America’s Lawyer E37: Rich and powerful people from across the world met in Davos last week to pretend to care about the world, but committing to do nothing about the problems we face. We’ll tell you what happened. A lawsuit against Beto O’Rourke could dramatically alter campaign speech in the future. And an airline CEO admitted that Pete Buttigieg’s office was fully aware of their scams and did NOTHING to stop them. 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. Rich and powerful people from across the world met in Davos last week to pretend to care about the rest of the world, but committing to do nothing about the problems. We’ll tell you about it. A lawsuit against Beto O’Rourke, well, it could dramatically change and alter the way that people campaign. And an airline CEO admitted that Pete Buttigieg’s office was fully aware of their scams way ahead of time and did nothing to stop them, coming from the airline industry themselves. All that and more, it’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
The World Economic Forum took place in Davos, Switzerland last week where the ultra-rich and powerful met and agreed to do nothing to make life better for any of us. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins joins me to talk about it. Farron, you know, you have masters, this story’s great, masters of the universe. They leave their security bubble, they’re gated communities, their billionaire gated communities with their arm guards on their jets and to tell the unclean masses, the mere mortals like me and you, how we should live. They fly in with their jets, armed guards, extra sex workers, by the way, are flown in just to make sure that all these billionaire types are really happy as they preach to us about how stupid we are, how smart they are. And it’s just at this festive environment, it where, where they’re just talking about basically, we’re the smartest people on the planet. That’s why we’re, we’re all here in Davos, Switzerland.
Farron Cousins: Right. And, and you know, I, I’ve read so many articles about what Davos, you know, what took place there, but nobody can even seem to answer the very simple question of what is the point?
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: You know, there doesn’t really seem to be any reason why this needs to be happening, because nothing comes of it, other than a bunch of rich and powerful people patting themselves on the back, patting each other on the back saying, we’re so great and wonderful. Shouldn’t everybody else be just like us? But they’re not smart enough to be like us.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I mean, look, the way I, the descriptions of the, it’s like five days of this nauseating virtue signaling. The virtue signaling is you dumb masses, if you would just be as smart as we are, this would be a better world. And in the process, they’re sitting there eating Swiss chocolate, drinking thousand dollar champagne, a thousand dollars a bottle, and they attack all the flaws of what they determined to be the common man. This is nauseating to me. What, this has been going on how many years? This is where globalism comes from.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: These are globalist, capitalist pigs is what they are. Globalist, capitalist pigs, doing all this virtue, this virtue signaling to say they’re somehow smarter than us.
Farron Cousins: Well, and one of the big themes that kept coming up was, oh, populism, populism is so bad. We’ve got these workers that are, you know, so-called quiet quitting, where they’re just not doing much at work.
Mike Papantonio: Now, talk about that. Okay. This CEO of this company stands up and starts preaching about the idea, you know, unemployment really is good. And then he tries to make it into an argument. Well, it’s good for the bankers, obviously, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. The, all the problems in the world are caused by the workers, not by the people at Davos. That is their big message. You know, we need high unemployment because it, it, it drives up our prices. You know, we’re able to save money. We can jack up our costs. We can be more choosy in who we hire when there’s three applicants for every job instead of one applicant for every three jobs.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: And that’s what they want and that’s what the Fed here in the US has been pushing and there was even a point where, where you had them talking about how disastrous it’s been for their individual countries with the offshoring of jobs. And then at the end they’re like, but we’re not gonna change.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: They, they actually said that. Like, we know it’s bad, but we’re gonna leave it in place because hey, why not?
Mike Papantonio: The edge of it comes, the, the interesting edge comes about the borders. Okay. You know, they can’t help but talk about the borders because these folks are the people who came up with NAFTA and CAFTA, had Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton push all that. And then all of a sudden they say, well, you know, we can do better than that. We don’t have to ship jobs overseas in places like America or Germany or wherever. We’re just gonna bring in all these immigrants and we’re gonna use immigrant labor the same way that we used to use it when we’d ship jobs over the seas. And it’s a better deal because if we maim ’em or we kill ’em, or you know, we just ship the body back. That’s how these people think.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: And the disgusting hypocrisy, they’re in this most this opulent setting where, you know, nobody, this is, this is rarefied air that nobody else is invited. But they talk down to all the rest of the world talking about how stupid we are, talking about how they have the better ideas on how to solve these problems. But your point is, they do nothing. Nothing came out of this. You understand?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Zero came out of this other than they all met.
