America’s Lawyer E34: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is facing huge backlash over the Southwest Airlines problems that stranded thousands of passengers during the holidays. We’ll explain what happened and why little is being done about it. More Twitter files have been released – with the new information showing how the US government used the platform to spread propaganda about other countries. And a Scientology leader has disappeared to avoid being served with a child trafficking lawsuit – we’ll bring you the details. 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. Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, is facing huge backlash over the Southwest Airlines problem that stranded thousands of passengers during the holidays. We’ll explain what happened and how he let it happen. More Twitter files have been released with new information showing how the US government used the platform to spread total propaganda, not dressed up propaganda, total propaganda about other countries and the United States. And a Scientology leader has disappeared to avoid being served with a child trafficking lawsuit. We’ll bring you all the details. All that and more. It’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Thousands of Southwest Airlines flights were canceled in the last week, stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers across the country. And the only thing our transportation secretary did was send an angry letter to the airline. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins joins me to talk about what’s happened. He needs a hell of a lot more than an angry letter to the airline, doesn’t he? You know what bothers me about this is the week before all this catastrophe started, he’s on the air saying, you know, DOT, we have it under control. Travel, there’s not gonna be any impediments this year. Everything’s good. But what we’ve learned now is time and time again, mayor Pete was told, take a look at the airlines, they’re getting ready to crumble where it comes to heavy traffic. Go ahead.
Farron Cousins: You know, this is a really interesting story here, because at, at first I talked about this last week and I said, listen, this guy’s not to blame. Obviously, you know, as the transportation secretary, he oversees it, but he didn’t do this. But when you look into this and you look at what Ro Khanna and Bernie Sanders did all the way back, in I think April, they told him, listen, we’ve got major problems with these airlines. We’ve gotta do something about it. But then 4th of July weekend comes and goes. Thousands of people stranded just like over the holiday. Nothing happens. Thanksgiving, same thing happened. A month later, Christmas and New Year’s holiday, same thing happened. So Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna warned about it for almost a year, telling him, you have to do it and laying out what he needed to do.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, they gave him the details.
Farron Cousins: Yes.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Ro Khanna and Bernie Sanders said, here, you don’t seem to understand what the hell you’re doing in Department of Transportation. So let us help you. So they said, the problem you got with these airlines is they’ve taken all of this money from the government, remember during the covid issue, billions of dollars. And that, rather than putting it into their infrastructure, rather than taking their computer system that was way, way outdated, especially Southwest Airlines, way outdated. Rather than making improvements, they paid themselves bonuses. They paid themselves dividends. They bought back their own stock. And so this guy knew. They’re, look, Democrats who wanna support Mayor Pete as if he’s really, really a presidential hopeful, come on. I mean, this, this guy has no chance in a president, presidential run. But the, the guys people that wanna support him say, look, he didn’t know. If I hear he didn’t know one more time, I will scream. He clearly knew the details of it, the infrastructure failure, the software failure. They didn’t even buy new software. Every, all the other airlines were buying new software because they said, we’re worried about this. He’s told specifically this airline didn’t do something about it.
Farron Cousins: Well, and you also have the, the airline unions, the, the pilots groups, the flight attendants groups that have been warning Southwest itself for years, saying, your system is so outdated, you can’t even keep track of us. You don’t know where we are.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: when you need us.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: And they warned him again, this is gonna cause problems. It’s gonna cause delays. You don’t have a proper system to reach out to us and get us in there. You don’t even have a system like the other airlines do in place for when this flight is canceled, how to reroute it. You’ve done no planning at all for your airline.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. It’s, it’s even worse than that. It, when you take it down to the, to the, the very basics. You had consumers that paid their fair, they paid exactly what they’re asked to pay. Flight is canceled and they can’t even get a refund. This has been going on for years with Southwest.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And that’s what Ro Khanna and, and, and, and, and, and Bernie Sanders was talking to him about. Look, here’s what bothers me about this. Okay. Why is it that Democrats and Republicans are always looking to create a hero where there is no hero? That’s what they’re doing, doing with this guy. This guy is a mayor. That’s it. He has reached his max as, as far as political potential, he’s a mayor. But nevertheless, you have Democrats out there, oh man, he’s a great presidential hopeful, just like we saw with Avenatti, right?
