America’s Lawyer E42: George Santos admitted in a recent interview that the reason he lied so much is because he thought he could get away with it – that admission may come back to haunt him as he faces criminal investigations. Lots of things are happening with both Democrats and Republicans as the 2024 Presidential race gets underway – we’ll bring you the latest. And Mike Pence is trying to prove that he’s a better Culture War leader than Ron DeSantis. 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. George Santos admitted in a recent interview that the reason he lied so much is because he thought he could get away with it. That admission may come back to haunt him as he faces criminal investigations. Lots of things are happening with both Democrats and Republicans as the 2024 presidential race gets underway. We’ll bring you the latest. And Mike Pence, well, he’s trying to prove that he’s a better culture war leader than Ron DeSantis. We’ll see. All that and more, it’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
George Santos really, really loves to lie and in a recent interview with Piers Morgan, he admitted that he does it because he doesn’t think he’ll get caught. That statement can cause him serious legal problems. I’ve got Farron Cousins to talk about what’s happening with this nutcase. Farron, you know, as you read this, as you read the Piers Morgan interview, you go, not only is he unstable, I mean, I think the guy’s dangerous. He, he is obviously, he’s got it, some type of pathology, some type of psychosis, where he does not, he can’t even identify the difference between a lie and the truth. Pick it up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This is really interesting to me because, you know, Piers Morgan, who, you know, usually is not, you know, one of the best interviewers out there, but he really got George Santos to admit that, well, yeah, I thought I’d get away with it mostly because I did the same thing when I ran in 2020 and nobody called me out on the lies then. So I thought I could keep getting away with it. And, and I think what’s really interesting is when you look at a criminal, a criminal always thinks they’re gonna get away with their crime. Why did you smuggle these drugs? Why did you rob the bank? Well, because I didn’t think I’d get caught.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: And so that’s the same excuse we’re hearing from George Santos, who is, is currently or about to be under investigation by eight different bodies, both in the US and in Brazil.
Mike Papantonio: Let’s, let’s talk about this just a little bit. Okay. First of all, when you have an essential element of what you’re representing, you’re, you’re saying, this is the truth, and because of this truth, you should send me money. Okay. It has a lot of components to it. You got wire fraud, you’ve got just straight out fraud. The, the representations he made to donors caused those donors to say, okay, I’m gonna send him money. That’s how fraud, that’s what fraud is about. I guess nobody’s told him that when he says, look, I just lie, I can get away with lying. I have a long history of lying about my religion, about my parents, about my education, lie about everything. When he admits that basically he’s really built a case for prosecutors. I promise you he’s going to be prosecuted. And some prosecutors are gonna figure out, these are fundamental representations you made to donors, and they weren’t true and they caused them, but for your lie, but for your lie, they would not have sent you money.
Farron Cousins: And, and it’s the same thing with the cases of the charity that he was running. Oh, give me money. I’ve gotta save this veteran’s dog. And then he pockets the money and the dog dies. The Amish dog breeder that, oh no, my checks were stolen. I didn’t write those bad checks. You’re admitting that you do have this pathology, that you do like to lie and that you think you’re always gonna get away with it. So whether it’s, you know, the donation fraud, the lying about donations, we found out this week that back in 2020, he had put on his filings that he said, oh yeah, I gave thousands of dollars to other Republican candidates. It’s right here in my filings. So they’ve now asked those Republican candidates, show us where the money came in. They said, well, it, I didn’t get any money from him.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: Lying to the FEC.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: You’re not gonna get away with that.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I think they have so many ways to go out. Do you realize McCarthy has not done anything about this? That McCarthy hasn’t even gone up to meet this guy and say, you know, you’re not, your time here is about over. Did you follow that part of the story?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And it truly is remarkable. And I think, look, this guy flipped a seat that was held by a Democrat. Now he’s got it in the Republican hands, and McCarthy understands there’s no way that that swing district is gonna put another Republican up.
Mike Papantonio: No, no.
Farron Cousins: When we get rid of Santos. So do I want to suffer the slings and arrows for now and have a guy who’s gonna vote with me or kick him out and know for a fact a Democrat’s gonna take it? It’s gonna happen either now or in the 2024 election, but Republicans have lost this seat.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I love this. He says, you know what, I’m a liar, but I’m a terrible liar and that humbles me. That’s, that’s basically, that’s what he told Piers, Piers Morgan.
