America’s Lawyer E50: The indictments against Donald Trump have left the political world wondering if this is putting us on a slippery slope that could lead to prosecutions of other elected officials – but that might not be a bad thing at all. The teacher that was shot by her 6-year old student has filed a lawsuit against the school for ignoring the repeated warnings they were given about the child. And the entire country is trying to figure out if Donald Trump fathered a child with a housekeeper at Trump Tower. 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. The indictments against Donald Trump have left the political world wondering if this is putting us on a slippery slope that could lead to prosecutions of other elected officials. For example, are they gonna go after Biden? The teacher that was shot by her six year old student, well, she’s filed a lawsuit against the school for ignoring repeated, repeated warnings that the school supervisors were given before that child shot her twice. And the entire country is trying to figure out if Donald Trump fathered a child with a housekeeper at Trump Tower. All that and more, it’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Republicans are warning that the prosecution of Donald Trump could lead to prosecutions of other politicians, like Joe Biden, especially all Democrats in the future. But is that such a bad thing? Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins joins me to talk about this. He has, I love your take on this. I love your, explain what your thought is because it’s easy to go to corner here and not really analyze this issue.
Farron Cousins: Um, I love that idea. Like, don’t threaten me with a good time Republicans. Like, oh no, we’re gonna prosecute everybody. Bring it on. We have sat here, you and I, and talked about crime after crime committed by members of Congress, by Democrats, by Republicans, and nobody ever faces any accountability. And one of the big things, obviously, is the insider trading that we have seen Congress do. We’ve got over a hundred members in the last three years alone that have been busted selling and trading stocks based solely on information they get as members of committee before it’s public. You do that, I do that, we’re going to jail.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Members of Congress do it, they pay a $200 fine, but they pocket about a hundred grand from these stock sales.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. There’s no, if you take a look at the history, you go into Congress, you’re worth a hundred thousand dollars. You come out and you’re worth $10 million. Okay. Now, the way it happens is there’s a lot of ways they do this, that if we did say, okay, everybody’s fair game, we would be looking at that congress, that congressperson who was on a committee, and all of a sudden the committee’s talking about, well, we need to do something with oil and gas. That guy, person, goes out and buys oil and gas and they make a lot of money. There’s tons of things like this. I think the first target really is gonna be Biden’s, I think it’s gonna center around Hunter Biden and they’re gonna tie Hunter Biden’s money into Joe Biden.
You’re already seeing Republicans try to do that. Whether it goes anywhere. I don’t know. I mean, I think the attitude is going to be, well, the Republicans don’t think that there’s anything to what they’re accusing Trump about. And they’re gonna say, well, we’re gonna do the same thing. We don’t know if the Hunter money actually went to Joe Biden and his family, but they’re gonna take a shot at it. We start looking like a Banana Republic when that happens. I mean, we really do. And I just think that’s where this is headed.
Farron Cousins: Well, and the thing is too, we’ll look like a Banana Republic once all these get rolling, but at the end of it all, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna weed out all of the bad actors. Doesn’t matter to me if it’s a Democrat, doesn’t matter if it’s a Republican. If we have people in office, which we clearly do, who are breaking the same laws that would land us in prison, I mean, the campaign finance laws that these people routinely break, and then the FEC comes back and says, oh, don’t worry about it. Just fix this.
Mike Papantonio: Well, explain that. Explain that.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. There was a big issue recently. George Santos accepted a donation from a man well in excess of the legal amount. So the FEC says, hey, this is an illegal donation, but what you can do, because this is actually a joint account with his wife, is you can just say that half of it came from the wife on your form and then you’re legal. And so he just changed, so the FEC that’s supposed to.
Mike Papantonio: The regulator.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. The regulator, instead of saying, I’m gonna prosecute you, says, listen, just change a couple names here and you’re good to go. And it’s crap like that, that let’s lower the bar for prosecution and get these folks out.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I agree with you, Farron. I think we lower the bar. Everybody’s fair game. It’ll look ugly for awhile. But then it might actually require that things like we’re the DOJ when we’re not even talking about politicians, but we’re talking about people who have big influence, the CEOs of large corporations, the people who have all the money, the affluence. Maybe we’ll start doing what we’re supposed to do and that is throw them in prison when they kill 2000 people with a dangerous product. You know, maybe that’ll happen. Maybe the DOJ will finally wake up and go after Wall Street when they steal mom and pop’s pension programs. Maybe.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I mean, if we lower the bar enough, we can get all these folks on conflict of interest, failure to recuse, you know, investigating the company that you used to represent in court. All of these things, it’s a good slippery slope.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. We’ve talked about, we have an upside down justice system right now. If you’re a child in a hoodie selling 10 ounces of marijuana on the street corner, you’re gonna be prosecuted. If you’re dressed up in an Armani suit and you have killed 10,000 people with a dangerous product, you’re gonna walk free. How about the opioid crisis? Who was prosecuted there? Zero. None of those folks went, killed 150 people a day. Maybe this opens the door to that.