Farron Cousins: Yes.
Mike Papantonio: We saw it with Avenatti, we see it time and time again. We see it with Republican, Republicans and we see it Democrats.
Farron Cousins: Well, he was mayor of a city with a hundred thousand people. So he goes from overseeing a hundred thousand people to the entire transportation infrastructure of the United States. You kind of feel like there should be a couple more stepping stones in between there.
Mike Papantonio: You think?
Farron Cousins: Instead of just taking this guy who is just not prepared for this job.
Mike Papantonio: No, he’s not.
Farron Cousins: And what we’ve seen in the last two years has been terrible.
Mike Papantonio: Well, look, both parties are in search of a frigging hero. That’s where we got Donald Trump, for God’s sake.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: He’s different. He’s an outsider. He’s, you know, he does, he’s not like the rest of ’em. Let’s create this hero. They created a monster. Democrats and Republicans do it all the time. And this is the best example I can give you. This guy ain’t no contender where it comes to national politics. I can tell you.
Republican representative George Santos, is in major trouble for lying about all sorts of aspects of his life. Wow. You know, apparently he’s, the Republicans say, this is okay. This guy’s a nutcase. He’s a Republican nutcase. He tells everybody, first of all, he’s Jewish. He’s not. The reason he said he’s Jewish is because he’s trying to raise money. And he does, very suspiciously, raise a lot of money. Millions of dollars. Although when he came to run, the guy was a complete pauper. He was living, he, he was, he was renting a place, and he was months and months behind on his rent.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, and it just blows my mind that the Democrats in New York, because they had a dossier on this guy.
Mike Papantonio: I know.
Farron Cousins: And they had enough information according to what they’ve said. Look, we, we thought most of this was a lie, but we decided to give him the benefit of the doubt on most of it. And instead they ran a campaign trying to just tie him into the Capitol riot.
Mike Papantonio: Hmm.
Farron Cousins: Instead of pointing out, listen, we don’t know where his finances came from. Could be some shady deals there. Uh, he, he might be a wanted felon in Brazil, maybe. They’ve.
Mike Papantonio: Well, apparently, no, he apparently is.
Farron Cousins: So he lied about his education, lied about who he worked for. This guy, I mean, it’s easier to list the things he didn’t lie about. And now we find out he may have even lied about his mom dying on 9/11.
Mike Papantonio: Yes, yes.
Farron Cousins: I mean, there’s no end to this at all.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Okay. So, so the Democrats have all of this info, this, bits and pieces of this information are already out there. They know about it. But their political, their political geniuses said, no, let’s talk about January 6th, because Democrats are talking about January 6th now. So let’s tie into January 6th. This was like shooting fish in a barrel. He, he said, he says his grandparents were, were, were in the Holocaust, were victims of the Holocaust because he’s Jewish. He’s not Jewish. There’s nothing Jewish about this guy. But he’s living in a Jewish community and the Jewish community sends him tons of money because he starts pulling at their heartstrings. And the Democrats just, just whistling through the graveyard saying, yeah, let’s, let’s do. But how about the, how about the Republicans allowing him to be sworn in?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. That, that’s even more disgusting, obviously, is because they know this guy is a complete and total fraud.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: His entire past is fabricated. And they had the authority, they can say, as the majority, we’re not gonna seat you. And hey, if you don’t resign, we will immediately vote to expel you.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: They have that power, but they didn’t do it because they have such a thin majority, you know, five seats that they need everybody they can get. Marjorie Taylor Greene baked cookies for this idiot a couple days ago, weirdly enough, cookies shaped and decorated to look like her. So she delivers him cookies. She’s been defending him because they’re cut from the same cloth. You’ve got these.