Farron Cousins: Right. And, and it just strengthens their alliances with one another because we had plenty of US lawmakers there. Kyrsten Sinema, Joe Manchin, Chris Coons.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: All Democrats, some Republicans there. But it was the Democrats up on stage.
Mike Papantonio:Oh.
Farron Cousins: Agreeing with these horrible things and agreeing to not bring jobs back to America.
Mike Papantonio: What was, it was like a Dem, it was a Democratic gaggle. That’s what is so offensive to me. There were some, there were a couple of Republicans, but this was a Democratic thing because if you think about it, it started globalism, the big push for globalism is what these people represent. And they want one, they want a one, one world order, as George Soros would say, we want a one world order. The one world order is these hypocrite, billionaire, elitist, trying to tell the rest of the world how we ought to live. It’s disgusting to me. And you know, why not meet in Detroit?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Why, why not meet in Detroit where there, you know, where there’s real, or Chicago? Come on down to earth and you don’t have, meet in a Hilton hotel. Invite everybody, let’s talk it out. No, they all wanna meet in their little rarefied air and tell us how stupid we are.
The number of private jets flying in and out of Davos last week caused a noticeable increase in carbon emissions. This is the second, second part of this Davos debacle, this gaggle of billionaire pricks meeting in this opulent hotel where nobody else is invited. And so, so lay out this story for us. How ridiculous, how, how the hypocrisy of this.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. You, you have this new report that has confirmed that each year when they do Davos, the number of private jets, which is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of private jets flying in there, causes a notable increase in carbon emissions that they say is the equivalent of putting an extra 350,000 cars on the road driving nonstop for seven straight days. And some of these jets that flew into Davos, do you know how long their travel was? 13 miles.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Not 13 minutes. 13 miles.
Mike Papantonio: No. See the, the big, the big challenger jet coming in there, the challenger jet is part of the opulence. It’s part of, I’ve, you know, I’m a bigger guy than you, or I’m just as important to you. These people can meet with a zoom call. You could have the most extraordinary zoom meeting you’ve ever seen. But why do they wanna get together? They wanna get together because they have these backroom deals where they’re making deals. We, politicians were there. Democrats showed up in mega force. So they’re meeting with these backroom deals with these Democrats, or I guess there, were there Republicans there? I didn’t see any.
Farron Cousins: I, I think there were a few.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: But I, the Democrats, like we’ve said, you know, they were the ones they were up on stage.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Because it all ties into NAFTA.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: It all ties into, it all ties in, into CAFTA. Shipping the jobs overseas is where this all started. When we heard Bill Clinton talk about the brilliance of globalism. That’s what this is where these billionaire types tell us how stupid we are. Tell us we can do better by shipping jobs overseas. But, but the point is this, they could have met with, in a zoom room for God’s sakes. They didn’t have to waste this kind of extraordinary energy input to do this. How about the sex workers? What, what, what’s, what the hell? They have to fly in extra sex workers because they know that these corporate types, they’re big on that. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. That, that is a story that emerged actually, the UK did a wonderful job reporting on that, just talking about the sheer number of women they bring in because they know these, these wealthy men, they’ve got appetites, they want this. So they bring in, you know, the highest caliber women they can find.
Mike Papantonio: And at the same time they’re talking about human trafficking.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: How bad human trafficking is and how it’s a global problem. Hell, they’re flying these women in from all over the world, you know.
Farron Cousins: And, it, it’s impossible to believe that these are not, at least some of them, women who are not there voluntarily.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, absolutely not. Oh, how about, how about, let’s talk about how great Saudi Arabia is. Pick up that part of it, it ties into the energy part of it.
Farron Cousins: Ken Klippenstein did a wonderful job where he talked about how it basically towards the end of the whole conference became an infomercial.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: An infomercial for Saudi Arabia talking about how great it is for investment opportunities. Oh, they’re turning things around in Saudi Arabia. They’re great people running this country. Just a complete fantasy land. They’re trying to portray Saudi Arabia like Disney World.