Farron Cousins: He needs to get better at it, I guess.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
If the penalty for breaking the law is a fine, then the law only exists to punish the poor. That’s exactly what the Mormon church found out recently after they hid billions of dollars from the government and they only had to pay $5 million as a penalty. We’re talking about 32 to, somewhere between 32 and $35 billion that they hid from the government. They hid from the IRS. They hid from virtually everybody who’s supposed to be watching how they’re spending their money because they don’t pay taxes. You know, can you imagine this cult? It’s no, it’s a Scientology cult. Yeah, there’s a lot of them, a lot more of them than there is of Scientology, but we’re talking about a cult here. And so pick it up from there, would you.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. For 50 years this scam was going on with the, the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormon Church, and they’re hiding all this money that they’re getting in, in donations. Nobody outside of this organization knows how much money they even had because it’s all hidden. And after years and years of piling up this money, finally you get the federal government that looks at it and says, oh my God, this is money that, because it’s investment money, not direct money to you, you do have to pay taxes on, you do owe the federal government a little bit of this. So you’ve got your 30 plus billion dollars. Give us 5 million and we’ll call it a day.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Okay. So look, here’s what’s really problematic. They’ve known about this since about 2017 or 2018, as we always expect for the feds, they do nothing about it until a whistleblower says, wait a second. You’ve known about this since 2018. You’re doing nothing about it. They’re stealing money basically, because the reporting of it in and of itself moves money around. Okay. And they have responsibilities with that money. The, they have a responsibility to say, A, where did the money come from? How are you using the money? Is it money that investors put in? Is it money that you’ve collected at your church? It, and they, they’re trying to say, well, we don’t have to pay taxes. So why is it all important? I love this last line. The lawyers, the, the lawyers comment on the fraud. Here’s what they said. Okay. First of all, yes, we lied to the SEC, we lied to the IRS. We agree, we regret our fraud, and we consider this issue closed. The arrogance of that. The arrogance of that. And the, it’s the same SEC understand that let Bernie Madoff steal billions of dollars from people’s, from people’s bank accounts. Bernie Madoff, SEC knew about it for 10 years and they let it go on. This is the same thing, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And if we’re talking about percentage wise, $5 million penalty on $35 billion, we’re talking about, I, I think I’m trying to do the math real quick in my head. It’s either 0.1% or 0.01% of the money that they made off of these investments that they didn’t pay taxes on.
Mike Papantonio: How about this? It ain’t nothing.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: It ain’t nothing. Nobody’s, nobody’s going to, SEC doesn’t put anybody in jail. Department of Justice, you, you know, you know that story.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And so it’s, so they get away with it. And if you tried that or I tried it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, we’re gone.
Mike Papantonio: We’re gone, man. We’re going to prison.
Donald Trump at last could be in serious trouble this election cycle, even though he only has one confirmed opponent right now, Nikki Haley, and she, you know, look at the polls. She’s surging at the polls, not enough. But he’s got some problems out there with both Haley and DeSantis when DeSantis announces.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This is really fun here, because I do love how the media’s saying, she’s surging in the polls. Okay, well, she.
Mike Papantonio: 6%.
Farron Cousins: She went from three to 6%.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, yeah.
Farron Cousins: But still in just a couple of days, that’s not bad for somebody who two weeks ago, most people in this country had no idea she even existed.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: So I, I think maybe it is a surge, maybe we do call it that. But overall, what we’re seeing with the trend in the polling, which is what we have to look at right now, is Trump is not growing. The other folks are, he may not be falling, but when we start to see these other people, when Nikki Haley comes in and suddenly her approval rating is up to 62%, which is pretty dang good for a politician.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Three to 6% on the I’ll vote for her, that’s movement. That’s movement for her in the right direction.
Mike Papantonio: Let’s just say he holds onto his MAGA base talking about Trump right now.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: He, it’s still winnable.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Because it comes down to the electoral college, as you know. And so, it’s not people saying, well, he’s just gonna keep his base. Everything’s gonna be okay. We don’t know what independents are gonna do this time.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, you know, who they’re, they’re really upset about a lot of things that are, that are happening right now. So I think Nikki Haley thrown in, I think she’s a good candidate. I mean, you know, she’s, she’s gonna pose, I think at this point before DeSantis comes in, I really do believe she’s gonna pose the biggest threat.
Farron Cousins: Well, and I think part of that too is the fact that Donald Trump is not taking any shots at her. He could, but also since he put her in the UN and he said a couple things like she was a bad governor, okay, whatever. But he’s focusing all his anger and his attention and energy on Ron DeSantis.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: Which bad for DeSantis, because Trump does have that manipulation, that big conman factor. He can get people to go against somebody.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Meatball head Ron, is, is Trumps. He, he’s not saying it, but he’s letting everybody else say it.