Mike Papantonio: This, you know, this is, this is why I talk about tribalism all the time. I mean, I just do. I hate it. As I’ve always said, I’m not a Republican, I’m not a Democrat. I just want to call strikes and balls. So Republicans, rather than doing what’s good sense they let this happen. The Democrats do the same type of thing. But they had all they needed on this guy. Quick question. Where did the millions of dollars come from? When he goes from being a pauper to having millions of dollars. Where’d that come from?
Farron Cousins: Well, he says it’s from his hugely successful business. But there’s a lot of red flags there. And of course that’s what is now being investigated in addition to Brazil has reopened their investigation of him allegedly stealing a checkbook and buying hundreds of dollars in designer clothing. But, so he’s got some legal problems right there on the horizon. But.
Mike Papantonio: I hate to say it, but he looks like Republican. I mean.
The family of the recently arrested FTX founder is now under scrutiny for their roles in the business. I don’t know that they get out of this without some real, real tough questions being asked. The parents in this situa, in this, in this case, I mean, Joseph Bankman. Okay. Joseph Bankman is a nationally renowned tax expert who, who’s a lawyer, teaches tax law at Stanford University. He was an employee of this business for 11 months. They’re paying daddy this money. Mommy, Barbara Fried is taking the money and she’s putting it into all of these Democrat, you know, money raise organizations. What is it, mind gap?
Farron Cousins: Mind the Gap.
Mike Papantonio: Mind the Gap was one of ’em. But there were many others.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: So she’s taken all this money that’s just rolling in from everywhere. Everybody’s saying, where the hell’s this money coming from? Moreover, what is this business? We don’t even understand the business. Everybody’s asking questions about it. Even the Fed, as dysfunctional as they are, they have enough sense to say, what is this thing, this being done here? We don’t even understand it. So mommy and daddy, I don’t know how they just walk away from this. They’ve lawyered up, by the way.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Especially the dad in this case because like you said, he was a paid employee. He was going down to The Bahamas at least once, oftentimes twice a month, down to the company’s headquarters. He’s the one who got his son all the lawyers that he needed. It, it, it’s very difficult to convince me that he wasn’t aware of at least some of what was going on. I mean, you are the tax guy. You’re the legal guy, and all of this is happening under your nose that your own son is doing.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And you have no idea. I, I find that hard to believe. So he, he needs good lawyers, obviously much better than what he is because the entire family, even the brother is linked to this. The brother’s getting money and he’s using it for his pandemic, you know, preparedness group.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: It’s awful.
Mike Papantonio: Here, here’s what really, really bothers me about this. They’re, all the writing was on the wall. You remember the Lianbo Wang fraud? It was a huge fraud. Robert Brockman fraud. Now, the reason those frauds were ignored was because, and the Bernie Madoff fraud to some degree also the same kind of analysis, because all of this money was moving into a political entity. So even though all of the red lights were going off, even though the White House was being told by their own, their own staff, something’s wrong with this guy. Something’s wrong with what’s happening, but they’re taking the money just like it’s okay. And, and allowing it to happen. The regulators weren’t involved. Fortunately, you had one guy who had enough courage to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I, you know, White House, you might put up with it. Feds, you might put up with it. I’m not gonna put up with it and goes after him.
Farron Cousins: Well, and, and he, Bankman-Fried, goes to Congress just a couple months ago.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, yeah.
Farron Cousins: Swears to them, hey, no, everything’s great. We don’t need to regulate the crypto industry. Just let us keep doing what we’re doing. Of course, he’s paying tons of money for lobbyists.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Giving tons of money to politicians. At the time, Democrats were in power, so that’s where all that money’s going. But he also, right before the election, I think when he saw, oh God, Republicans are gonna get it, writes a big ol’ check to Republicans because he’s really not a party guy. He just says, who do I need to pay off?
Mike Papantonio: Exactly. Mommy, daddy, who do I pay off? That’s kinda what happens here. But, okay. Has the money been returned?