Mike Papantonio: And it’s all of these international bankers trying to get part of the Saudi Arabia money. Part of the pitch about Saudi Arabia, look what they do for our country. They invest, they buy our weapons. Okay. They invest into buying our land and building whatever the hell Saudi Arabians build nowadays. It was just, it, it was, it was this whitewash of Saudi Arabia. And they didn’t get into the idea of, gee wiz. Let’s talk about the energy as it relates to Saudi Arabia.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: You know, the point, the hypocrisy was just so palpable here. And, and, and I didn’t see either side. I didn’t, I read across the board, I read the conservative stuff. I read the Republican stuff. Everybody lands exactly where we are. What we’re saying. It’s this unprecedented corporate opportunity to try to shape the world there in Davos Switzerland. Not in Chicago, not in Detroit. Not by zoom, but in this opulence.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. It, it was really interesting. This is kind of one of the few things that brings together both sides because like you said, across from left media to right wing media, everybody is out there saying, this is deplorable. These people are disgusting. They are the causes of the problems that we’re suffering from. And yet they’re up there on stage preaching to us about, oh, you’ve gotta do something to reduce your emissions. Now let me go get in my private jet and fly 13 miles.
Mike Papantonio: 13 miles. Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Because I didn’t want to call an Uber to get to the conference.
Mike Papantonio: I think, I think the number was more than 50% of the, all the jets coming in flew less than 500 miles.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: And, and they have railway systems that serve Davos. They’re very nice, by the way.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: It’s not like a getting on a crappy Amtrak.
Mike Papantonio: No. These cats don’t, they don’t do rail services. Okay. So, but anyway, the, the, they were asked several times different ways. Why, why, why don’t you do this another way? Why, why do you have to fly in with your jet? Why can’t you do it it by zoom? The question was, well, we’re extremely busy people and we have things we have to talk about face-to-face. Yeah. Face-to-face is in backroom deals that are being cut for these bankers all over the, all the world.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. All off the record. Where, you know, where zoom could be recorded.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Somebody could accidentally tap into it. You do it in a closed door room, nobody hears what’s going on.
Mike Papantonio: God forbid they should, they should hear us in a zoom room talking about how brilliant Saudi Arabia is and how they’re our best friends.
A new lawsuit in Texas could have a devastating impact on the free speech in America. Interesting case. It has to do with SLAPP suits. Lay it out for us a little bit.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. So what happened is you had Beto O’Rourke who was running for governor in Texas, didn’t win, obviously lost by a lot. But during the course of the campaign, he called out Kelcy Warren, who was a natural gas billionaire with Energy Transfer Partners. And he talked about the fact that there’s these laws in Texas after the energy grid failure that exempted natural gas companies from being able or having to winterize their systems. After that came out, Warren of course gave Greg Abbott a huge political donation. And O’Rourke comes out and says, this is bribery. That statement that this is bribery.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Is what is getting him sued now for defamation. And it, it’s a fine line. I mean, I gotta say, when you read the details of this, not that I believe that Warren truly suffered, as they say, you know, mental anguish over the claims, but the language he chose to use, eh, it’s iffy.
Mike Papantonio: It’s, it is, it’s very much on the line. I looked at this case and they might, he, he might win this case.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I, I assure as hell don’t wanna side with him, but.
Mike Papantonio: I know, but, but the, the language O’Rourke used.
Farron Cousins: Was irresponsible.
Mike Papantonio: First of all, the question is, is this a public figure? Okay. That’s, you have to get past the threshold.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Is this is a private figure or a pub, a public figure because that changes the standard, the way we evaluate this case. I, you know, it’s a tough call. This guy could be a public figure because there was so much publicity about him giving a million dollars to Abbott. Abbott got, that was his, that was Abbott’s biggest money coming from this guy. Second, could he be a public figure because there was so much publicity about the fact that Abbott had been instrumental on changing, on trying to change the SLAPP law to where it’s easier for a corporation to bring a case, you know, to bring a lawsuit against people like O’Rourke. Uh, you know, this is 50 50 chance. I, I think I, I think this guy could lose this case. I think, I think O’Rourke really is, is maybe in trouble here.
