, his promise was Wall Street has stolen $8 trillion from us. I’m gonna do something about it. Remember the campaign? I, I was actually on talk shows telling people that, that, that vote for this guy because he’s gonna do that.
Farron Cousins: Get the handcuffs ready. I remember.
Mike Papantonio: And get the handcuffs ready was, get the handcuffs ready was my pitch when I’d go on MSNBC, wherever I went, I was all for it. I was so excited about it, man. This guy’s really gonna do something. How did it end?
Farron Cousins: It, it didn’t happen. And then of course, you know, because during the Obama years, we did see a decline in these corporate prosecutions. Trump came along, the decline went even further and every year of the Trump administration, you and I did a segment when this same report came out.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: I think Public Citizen is the one who does it. They’re phenomenal with it. And we talked every year, they’re down from the year before, Trump’s not prosecuting these people. Okay. Well now we got a full year of Biden under our belts. Same report comes out and says, hey, guess what? As bad as Trump was.
Mike Papantonio: 1%.
Farron Cousins: As bad as Obama was, things have somehow gotten even worse. Only 90, 90 not even prosecutions, you could call them.
Mike Papantonio: No, they, they’re investigations. Not prosecutions.
Farron Cousins: 90, 90 deals really.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: To, to let you off with this corporate leniency as they call it.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Why again, I’m gonna throw this out there again until you’re tired of me asking this questions, why? It, isn’t it the same issue that the politicians are afraid that they’re gonna, they’re gonna lose money if they go after the people that have the money. Regulators are looking for jobs, they’re never gonna do what has to be done. Corporate media, most of the time is totally asleep at the wheel or they have some big advertiser who can.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: Advertisers spending a gazillion dollars on NBC or CBS. They’re not gonna do a story like this. So how do, you know, where, where does it stop, unless we have, unless we have a Department of Justice that takes it on themselves and just goes after these folks, right?
Farron Cousins: Well, the problem with the DOJ is, is usually even much worse than we see at these other agencies because it gets stacked with these lawyers who come from these law firms that, oh, you were just my client, you know.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: Last year I was in court defending you.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: And now, now I’m supposed to, I’m not gonna go after you.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: You’re my buddies. We went golfing after I won your big case for you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s so true. Remember the HSBC story we did?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. HSBC, washing money for terrorists. We’re handling that case. You know, we, we, we are the people handling that case where the, the banks were washing money for terrorists. HSBC signs a 16 page document. In there they say, yes, we did wash money, billions of dollars. Yes, we knew that human lives were at risk, contractors lives from all over the world, soldiers from all over the world at risk. We knew what we were doing. We understood where the money was going. It’s right there in 16 pages, they admit all of it. Do you know what was done? Eric Holder under Obama, you know what happened? Nobody was even criminally investigated. Nobody, nobody went to jail. They fined ’em a hundred, they fined ’em $1.6 billion. What did they, who paid for that $1.6 billion?
Farron Cousins: Most of that gets shifted back onto the taxpayers through all of these loopholes and ,you know, clever accounting methods. And of course they made way more than $1.6 billion.
Mike Papantonio: Oh yeah.
Farron Cousins: Off of the money laundering. So they profited from it. Nobody goes to jail and that $1.6 billion fine just becomes a fee at that point.
Mike Papantonio: The number was a hundred, a hundred, a hundred million dollars.
Farron Cousins: Billion.
Mike Papantonio: A hundred billion dollars is what they made.
Farron Cousins: So 1%.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, 1%.
Farron Cousins: That’s your 1% fee basically for doing crime.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. So, so here’s what is happening now. We have bid rigging going on from Wall Street, insider trading, lying to investors, spying on American citizens, big tech is outta control and this administration is asleep at the wheel. Now Biden in his mind, he might think something’s happening. Who knows? I don’t know what’s going on in the guy’s mind. But nothing is happening.
Farron Cousins: Right. And, and it all comes back to Merrick Garland, which of course is why many, many, many, many years ago, I think on free speech TV, you and I sat here doing segments about why Merrick Garland is a bad pick for the Supreme Court.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, yeah, he was terrible.
Farron Cousins: Because he’s a big friend of corporations, terrible on environmental issues. And he’s no different, even worse actually, as attorney general of the United States.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. It’s happening right as we speak.
Mike Papantonio: Procter & Gamble is being accused of discrimination after it was found that they’re paying a black owned contractor company far, far less like one, just almost half the amount.
Farron Cousins: It’s, it’s ironically three fifths. So they’ve come up with this little three fifth’s compromise, I guess you would call it, for this black owned contractor doing the same thing for Procter & Gamble that all of these other white owned businesses are doing. And it’s not like they were late to the game. This company again, owned by this black individual, has been doing business with Procter & Gamble since 1987.
Mike Papantonio: What is the, what is the company?
Farron Cousins: They’re, they do contract package, packaging, excuse me.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: For Procter & Gamble. It’s QAI is the name of the company.
Mike Papantonio: So, so how do you come up with this formula that it’s, it’s owned, it’s owned by African Americans, let’s now pay, pay the, how much less is it?
Farron Cousins: It’s they’re getting 60% of what the others get. So three fifth’s.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Okay. So, but you know, I saw this story and you know what it reminded me of, Farron, it reminded me of what we’re seeing this virtue signaling from all of these companies. I mean, you see, look, you expect virtue signaling from celebrities in Hollywood. My God don’t you get tired of it. It just is endless, this virtue signaling. But, but corporate America has picked up on the idea, hey, that’s a pretty good idea. Let’s do some virtue signaling. Give me some examples.
Farron Cousins: Well, right. Well, well before that too, though, Procter & Gamble to your point here, they’ve got all kinds of pages online about how they’re an all inclusive company, no discrimination, zero tolerance. We accept everybody. We treat everybody fairly. And that is, as you say, that’s their virtue signaling.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Because when you get into the documents, when you start seeing what’s, you know, on paper, it has nothing to do with reality. And this month we see it happening with corporations all across the country because it’s pride month. So everybody changes their logos to the rainbow flag.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: Acting like we’re so inclusive. We care so deeply. No they don’t. None of these corporations give a about anything except for dollars.
Mike Papantonio: I think of Exxon, you know, you did the Exxon story. I don’t know, honestly, I don’t know anybody who really knows more about Exxon than Farron Cousins. But you’ve done these stories about where Ex, what Exxon knew all the way back to the fifties. About they knew that global warming was taking place. They knew exactly what it was. They knew they were, that they were in part responsible, fossil fuels were responsible. But Exxon, tell me what they do with that.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. They, they, they take all that money they make destroying the planet. They go to the corporate media, they buy these ads touting Exxon’s research into renewable energy. And it’s got all kinds of fun graphics and animations, showing we’re, we’re making fuels from biofuels. We’re, we’re looking into solar. We’re looking, they’re not doing any of that. They’re, they’re hoodwinking the public into thinking they’re one thing. But again, just like Procter & Gamble behind closed doors, they couldn’t care less
Mike Papantonio: Amazon, same story. Disney, same story. I mean, it’s the PR firms have this down pretty well. And you know what, it works. I mean, it does work.
Farron Cousins: Unfortunately, yeah.
Mike Papantonio: What it does is it creates doubt, because you don’t have enough, most people don’t have enough information. It’s not their fault. They simply don’t have the backstory and they don’t have the information to really figure out what’s going on. But this virtue signaling is like an all time high.