Farron Cousins: Uh, not all of it.
Mike Papantonio: I’m not seeing it.
Farron Cousins: There’s far too many that are still sitting there on their FTX money.
Mike Papantonio: All, all I can do is tell mommy and daddy lawyer up if you haven’t already. And apparently there are, already are.
A group of 8 teenage girls have been arrested for murdering a homeless man in Canada and authorities think social media may have played a major role in it. This story has come, this isn’t the first. The reason I think this is an important story right now is because finally we’re seeing some, we’re seeing some of the results of an investigation that started after, do you remember the Slender Man murder?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. You had, had what they called Slender Man murder. It was, uh, 11. Was she 11 years old?
Farron Cousins: I think so, yes.
Mike Papantonio: 11 year old girl on social media. She, she, she draws one of her friends into the, into the forest and then stabs her 19 times, kills her. And, and, and so she comes out and says, she told the story of the Slender Man. I’ve followed up, I’ve followed it on, on the net. I’ve, you know, this guy’s a hero to me. I wanna know what’s, what’s up with it. And so she does this herself. So out of there comes a really important investigation. I mean, I think it’s very important. The American Psychological Association takes a look at it and says, is this happening to our kids? Is this a big thing we need to pay attention to? Pick it up from there.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, and, and with this particular story here, more is still coming out about it because it’s still very fresh. But the police chief up there in Toronto, I believe says, listen, we’re working on this, but right now signs are pointing to these girls met on social media.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: They likely planned it on social media.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: And then carried out. And some of these young girls were, were 13 years old.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: They approached this homeless man, a gang of eight of them, and just brutally murdered him.
Mike Papantonio: Well, apparently one of them said they were doing this because they wanted exposure on social media.
Farron Cousins: Yes.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, this was their, this was their chance to have, you know, I guess 15 minutes of, 15 seconds of 30, of fame there on the social media. But when this study came out, I mean, you can’t help but read it and say makes, makes a lot of sense. It talks about the dense, the, the desensitation, the, the, the, you know, talks about this whole desensitized reality for these people.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And this desensitized reality is something that they see time and time again on social media. You know, I, I don’t know. I think at some point that’s the big problem that TikTok is gonna have. Right now you got congressional folks that are gonna use this study. They’re gonna use the information coming out here and say, look, we don’t like what you’re doing and we gotta do something about it.
Farron Cousins: Well, and, and it is so terrifying to watch these children because these are children.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And, and they’re watching all of these horrible things online. Their friends are posting videos and they get drawn into it. And, and they don’t know any better. Like you said, it’s this whole desensitizing.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Aspect of it.
Mike Papantonio: Well, that’s the whole focus of these.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Of these psychological profiles that they’re finding about it. And so, I, I think to me, the story’s important for a lot of reasons. I think one reason from a, just a time element, kind of the temporal relationship of this story is what’s going on with TikTok right now.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And I think it’s gonna have a big impact when congressional hearings take place.
A new batch of Twitter files have been released showing that the United States got permission from the platform to use it to spread propaganda. Okay. Now first of all, these stories are coming out by an organization that both you and I really, really think is critically important, it’s The Intercept.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: And you’re dealing with reporters like Lee Fang, who is just, I mean, the, this guy ought wear pol, he, he ought to win Pulitzers left and right. But, you know, he doesn’t because he’s working with social media. So I look at this story and it’s not just government. We’re talking about the spook industry. We’re talking about the CIA, FBI, the DO, the Department of Defense using this vehicle for sheer propaganda. And now we know it. Before it was just, well, maybe they are. No, they are.
Farron Cousins: Right. What Lee Fang uncovered here in this new batch of Twitter files, which to me the first batch is a, meh, I don’t really care.
Mike Papantonio: I agree.
Farron Cousins: This is a big one.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: This is kind of, you should have led with this because this is important.
Mike Papantonio: I know, I totally agree.