Farron Cousins: Well, and.
Mike Papantonio: Because the language, not because, not because, not because it’s not right. Because, you know, politicians should be able to say what, what’s on their mind.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, and see that, that’s the problem. Because the, the results of this lawsuit would not only affect O’Rourke. I mean, he’s, it’s a million dollar lawsuit. So that’s really not that big of a deal. And to me, that low sum kind of shows that this isn’t about the money.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly.
Farron Cousins: This is about proving a point.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly.
Farron Cousins: And that point would have this massive chilling effect. I mean.
Mike Papantonio: Yes.
Farron Cousins:We, we’ve done plenty of segments where we talk about the money that corporations are giving to politicians, and we call them out for it.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: But when you suggest that doing so is illegal, which it is not, unfortunately, should be, but it’s not. If you say that they did something illegal, which the word bribery has that, you know, connotation of an illegal transfer of money for a favor.
Mike Papantonio: Well, there.
Farron Cousins: That crosses the line.
Mike Papantonio: There’s slander liable, per se. One is you’ve committed a, you’ve committed a crime. One has to do with your some kind of perversion of sex. There’s, there’s about four areas where you simply can’t, you can’t go there.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. If you go there, it’s called per se libel or per se, slander. And, you know, then you’re only talking about damages. How much did this, how much did it affect you? I’m worried about this case. Hulk Hogan, if you’ll think about it, he won his case against Gawker. Hulk.
Farron Cousins: And shut them down from it.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, Hulk, that’s where, and, and this is where the Gawker showed a video and talked about the fact that Hulk Hogan allegedly was having sex with his best friend. Well, Hulk won that case, it was a $140 million case. And it put Gawker out of business. You, you know, you can, first of all, it wasn’t true. You know, they found out this was just a kind of a made up story. But the point, the point is, this is one of these, this is one of these lawsuits that can go really bad real fast.
Farron Cousins: It, it really can. And again, this is not just going to affect politicians who want to call out the corporate money.
Mike Papantonio: It affects us.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Everything we do here is on the line. So it is one of those times, like I’m, I’m, I’m pulling for O’Rourke to win. But when you actually do dig down into this, man, it, it doesn’t look good at all.
Mike Papantonio: The word, the wording when you take a close look is, it’s, it’s problomatic.
Farron Cousins: And, and it’s tweets. It’s ads. Ads that he paid money to put in front of people.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Yeah. It, it, it did make this cat look like a criminal.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: You know, the totality of it made him look like a criminal.
The DOJ was launched, they, they’ve launched this investigation into Abbott over contaminated baby formula that killed two infants. But this story’s much bigger than that. It’s also the NEC story that you’ve covered. You did a story on NEC. Matter of fact, my daughter in this law firm is handling that case. It’s a huge case against Abbott. Let’s talk about this one.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Right now, and it’s, you know, 12 months after the fact, the DOJ finally says, okay, we’re gonna look into what happened. But last February, of course, we had Abbott industries pull their baby formula off the market after two infants died after ingesting it because it was contaminated with bacteria.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: And a year before those deaths happened, you had a whistleblower at the company come forward and say, there is bacteria all over this. These are unsafe conditions. We’re putting out a dangerous product. So 24 months after the whistleblower came forward, our DOJ finally says, all right, I guess we gotta do something here. And they’ll do nothing in the end.
Mike Papantonio: Well, yeah. It’s, it’s the same story. I, I sometimes I get tired of talking about how dysfunctional the DOJ is. It’s just a joke. It’s just like the regulatory SEC, it’s just like the reg. I mean, go, go watch the Bernie Maddow, this last movie they made on Bernie Maddow to understand how dysfunctional these folks that we believe are looking over everybody’s shoulder and doing the right thing. It, the SEC, you may as well not even have it. FDA, it’s a joke. EPA, my God. Really? What it’s become. So this is one of those stories where all this is avoidable, wasn’t it?