Farron Cousins:: And, and so.
Mike Papantonio: It’s already begun.
Farron Cousins: Well, and it opens up the avenue for somebody to sneak in behind and start gaining this momentum while she’s not being attacked.
Mike Papantonio: Question is, is it set up? Is it a setup? Does Trump want her in to divide? You know, that’s, that’s the question. I, it wouldn’t surprise me. Lemme put it like that.
The Supreme Court has the power, finally the power to break the internet as they consider a challenge. And this is an important challenge. It’s an, it’s an important challenge to, to TikTok. It’s an important challenge to Facebook and, and it really across the board, because if the Supreme Court does what they’re supposed to do, what they should do, they’re gonna say this thing called 230 that, that they don’t have liability. There’s no liability as far as the way they control the content on their site. This could go really bad for the, for the, for the folks. The problem is, the guy who made the argument was a moron. I mean, that’s the only, Eric Schnapper. This is some professor that they have arguing on behalf of we need to do away with 230. And the, my lawyers who watched the argument, who I talked to, said it was the equivalent of a first year law student being called on for the first time in a contracts class. It was babble. It was meaningless. So bad that the court said, what the hell, what are you talking about, Mr. Schnapper? Eric Schnapper, what an embarrassment.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. The judges, both the liberal and conservative justices had to repeatedly say, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We don’t even understand what you are saying. But listen, section 230, I’m, I’m very torn on it because to one degree, especially in this particular case, which is social media, these terrorists were allowed to conspire and they planned an attack and it killed somebody. Things like that, we absolutely have to work on and get these social media giants accountable for that happening. The flip side of it is that these social media giants, if we kill section 230 altogether, are now liable for everything on their platforms.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Now let, let me, let me mention that. Let me mention something you, you and I usually agree on 99.9%. I, my position on this, because I’m handling cases where I’m seeing children trafficked. Okay. I’m seeing suicides that are taking place. I’m seeing murders that are taking place. And when you back up and see where it’s coming from, a lot of it’s coming from, a lot of it’s coming from the impressions and the push and the ideas that are coming from the internet. Now, the way I see it, we came up with 230 when the internet was emerging, Farron.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: When it was just getting a start, we needed to innovate. Now they’re making so much money they’re saying, we don’t wanna spend any money improving our system. That’s what this is about.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio:: That’s what this is about. We don’t wanna spend any more manpower. We don’t want to build any more technology because it’s gonna cost, it’s a corporate analysis and we treat ’em differently. I, I am all for doing away with 230. Based on this guy’s argument though, I don’t think you have a chance.
Farron Cousins: Well see, my take on it and to borrow the phrase from Obama, instead of taking a hatchet to it, we need to be taking the scalpel. Because what this will do, say for example, and this, you know, very close to home, if YouTube suddenly is liable for all of the content on their website. Who does that kill? That kills independent creators.
Mike Papantonio: Good point.
Farron Cousins: Because suddenly if, if I say something that might be incorrect, not only could I get sued for slander, but YouTube, as the host of it, opens themselves up to also be sued.
Mike Papantonio: So they’re going to, they’re gonna rail you back.
Farron Cousins: They will kill my channel.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Okay.
Farron Cousins: In a heartbeat. So that’s what worries me. But that’s why I say we need 230 to protect the independent media creators.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: We have to get rid of the part of 230 that says you can let terrorists conspire on your platform all day.
Mike Papantonio: Traffickers.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: You know.
Farron Cousins: And so, it, if the court is smart, what they may do is send it back down to the lower courts who might then be able to dismantle 230 to a degree. And that’s what we need. We don’t need all of it gone. We need a lot of it gone.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: But it just needs to be rewritten for modern times, really.
Mike Papantonio: Well, yeah. I mean it is, it, that’s the issue. And we’re, this is years and decades away from where this all started. It was, when it first started, I thought, okay, well I see giving ’em some, some protection. Now they’re making so much money, they don’t wanna spend a dime creating a system that they can avoid this kind of thing. Well here, you know, Democrats in their mind 230 promotes misinformation and hate speech. That’s the Democrat side of it. Republican side is 230 allows the, the beating down of conservative opinion. So here’s the point. You’re not gonna get, you’re not gonna get a decision from Congress, right?