Farron Cousins: But what he found was these emails from the Department of Defense, the Pentagon, the CIA saying, hey, Twitter, uh, you, you seem to have throttled this account here. You know, and they’d give them normal sounding names and they said, listen, this, this is actually what we use to, you know, spread lies about these other countries.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So we’re gonna need you to go ahead and whitelist all these accounts. And they would send a big ol’ list.
Mike Papantonio: Well explain, explain the whitelist thing. You know, they got the blacklist and they got the white. What’s the whitelist?
Farron Cousins: The whitelist means you can pretty much do whatever you want.
Mike Papantonio: Whatever you want.
Farron Cousins: You can say whatever you want and Twitter is not going to, they’re not gonna throttle you. They’re not gonna shadow ban, and they’re not gonna ban you at all. They’re gonna let you do whatever it is you need to do because according to the government, look, this isn’t our national interest.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: We need to convince the people in Iraq that Iran is about to attack them at any given moment. And, and that’s one of the things.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I mean, it’s crazy stories. Like they, they, it’s CENTCOM. CENTCOM, explain CENTCOM to the viewers, please.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. That is the centralized command center, basically, of the entire, not just defense, but I guess intelligence apparatus in the United States.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. It’s, it is, it’s the center of the spook industry.
Farron Cousins: It’s the hub.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. It is the hub of the spook industry. And now, okay. First on so many levels, first of all, we know now the CIA was directly involved with this. Okay. We know that after the Church Hearings, it was made very clear the CIA, CIA should have no, not, they shouldn’t touch domestic politics at all. Jack Dorsey obviously knew exactly what was going on. It had been going on for, what, five years?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, there’s clear.
Farron Cousins: A long, long time.
Mike Papantonio: There’s, there’s a five year history that we know about just by what’s, what’s showing up. But you see the problem here. I, I don’t know how anybody listening to this story says, oh, it’s okay. It’s okay if government creates propaganda. It’s the same thing, if you remember, that they went after the Russians about. The Russians are creating propaganda. Well, they spent $175,000 creating propaganda. Here, this is a limitless budget coming directly from the US government that says, we want to tell a story the way we want to tell the story. We want to, we want to gin up interest in Syria. We wanna make people mad about Ukraine. We wanna make sure that Venezuela is something we talk about all the time. We want to create this centered message by way of your site, Jack Dorsey, and Jack Dorsey said, okay.
Farron Cousins: We, we also want to control the narrative about what’s happening in Yemen too.
Mike Papantonio: Good point.
Farron Cousins: And that’s, you know, Saudi Arabia.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Good point.
Farron Cousins: Going after Yemen.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So they wanted to completely whitewash everything that was happening there. And I, I just, I cannot stress this enough. The government itself, and, and this goes back to, and I guess this is worth mentioning definitely, where we talked about years ago in the military budget, suddenly it was uncovered you’re setting up a propaganda arm.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: What, what are you gonna do with this propaganda arm? Okay, well now we know.
Mike Papantonio: Hell, Obama blessed it. Obama said, yeah, we’re gonna have a.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. It, it was his last year, I think, when they created it.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Last year, we’re gonna create a propaganda arm, where the US government is gonna create just not international propaganda, national propaganda.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Here’s how they did it. They actually were willing to create computer generated personalities. Okay. They would take Farron Cousins, they’d put another head on Farron Cousins. This is a new character, Farron Cousins. He’s, he’s telling a story for Apex, Apex News Service. Apex News Service was computer generated. It wasn’t even real, it was fake. Wasn’t even out there. And then they’d create the fake story that the fake Farron Cousins would tell on the fake network. And everybody’s, people listening to this story are gonna say, well, that’s okay. That’s okay because, well, it’s making us safer. Really? I mean, come on. Pick.
Farron Cousins: No, no. This was, this is absolutely meant to create more tension in the Middle East, to excuse the worst behavior of some of the people that we call our friends, but really are the biggest enemies we’ve got out there attacking the countries that, you know, we want people to think are the real enemies. It, it’s disgusting.