Farron Cousins: It, it really was. And here’s the thing too, and this is, I kind of, I’m, you know, gonna give you a hell of a lot of praise here and, and all the other attorneys, the DOJ will look at the same cases you look at, and the DOJ will say, oh, well, uh, we’re not gonna end up doing anything about this. We don’t really think there was anything super bad with it. They’ve learned their lesson, whatever it is. But then you can go to court, you’ll beat the hell out of these people and you’ll win hundreds of millions.
Mike Papantonio: And then they’ll do something, maybe.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. But it takes you, it takes these other lawyers from across the country to actually hold these people accountable for the DOJ to finally say, okay, I guess we have to, because now we look like idiots.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Because all these other great lawyers were able to hold these people accountable.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I think what it is, is the DOJ has a tendency to go after low hanging fruit. If it’s not easy, they’re not gonna do it. The other part of this story, maybe they’ll take this more seriously, is that the Abbott and some other folks that make baby formula understand that you cannot give preemie babies cow’s milk. Because what, what it’ll do is has, it will, it can shut down their entire gastrointestinal system. It dries it up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: To where it’s like paper and these kids die. And these cases are so bad, as we’ve talked about on another show, is that the nurses who are working in these pediatric settings with preemies, they end up quitting because they can’t stand to, to hear the cries and the suffering of these children.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: It’s, it’s so excruciating. It’s such excruciating pain they almost have to put ’em into a coma.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, and, and it is, it is a painful death that takes a long time to happen. These nurses are emerging almost with PTSD.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: From their experience with these infants who they’re watching die and they can do nothing about it. And it, it, you know, based on what we know, it, it sure as hell looks like these companies knew.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, they did.
Farron Cousins: This was happening.
Mike Papantonio: There’s zero, Farron, there’s zero questions. The documents are always coming, they knew. They had every reason, the literature showed them. Epidemiology showed them. Their in-house documents show it. They had every reason to know it. But what they were doing is they were trying to build brand loyalties, crazy, crazy angle. But they understood that if you can build brand loyalty with a formula at a very young age, that that goes on for about six or seven years.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: With, with the, with the baby foods that you sell. And that’s what this was about. So they were telling these nurses, yeah, give them this stuff. The nurses saying, you know, I don’t, I don’t want to. And the doctors were ordering them to do it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. They’d make the deals with the hospitals to pretty much be the exclusive.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. To buy exclusive in big, in big amounts. So this Abbott story, we’re, we’re gonna be, we’re, we’re going after Abbott in a really big way. More on the NEC story.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: With, it’s an awful story.
A special needs school in New York is being sued for running what one former employee called a complete scam that caused taxpayers millions of dollars. Lay this story out. I, you and I may have similar angles on it. I, I want to take another track on it. Go ahead.
Farron Cousins: This, this is an absolute, just start to finish every part of this story is, is horrendous. You have this iBrain school in New York is what it’s called, iBrain. And what they are is it’s a special needs school. You know, give us your, your your, you know, mentally disabled individuals, you know, physically disabled. We’re gonna get them, we’re gonna give them an education. And finally, eventually, one of the workers there came out and, and has sued them because they said, among other things, and I’m gonna try to get the whole list, but there’s roaches and spiders everywhere. There was a dead rat carcass on the floor for days before anybody even bothered to move it. The smell is horrific. The black mold is dripping off of our ceilings. There are roaches in the children’s wheelchairs. Oh, and by the way, you’re, they’re performing illegal surgeries on these students with people that it turns out aren’t actually doctors. They lied about their credentials.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. So here, so, so, so what you have going here is you have the, there’s, there’s supposed to be oversight here, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: There’s supposed to be regulatory oversight. This goes on, apparently for years. The, the whistleblower described it as the most, as a filthy environment. Then she points out that, that part of the lawsuit anyway, you know, it still hadn’t gone to court. But the lawsuit is that, the people running it were, the guy running it was a chiropractor. He wasn’t even a doctor. And the one person that he had working as a technician was an ex-felon that had been, you know, actually given this job, make sure everything runs right here, is acting as a doctor in, in many capacities.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. They, they gave him a fake name, you know, fake credentials. None of it was real. The guy had, you know, spent a lot of his time in prison. And so the parents who would go and, and get their children into this place assumed, okay, well we have doctor number one who owns it and runs it, who says he has perfected this unique treatment.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Which turns out to not even really exist. And then they’ve got the other doctor, you know, the former inmate that, oh, okay, well this guy went to Harvard and he went to all these places. Nope. He went to prison. He didn’t ever go to medical school.