Farron Cousins:: Right.
Mike Papantonio: It’s up to the Supreme Court right now. And the, and I’m hoping that these folks have good clerks because the babble that this Schnapper presented, when, when my lawyers are saying, what the hell, what is he talking about? He missed the whole point. And it was so bad the Supreme Court justices said, sir, we don’t know what’s, we don’t know what’s coming out of your mouth right now. We don’t even know what you’re saying. Where he came from, I have no idea. One of the most important cases in the country right now and this cat’s up there arguing it.
If you want your children working with bone saws and a pile of animal guts, then Wisconsin might be the state for you. Recently more than a hundred children were found to be working in a Wisconsin meat packing plant in clear violation of every kind of state labor law. No surprise. We’re, we did a story on this last week. The US Chamber of Commerce is giddy, the association, the associated industry is giddy, because we’re bringing all these children across the border. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: What are we gonna do with them? We’re gonna pay ’em below average wages because they’re gonna be working part-time. We’re gonna put ’em in situations where they can be maimed or killed, lose an arm, lose an eye, and we ship ’em back home. US Chamber of Commerce, buddy, they love that because they don’t have to spend the money going across the border. They bring ’em in from Nicaragua and Honduras, wherever. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And this is truly disturbing because when we had talked about this, we were talking about legislation that had been proposed to allow this.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: And then we turn around, find out a week later, uhoh, this is already in practice, illegally in practice, but that shouldn’t surprise anybody. And this company, this Packers Sanitation Services, which is a meat packing plant and they own plants across several states, all of them with children as young as 13, working around these animal carcasses, in unsafe conditions with tools they don’t know how to use. They don’t understand, you know, what happens if you lose an arm at age 13 because they can’t process that kind of future, you know, injury yet.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: And, and it’s terrifying that this is happening in the United States. But it is, and I guarantee you this Packers Sanitation is not the only place doing it.
Mike Papantonio: But Farron, look. Look, US Chamber of Commerce, I can’t tell you what an ugly, ugly bunch of people these are. First of all, it ain’t your mom and pop business down the road. We’re talking about 19 of the biggest multi-global corporations in the, I mean on the planet. Okay. So these are the people who run the US Chamber of Commerce. So what they, when they, when we, when the media started reporting, oh my god, these poor children, we have to let ’em in the country. They missed the story. They, the story is US Chamber of Commerce is now saying go Biden, go Biden. You know, they’re all behind Biden on this. They were doing it because now they don’t have to go out of this, they don’t have to leave the country and pay bribes. They don’t have to engage in corruption to be able to, to manage workers like child workers. Now they just bring ’em into the United States, put ’em in a meat packing place, put ’em in the coal mines. Story we did, they were in coal mines. They were in every kind of mining business. They’re in every kind of meat packing business. This is the way that US Chamber of Commerce is they’re delighted by, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, it is. And, you know, you and I actually did a story during the Bush, W Bush administration, we haven’t been doing this since HW but we’ve been doing it a long time. So all the way back in the Bush administration, I remember you and I talking about Tyson Foods and Tyson Foods through the US Chamber of Commerce was directly influencing the, the W Bush administration to do nothing about immigration, to continue letting everybody across. Talk about it publicly, oh, we’ve got a crisis just like we hear every day now. But these businesses, these industries, the US Chamber of Commerce, they control both parties. So that’s why we hear politicians talk a big game about we’re gonna stop all this immigration. They never will.
Mike Papantonio: No.
Farron Cousins: Because their donors need this source of labor.
Mike Papantonio: Republicans won’t stop it and it’s like Democrats don’t have enough sense to know that they’re getting hustled. That this is not about being humane. This is about feeding the US Chamber of Commerce labor market. That’s all this is about.
Is it a bad thing not to want to hire stupid people? A pizza shop in Ohio is taking heat for putting up a sign that says we’re now hiring non-stupid people. I don’t know. What, okay, so they, they’re catching, they’re catching criticism because they’re saying, you know, we don’t want, we don’t want stupid people working for us. That doesn’t sound like such a bad thing. I guess we do it around our, you know, we are pretty smart people around here. I don’t think we’d put a sign out, but pick it up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. You know, you’ve got this pizza, Santino’s Pizzeria, you know, just outside of Columbus, Ohio, they needed employees. So they put up a sign that they thought, this will be funny, now hiring non-stupid people. Well, of course it gets on the internet, everybody starts freaking out. And I, I don’t, I mean, for the life of me, look, I’m a, I’m a progressive guy. I’m on, online all the time. I don’t understand the outrage of this. Like, why, why is that, why are you mad about this? It’s a joke. They’re not literally pulling in potential applicants and saying, well, hang on there. Are you stupid? Ah, get the hell outta my. That’s not happening. It’s a joke.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly. It’s like Bill Maher and all the comics are saying right now, it’s like these folks need a safe space. I need a safe space. How dare you say something like that. It’s a joke. That’s all this is. I mean, and, and, and so, so, so this pizza, I think probably what we’re gonna find is it’s really improve their sales because the assumption is there’s no stupid people working there.