Mike Papantonio: White, whitewashing Saudi Arabia.
Farron Cousins: Yes.
Mike Papantonio: Now that’s a big one. Let’s whitewash this nutcase, this Prince nutcase, who, didn’t they set a record last year for beheading people?
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: They, that we know, you know, I, I think we, we always talk about this guy without talking about the fact that he is a blood thirsty murderer.
Farron Cousins: Yes.
Mike Papantonio: He abs, Khashoggi, that, that Khashoggi, that’s, that’s one part of the story. If you look at this guy’s history, it’s awful. So what do we do? We use Jack Dorsey, we use his network to whitewash a guy like that. And the government is doing it by creating the story, creating these news services that don’t even exist. And nobody even asked the question, well, I’ve never heard of Apex News Service. It sounds credible because it’s been created by the government.
Farron Cousins: Well, and, and people have to understand there’s actual human beings at the CIA, possibly at the FBI and the Pentagon, that do this all day.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: They make up these fake articles. These are people, how do you go home, how do you tell your wife and kids like, oh, I had a great day today. I convinced Iraq that Iran was putting meth in their water supply.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. That was a story, wasn’t it?
Farron Cousins: It was. That was a real thing they did.
Mike Papantonio: They told the world that it was a big story in the US. Of course, the idiots on MSNBC, the idiots on Fox, the idiots on CNN pick up that story. They’d pick it up right off of social media and say, did you know that Iran is putting meth in Iraqi, in the Iraqi drinking water? It’s created by the government and these morons that are running these news services don’t even stop to ask, is this a real story?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: How about, how about the bombing in, in, in Poland?
Farron Cousins: Right? Yeah. The, the AP guy who came out and said, oh, Russia just sent missiles into Poland. They’ve killed a couple people. And then.
Mike Papantonio: The story behind that was, oh, this came from an anonymous service.
Farron Cousins: Yes.
Mike Papantonio: Came, well, an anonymous source and anonymous service created by the government. I don’t, this is terrifying to me. I, I don’t.
Farron Cousins: It really is.
Mike Papantonio: I don’t know why it is.
A story that ties into it. There’s a, this terrifying revolving door that’s emerged between intelligence agencies and social media companies. Wow. Okay, so here again, you have reporters. They’re not just talking. They’re, these aren’t fake reporters. These are real people, real news services, Daily Mail. And they say, we’ve looked at this and we can name the number of CIA agents, CIA agents, FBI agents that have directly gone to work with Facebook, with Twitter and with Google. And then they give us the names. Pick up, pick the story up. I, I, this is a remarkable story. Did you see this anywhere, anywhere on national media?
Farron Cousins: No. That, that, that’s what is so frustrating about this stuff too, because yeah, they found all these CIA agents, you know, former CIA lawyer, Gina Haspel.
Mike Papantonio: Yes, yes.
Farron Cousins: One of ’em. Jim Baker, also one of ’em, of course, everybody knows he was with Twitter until recently.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: They realized, oh wait a minute. Get the hell outta here.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. He was with the FBI, CIA and then went. Yeah, exactly.
Farron Cousins: But, but what has happened here, which we’ve talked about with the FDA, with the SEC, the revolving door.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: You take the people from industry, you put ’em in regulation, take the regulators, you put ’em in the industry. That’s what’s happening with this intelligence community.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: We are sending our good agents, you now work at Facebook for some reason.