Mike Papantonio: No.
Farron Cousins: And, and then the, they’re getting $235,000 per student from the state each year, this school is. It is a, it’s a money making scam.
Mike Papantonio: Well, it is. But it, which leads you to the problem that is bigger for New York. It’s bigger for a lot of big cities right now. And that the regulate, regulators, forget it. There are no regulators. There’s nobody watching anything. And it goes to the idea of, of other things that are happening with the infrastructure in New York, the garbage collection that ties right into the story. What’s happening there? Our regulators aren’t regulating. Social services are not working. That’s why this happened. Subway services, I mean, you know, we can’t even get our subways working without crime problems, without delay problems, without breakdowns. You’ve got an epidemic of homelessness going on up there. When I looked at this story, and I, I talked, I, when I compared what is different about what’s going on in some of these bigger cities, this is it. This story to me is the metaphor for the entire infrastructure. When you have this going on for apparently years, you have it going on for years.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I mean.
Mike Papantonio: And, and, and there’s no regulator there. There’s no politician there. There’s nobody looking at what the hell’s going on. It kind of ties into the rest of the things that are going on in, in cities like LA or New York or Chicago. This, this is part of the problem right now.
Farron Cousins: Well, it really is because an organization like this with this many problems, this many fake credentials, phony surgery.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And, and, and kids going to the hospital because the phony surgeries. This should have been shut down after about six months. But you’ve got a city that is so plagued with so very many problems and so few people to deal with them if they want to deal with them at all, that it, it’s almost, you know, sitting here thinking about it. Is that city too big now?
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Do we need to break it into two cities to be able to function,
Mike Papantonio: That, that, you know, interesting thing. American, it was American Experience. It’s a PBS show. They analyzed it the same way you do. You probably haven’t seen that. But they came up with an analysis. Are cities reaching this point where this kind of thing’s gonna happen because there’s nobody watching? Like it’s a Mad Max movie taking place right there in the city. PBS, American Experience, it talks about New York City chaos and what’s happening there. Why does this kind of case arise? How could this go on where you got doctor, who’s not even a doctor, he’s a chiropractor.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Experiment, doing experiments that aren’t even legitimate experiments with a friend who’s an ex-felon, living under an assumed name, who are taking care of kids as special needs children with mental disabilities. How does that happen for years? It happens because there’s a breakdown in the infrastructure and that, that I think goes to the heart of this case.
Farron Cousins: Maybe time to break ’em up.
Mike Papantonio: A possibly illegal database of financial transactions have been kept for years by the Arizona State government. Wow. Go ahead, go ahead with this story.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This is one of those things that we always talk about, about with the slippery slope of things. And this is exactly what we’ve got here. You’ve got the Arizona secretary of State basically, or Attorney General, excuse me. And years and years ago, all the way back to the Bush administration, they said, listen, we got a lot of crime.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: So what we need to do, Department of Homeland Security, is we need to be able to monitor these financial transactions going through, you know, Western Union and MoneyGram. That’s how the criminals are moving the money. And we can get that and we can take care of it. Give us the authority to do it. So Homeland Security says, yeah, go ahead and do it. Well, it only took a couple years before the state of Arizona thought, you know what? We don’t just have to, we’ve been given a blank check, we don’t have to just look at the criminals. We can analyze any money transfer.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: And so what.
Mike Papantonio: Over five, $500.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, over $500. So what they started doing was without warrants of any kind, they would issue what’s been described as fake subpoenas to these money organizations getting all the records from these individuals that were not under investigation.
Mike Papantonio: Well, it’s part of the way to deal with immigrants to say, well, we can follow what you’re doing.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: You, you wrote an interesting, you, you sent this story to me, top of the story. This is your, my take on the following story is that they continue to go after the migrant, migrants working in America, not the companies that are illegally employing them. And so this is kind of one of the things you’re talking about here.
Farron Cousins: It is.