Farron Cousins: Well, and I will say too, look, you know, on, on my segments I do every day, I call people stupid, I think at least once a day. So I’m, I’m not, you know, above the fray on this.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: If, if it’s bad for me to call people stupid, I’m sorry. But if I see something stupid, I’m gonna call it stupid. I don’t think that’s discriminatory.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And if this pizza place wants to make a joke, we’ve driven by businesses that have jokes on their boards and their signs. Churches will have jokes. It’s sometimes folks, focus on the bigger issues because a pizza place hiring not stupid people.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Especially in Ohio where we, we’ve got a toxic plume of chemicals that could kill people.
Mike Papantonio: How about.
Farron Cousins: Maybe redirect the anger.
Mike Papantonio: How about leave your safe space for just a minute? How about that?
Mike Pence is challenging Ron DeSantis for the title of the lead culture warrior for the Republican Party. But DeSantis, well, he’s not gonna go down without a fight. He’s bought into everything that is nothing less than a culture war, pitting this group against that group, white against black. You know, that’s where it begins. Religious against non-religious, southern against northern. That is what DeSantis is up to. But Pence, he knows it works. So he’s jumping in. What do you think?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, Mike Pence, you know, he comes from the old school evangelical Republican party. Ron DeSantis is kind of the new school. We’re still religious, but, you know, we’re, we’re not leaning on that anymore. So it really is a fight right now between new and old. And Pence comes from the, the early days of the culture war. He was around when this stuff started. He was a conservative radio host forever. So he has pushed it since before DeSantis even thought about running for office.
Mike Papantonio: He loved Atwater. He loved Lee Atwater.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: He loved Donald Segretti. He loved the fact that the culture war was winning both, both sides, at some point. I mean, you had Democrats and Republicans were using the culture war. You had, you had Bush with the, the queen, with the welfare queen.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: You had the, the, the announcement in Philadelphia, Mississippi, one of the, what was one, regarded as one of the most racist places on the planet where Reagan launches his presidential campaign. And, and you had, you had advisors that had worked for the Democrats. I mean, telling ’em, yeah, this is gonna work here. Go ahead and do it. The point is, you know what, I don’t know. I think between the two Pence is so boring. I mean, I sometimes, you almost wanna put a, a mirror under his nose to see if there’s any condensation. See if he’s got any life in him. It’s kind of a mismatch. It’s a mismatch, 6% versus a real contender.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I think he’s in the forties at this point, DeSantis is. Not to mention the fact, you know, the Capitol rioters, when they went on January 6th, they were marching around chanting hang Mike Pence. So I don’t know who Mike Pence thinks his base is.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, yeah.
Farron Cousins: But the people who supported Trump hate him.
Mike Papantonio: He is so.
Farron Cousins: So he’s, he’s already lost that group. Moderate Republicans, they’ve already moved on to Nicki Haley and actually Ron DeSantis. So I don’t know who Pence is pandering to.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: We know he’s eventually gonna announce he’s running. So is DeSantis.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: But I think Pence is, is DOA in this race. I don’t even think he’s a factor.
Mike Papantonio: He’s not, he’s not. The guy is so boring. How in the world he did a radio show, you know, you tell me.