Mike Papantonio: They, but you see, the problem is management knows it. They’re cooperating. They’re cooperating because they’re getting money from the government in various ways. Just like Amazon. Okay. Amazon gets these huge government contracts, these other folks do too. So Jack Dorsey, I guess was thinking, well, wow, if I let Aaron, Aaron Berman in, or no, Aaron Berman went with, he went with Facebook. But this, this guy was, he was the service manager, he was the security service manager for Facebook. He’s the guy who said, this is a story we’re gonna allow. This is a story we’re not going to allow. We’re gonna throttle this one back, we’re gonna throttle forward on this one. He was with, he, he was a spook most of his life working for the CIA.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: You have Deborah Berman. Well, she was a former intelligence analyst with the CIA. Notoriously, notoriously secretive in what she did. But you had, she was working on, her project with Facebook was to take misinformation and decide whether we should pull that mis, misinformation or whether that misinformation is going to help us. So she decides, do we put it on, do we take it off? How many more people are there?
Farron Cousins: Oh God. There’s so many.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, we don’t have time to go through all of them.
Farron Cousins: There’s, you know, Kris Rose, who’s political and counterterror, terrorism analyst at the CIA. He went to Facebook. He joined them in March of 2020. Bryan Weisbard, CIA intelligence officer, he went with, um.
Mike Papantonio: LinkedIn.
Farron Cousins: LinkedIn.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Cameron Harris.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: He went to Facebook. But, Scott Stern, also went.
Mike Papantonio: But the point is this, the point is this, we could go, this is a huge list.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, and we don’t even have the whole list.
Mike Papantonio: But they all, no.
Farron Cousins: There’s still so many more.
Mike Papantonio: They came from the spook industry.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And people like Jack Dorsey and, and, and, and, and Zuckerberg, said, look, come to work with us. But it wasn’t just, you see there was something in it for them. Let’s let this spook decide what we’re gonna put out there in the public. They’re gonna take, they’re gonna make the decisions. We’re putting them in charge. But the rest of the story is when they did that, they benefited some way in all kinds of ways from the government. Just like, take Amazon again. Go back to, go, go back to that story. What was it a $600 billion contract? Was it 600 billion dollars?
Farron Cousins: A, a good portion of all the money they make actually comes from those government contracts. I think a majority of Amazon’s profit. It’s not from people buying toothpaste on their website. It’s from these government contracts.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. So these, these, these freaks want to say, well we are just looking out for the American public. No, they weren’t.
Farron Cousins: No. And.
Mike Papantonio: They were looking out for themselves. They were destroying everything we hold dear about the freedom of press in this country.
Farron Cousins: And, and you also have to wonder too, what else did they get in return? Because a revolving door of this size with this many people from this one area of the government going to these exact same companies, there’s a bigger relationship there. And I hope that gets flushed out because they get access. Just like we talk about with media outlets that hire the former CIA people.
Mike Papantonio: Mm.
Farron Cousins: It’s because they want the access. So why did, why did these groups need the access? That’s a question we still need answered.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: We also know that these are companies that are still largely unregulated.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Facebook alone facing tons of lawsuits for monopolistic behavior. They want to be in good with the government because they did it with Obama. They did it with Trump. They’re doing it with Biden.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, it goes all the way back to Bush.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. So no matter who’s there, we’re gonna be your friend. We’re gonna give you what you want, in return, you don’t touch us.
Mike Papantonio: Right. Leave us alone.
Farron Cousins: We’re your guys.
Mike Papantonio: Don’t hit us for monopoly cases. Don’t, you know, say it’s an antitrust case. Give us a break when you can. Even though Europe is killing us.
Farron Cousins: They are.
Mike Papantonio: Europe is fining the hell out of us for doing all this illegal stuff. Don’t do it in the US and we’re gonna let your spook industry take control of this entity. That’s exactly what’s happened here.
A leader at the Church of Scientology has disappeared after authorities tried to serve him with a child trafficking lawsuit. Farron, you and I have done plenty of stories on this cult of crazies. That’s what it is. It’s not a church, it’s not a religious organization. It is a cult of maniacs. And nevertheless, we give them, we give them a tax break. They don’t have to pay taxes. Now this guy that, that’s running the entire organization is on the run. He’s hiding out because of this lawsuit that’s been brought by a Florida lawyer down in South Florida. Go ahead.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, and we actually, we talked about the lawsuit really just a couple weeks ago.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: You basically, you have these children, some as young as you know, five and six years old, they get pulled into the church with their families and the, well, I don’t wanna call it a church. The Scientologists put them to work.