Mike Papantonio: This is how let’s go target that migrant worker who might be sending $500 back home so the family can live back in Mexico or El Salvador, wherever it is. Correct?
Farron Cousins: Right. And, and they’re getting paid under the table. You know, the boss of whatever it is, whatever, you know, small factory or, or, you know, yard maintenance service is huge. They’ll pay ’em in cash.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: They take that cash to a Western Union, say, I need to get this $500 to Mexico, because that’s where they were looking at the transfers going. And so then when immigration comes to crack down on these people, they’re not going to the employer.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: They’re going to the individual.
Mike Papantonio: The chicken farms.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: The, the, the big massive cattle, you know, it, it’s, it’s nobody else will take these jobs is their position right now.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, that’s what Davos, Davos, Switzerland, that was kind of their talking point. We have to bring ’em in because Americans just don’t wanna work. That was really what they said out there because, so we have to let ’em out over the border. Now your point being is we let ’em over the border, they take the job that we expect ’em to take, and then organizations like this go target them for sending $500 back home because they know where they live now.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: You know.
Farron Cousins: And, and so then they take that migrant, the immigrant ship ’em back. Then the employer just says, okay, they’ll be another one tomorrow. So I’m fine. I can keep doing this.
Mike Papantonio: And, and I can pay ’em substandard wages. If they break their arm, I send them back to Mexico. If the, if they’re, if they’re killed on the job, I send ’em in a body bag back to Mexico. I don’t have any responsibility after that. That’s what this is all about. And that’s what kind of Davos, that’s what they were talking about in Davos, Switzerland. That’s, this is great. This is great. US Chamber of Commerce loves this.
Farron Cousins: They do.
Mike Papantonio: They’re behind this. But the US Chamber of Commerce won’t say, hey, wait just a second. Why are you going after these people that came here to work that you’re, you’re telling the American public that Americans are too lazy to work? So we’re bringing in these folks and now you’re targeting them. It’s an ugly story all the way around.
Farron Cousins: Well, you know, just a couple years ago there was a big migrant worker bust at a, it was a food packing plant, it was Mississippi or Louisiana.
Mike Papantonio: Mississippi. Yeah.
Farron Cousins: But, so they haul out about one to 200 immigrants. They have them outside. All of them are in handcuffs and they ship ’em all back.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And that was the last we heard of that story. There were no prosecutions for the owners, the managers, nothing.
Mike Papantonio: No.
Farron Cousins: I mean, the people’s kids were being dropped off there at the factory from school. They come out to see their parents in handcuffs.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: It, it was sick because they punished the people who were literally just doing a job. They’re not breaking the law. They’re doing a job.
Mike Papantonio: In other words, everything that Davos, Switzerland was talking about comes to pass. And when it comes to pass, they make it even tougher. They go after the workers that they’re saying, hey, come to the US because we need your, we need you to work here.
Nancy Pelosi’s daughter says that the former House speaker had an exorcism performed on her home over Thanksgiving. So an exor, I mean, I had to, you know, the first time I saw this story, I know I sent it to you and I said, Farron, is this, is this right? Is this, is this true? And is, I mean, we still don’t know that it’s true, but it’s sure being reported. The daughter said, this is what happened. Pick it up from there.
Farron Cousins:Yeah. The, the the daughter, Christine Pelosi I believe, or Alexandra Pelosi, excuse me. She, she tells the New York Times that, you know, Nancy was riddled with guilt over the husband getting attacked at the home. So she is Catholic. She calls up the Catholic priest and says, hey, um, it’s probably the house, I guess, that’s got the evil spirits. I would like for you to come and perform an exorcism on my home. And then again, this is according to Alexandra Pelosi. So the alleged exorcism took place possibly over Thanksgiving, although they did reach out to the local priest, I guess who’s supposed to be Pelosi’s priest. So they said, no, I, I didn’t go perform an exorcism. So we don’t know if it happened, but the daughter says it did.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, yeah.
Farron Cousins: So we have to take her at her word.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I mean. Okay. I mean, truthfully, let’s be fair about it. Her husband is brutally attacked, you know, with a hammer.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Still recovering. She’s not in the house. She feels guilty about it. And you know, some of these folks said, look, this, you don’t need an exorcism. You need some psychiatric care. You need some counseling. So that’s the other part of it. It’s, it’s, it’s a sad but weird story. I mean, I guess that’s the way to describe it.