Sometimes you just gotta learn to keep your mouth shut. The foreperson of the special grand jury from Georgia has been making the rounds in the media this week, and her behavior has caused people to freak out because it’s so stupid. This woman needs, I don’t know. Look, the story is that you’ve got this Emily Kohrs, she is foreperson of a grand jury. Here she is, right there. Foreperson of a grand jury where it’s a civil grand jury, and you’ve got the prosecutor, Fani Willis saying, let’s look and see if Trump interfered with the voting process in Georgia. What did he do? And it’s an important thing to find out because there’s a lot of people involved with it. So you got these prosecutors, they’ve worked so hard to make it happen. You have investigators that have worked so hard. You’ve got jurors who’ve deliberated. You’ve got witnesses. I, the time and money that’s gone into this, this idiot woman in about 10 seconds creates an atmosphere that if, if they did find something on Trump, defense lawyers have a golden path. She’s the golden path. There, any chance of this thing actually going anywhere now is really, really diminished.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. What she has done, I mean, and we’ve got media outlets on the left and right and in the middle that have all gone after her for, for what they’re just describing as just bizarre behavior going on and doing these interviews and rolling her eyes and laughing at things that are not laughable situations. Very awkward. And, and you think, you know, this is not normal behavior almost. And even the Daily Beast said, my God, can somebody tell her her 15 minutes of fame have ended? Which is what this is about. She wants the attention and the fame.
Mike Papantonio: You have to watch it to believe that she’s like a 12 year old who is just giddy playing, spin the bottle. And she’s giggling and laughing. She, it looks like she has the IQ of something around, around room temperature. And she’s the foreperson of this whole process. And, and here she’s talking about what other jurors thought. She’s talking about how they deliberated. She’s talking about what she saw and witnesses and what they did. And she’s laughing about that. She’s talking about what she thought those witnesses were thinking. I mean, this is so, this has gone so far. The problem is Fani Willis, the prosecutor, lost control of everything. She made this into such a political issue. And the chances are they probably could go after Trump in some criminal setting. This though, every defense lawyer that’s gonna be there for Trump and all these other people that should or possibly be indicted, it’s, it’s gonna be a heyday for ’em. It’s, it’s like she, it’s like, it’s like all this work is just destroyed by this impartiality, by this, by this bias that she’s out on the networks talking about. I don’t know. Like she never took a civics class.
Farron Cousins: Well, especially after the judge didn’t want any of this going out either. That is also a very big problem that this investigation has. It still has to go before the, the normal, the criminal grand jury. You know, I, so I don’t know how that plays out in the end. But her behavior, Trump’s lawyers have already come out and they’re making it an issue now.
Mike Papantonio: Oh my God.
Farron Cousins: And, and if they capitalize on this, then, like you said, I mean, they brought in experts in racketeering.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: On this investigation.
Mike Papantonio: The cost, can you imagine?
Farron Cousins: They, they, they, they got him. They got the people they needed to get. And, and it could be undone. And I don’t know, people may not understand this, but this behavior could kill all of that. It truly could.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, you know, I gotta tell you, there’s, there’s just no question about what you’re saying there, Farron. The defense lawyers, I mean, you know, jump on it right now. Describe her, she’s the product of a ridiculous circus. Who’s suggesting that Fani Willis is, the prosecutor, is the ringleader. Here’s the problem. They’re in the 11th circuit in Georgia.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Conservative circuit. You think that they’re not gonna be able to tie this woman’s conduct up in appeals for a long, long time? That’s the problem. And did the judge lose control? I mean, I don’t know. I don’t have an opinion about that. I don’t know what the judge did. I’m sure he instructed her, but she went way beyond the instructors. But I think that, what the defense lawyers are saying is that Fani Willis created this atmosphere. The prosecutor created this atmosphere, and now she’s the end product. It’s like this, like I, like I say, it’s a giddy 12 year old, and it’s like she’s been kissed for the first time. It’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen in video. You gotta watch it to really appreciate, if you’re a defense lawyer and you’re saying, how do I throw a bunch of problems on this? You’ll get it immediately.
Farron Cousins: Right. And they may be able to, you know, challenge this before we even get to the other grand jury.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, of course.
Farron Cousins: And tie that up for a year or two before that grand jury can be empaneled by trying to argue this was whole tainted just from the start. So huge problems with this. Some folks might think, oh no, it’s not a big deal. It is, it is so much worse than I think people can understand.
Mike Papantonio: You know, I’ve been a prosecutor myself.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I would hate to have to have to deal with this. And I have, she has no idea. She was talking to her boyfriend about it. She’d go home and tell her boyfriend, what happened that night. Well, we did this, we did that. I don’t.
Farron Cousins: That’s a big problem.
Mike Papantonio: That’s a big problem. Farron, thanks 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 coming week right here on this channel. And you can follow us on Twitter @AmericasLawyer. I’m Mike Papantonio and this has been America’s Lawyer, where we tell you the stories that corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers don’t allow for it. They tell ’em, no, you can’t tell that story because we’re paying you money to advertise it or their political connections just don’t allow for it, because those political, political connections are so tribal. We’ll see you next time.