Mike Papantonio: A cult.
Farron Cousins: Scrubbing boats, cleaning hotel rooms, doing all kinds of horrible things for no pay at all. Basically using them as child labor. They’ll take away any documents they have so that they cannot escape. They’re trapping these people. It is human trafficking.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Just through an organization that most people in this country somehow view as legit. It’s disturbing.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I mean, okay, so it starts in California. You would, no surprise there. It’s the hub of crazy. So it starts in, starts in California and then Florida, second hub of crazy. It builds its second big monstrosity of an organization in, in Florida. But as it’s doing it, you understand what they’re doing as they build is you brought in the Scientology, you give me everything you’ve got. You may not have any contact with your family. If you have an inheritance, you give it to me. A lot of the money they make is from that. The second big bit of money is, is they don’t pay taxes on anything.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Because for some reason they’ve been, it’s been determined that they’re somehow a, a religion. It is a cult of crazy. What I think is interesting, L. Ron Hubbard, who started this whole thing, started it on a pretty good premise. And that is the American and international psychology has become a, a, a dirt pit. That it doesn’t work. It’s, you know, we’ve made it into something that it’s not, that it shouldn’t be. So he starts attacking the, the, the, area of psychology. The discipline of psychology. And he builds his entire structure around that. L. Ron Hubbard was the guy. He ends up spending his life on a boat because he’s running from the law all over the world. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And.
Mike Papantonio: Sea Org.
Farron Cousins: Well, and, and, and another part of it too is that, you know, we talk about how we in the US give them this tax exempt status, most countries in Europe don’t even recognize it as a religion anymore.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly.
Farron Cousins: They have stripped them of any status they may have had because they understand this isn’t a religion. You’re not even really praying to a, a deity of any kind. You don’t really believe in anything.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, L. Ron Hubbard, L. Ron Hubbard is their deity.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, if you’re gonna have a deity, it’s L. Ron Hubbard, who by the way, was all, always having to run because he was, he had so many fraud cases against him.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: The criminal fraud cases against him that he had to live on a boat and he started something called Sea Org. And this whole thing is where, this is where we are. I, I would think that, that that’s where we’re gonna find David.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: You know, David is on the run right now because he understands that these charges are, are, are big.
Farron Cousins: David, who by the way, actually served as the best man for one of Tom Cruise’s weddings, I think his second wedding, maybe.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Okay. So it’s a real easy solution. And here’s what I hope happens. You, you could, you can yank, you can, you, you can yank their tax exemption. You can get judgements against them. This is exactly what we’re doing with Iran in the terrorist cases. They hold, they have a lot of holdings all over the world, a lot of ’em in the United States. So we get judgements against them for what took place with, with terror groups that have killed American citizens. So we get, we get judgements against ’em. We sell their property. We, we put, we get possession of their bank, bank accounts. And so there’s all these things that they’re able, that we’re able to do, if somebody would show enough courage and just pull the trigger on this, and it doesn’t have to be a criminal event. This, if this civil case turns out to be what I think it is, this is serious stuff.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, and I think it’s, people should understand how serious it is. If it wasn’t serious, this guy wouldn’t be on the run right now trying to evade authorities. I mean, they went to his office and security refused to let them in to just serve the lawsuit.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. 37 times.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. 37 times.
Mike Papantonio: 37 times.
Farron Cousins: So he, he knows, he knows he’s done for, I think.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Let’s hope, let’s hope they get, let’s hope they get him. But more importantly, let’s hope they close this cult of crazies down, because that’s all it is. It’s just taking advantage of people all over the world right now. Thank you for joining me. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week. But all of these segments are gonna be available this 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 every week we tell you the stories that corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers don’t allow for it. Or their political connections are just so strong and they’re so tribal that they won’t allow for the story to be told. We’ll see you next time.