Farron Cousins: It, it is. And so, you know, if we listen to what the daughter says, she felt tremendous guilt.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: That is the kind of thing you go, you talk about, about that with the counselor, with the therapist.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Not an exorcist.
Farron Cousins: And, and with your husband and y’all work through that together. You know, you’re both in your golden years. You may not have a lot of time. You don’t wanna live with it forever. So.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, it’s, I’m, I’m mixed on. I mean, it’s a sad story. I mean, she’s at the end of her career. Her husband’s almost killed. I don’t know whether he has residual brain damage. I have no idea. But she’s watching him go through this and she’s so desperate she says, we need an exorcism. And she really needs counseling, is what everybody else suggests here. But let’s hope it ends well. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Is that still a thing? That, that, I mean, exorcism, I mean we all saw The Exorcist. Is that still a thing? Are Catholics still doing that?
Farron Cousins: Apparently it is. And you know, we, we’ve actually, I mean I’ve, I’ve covered stories plenty of times of these, usually it’s on the right, you’ll get these Republican groups saying, we’re gonna perform an exorcism of this. We’re gonna perform an exorcism of that. And it’s just total kind of nut ballery to me. If, if we can make up that word.
Mike Papantonio: Well, let’s do an exorcism, if it’s a thing, exorcism office to office in Washington, DC. Let’s, let’s perform those kinds of exorcisms.
An airline CEO has admitted that Pete Buttigieg’s office knew about their scams and let them do it anyway. Now, the reason I wanna do this story, because the first time we did this story, there was outrage. How dare you go after Mayor Pete and you don’t have any proof that he did anything wrong. Well, this is pretty strong proof, isn’t it? Go ahead.
Farron Cousins: It, it, it is. So you’ve got the United CEO, Scott Kirby, recently very openly on a call with investors and other airlines was like, hey, listen, we’re gonna keep doing everything that led to those massive meltdowns in our entire system over the Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks because the Department of Transportation knows that we do this and they.
Mike Papantonio: They gave us permission.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. They’ve basically said, we are not gonna actually hold you accountable.
Mike Papantonio: So what they do, they advertise, they say, we can handle this leg of a trip. We can do this. We want your money, all the time they know they don’t even have the personnel to handle it. If they get it a year out, they’re gonna sell it anyway. Buttigieg was told by what, 30 Attorney Generals that this was.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. 34 I think. Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. 30 so Attorney Generals, this is what’s going on. Now this didn’t just happen. This happened a year and a half ago.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And so when we did this story, and everybody says, oh, you just, you know, you’re, this is a gay attack. I mean, they literally said that in the comments. Really? No, this is a competence attack. And our position was, Mayor Pete ain’t ready for the big time.
Farron Cousins: No, he’s really not.
Mike Papantonio: And, and that’s, that’s kind of what this story was about.
Farron Cousins: Well, and, and at the time too, you Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna of last year, I think it was in March or April of last year, already sent a letter to him warning that, hey, this is what’s happening. They know they’re selling flights that they can’t fly because they don’t even have pilots to fly them on the schedule.
Mike Papantonio: So was Ro Khanna attacking him and Bernie attacking him for any other reason than competence?
Farron Cousins: Oh, Mayor Pete’s husband came out on Twitter and absolutely went after Ro Khanna for it.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. For saying, do your, do your job.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Do your job. But again, tribalism gets involved. He’s a Democrat. He’s my guy. I’m gonna stand behind him anyway.
Farron Cousins: He, he is not qualified to hold this position. When you have the airlines that he’s supposed to be reigning in bragging about him not doing his job.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: That’s the end of the line.
Mike Papantonio: High fives about it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: High fives about him not doing his job. Farron, thank you 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. You can follow us on Twitter @AmericasLawyer. I’m Mike Papantonio and this has been America’s Lawyer where, where every week we tell you the stories that corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers won’t let ’em, or their political connections just don’t allow for it. The connections are too strong. We’ll see you next week.