The teacher that was shot by her six-year-old student has filed a lawsuit against the school administrators who repeatedly ignored all the warnings they received about how dangerous and how outta control this freakish little kid was. Pick it up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This is, you know, we talked about the initial story when it happened. The first grade teacher shot by her six year old student. She’s now filed a $40 million lawsuit, I believe. Because what we have here is the school administrators not just failing on that day, although there’s a laundry list of failures from the day of the shooting, they failed for a year and a half to heed all of the warnings about this child. He was reportedly at one point, running around the playground with a belt whipping other children, threatened to assault other children.
Mike Papantonio: Well, sexually assaulted one child.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Threw her on the ground, pulled up her dress and all but sexually assaulted her.
Farron Cousins: And this is a, when he was in kindergarten and through the first half of first grade, this is the kind of behavior that you would expect from the Omen, right? You know, you look at little Damien and that’s what you see. And I hate to, you know.
Mike Papantonio: You look like a, if you’re looking for a possessed child, look at this kid, you know, kinda.
Farron Cousins: And not just the teacher that was shot, but you have on record at least three other teachers from the day of the shooting that warned administration at that school, this kid has a gun.
Mike Papantonio: You know what? But how about he tried to strangle one teacher. I mean, teacher’s sitting at their desk. He comes up and starts trying to strangle the teacher. At some point, okay, so the officials say, well, we’re under strict laws and rules and we have to let little freakish Johnny go to school, or we’re gonna be sued for kicking him outta school. If that’s the case, if you’re an administrator and you believe that’s what’s keeping you for sending this little freak home and saying, you’re not coming back on this campus, then you’re not much of an administrator. Go ahead and take the chance. Protect the teachers, protect the rest of the kids.
But don’t put yourself in a situation, don’t put the school in a situation, where you have got this cascade of stupid. This is a cascade of stupid where it comes to administration. As you point out, kids run around with a nine millimeter in his backpack. One of the teachers says, check his backpack. And the principal, what’s her name? Parker. Yeah. Ebony Parker says, no, we can’t do that. And not only that, he can’t get a nine millimeter into a backpack. I mean, geez.
Farron Cousins: And he’d already put it, as one teacher had reported, into his sweatshirt pocket. And another thing here too is that the day that this happened, again, multiple teachers reporting it, students reporting it, one kid said, hey, he just showed me the gun that he has in his sweatshirt on the playground. And also his parents by order were supposed to accompany him throughout the school. So his mom or dad had to sit with him at school all day, every day. Day of the shooting, mom decides, I don’t wanna be here with the kid today.
Mike Papantonio: I wanna know your opinion. Your wife’s been teaching a long time. She teaches special need kids. She does a wonderful job. What, at what point do you say, no, this child does not belong in a school with other kids where he has potential to kill ’em? I mean, what stops the administrator from saying, hell no, he’s not gonna be in the school. I mean, what is that?
Farron Cousins: To be honest, at least from the experience we have had, it is a decision for the principal. And the principal will take it to the county. County will make a decision. But usually if any one or two of these items had been brought, you know, in my wife’s school, the child would have been removed. And they do have other options. They can offer remote learning. They can offer to put them in a more secure schooling facility.
Mike Papantonio: How about in a padded room in a straight jacket? You know.
New legislation’s been introduced in the House of Representatives that would put an end to the concept of corporate personhood. The goal is to undo the Citizens United v Supreme Court and the ruling that they made and it’s allowed corporations to absolutely trample, trample on consumers all over this country. Pick it up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. What we have is representative Jayapal, who has put forward the We The People Amendment that says, you know, to distill it down to its most basic point, we the people means we the human beings, not the corporations. Because the big cornerstone of Citizens United was the Supreme Court saying that corporations are people and money is free speech.
Mike Papantonio: By definition of the Constitution.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: That’s what the Supreme Court did, which was ridiculous. It’s all, this fight’s been going on corporate America since, you know, since they came up with the notion of an LLC and a corporation has always been fighting to say, treat us like people. Well, if we’re gonna treat ’em like people, well let’s talk about what we should be doing with them. We ought be throwing ’em in prison when they do things like HSBC. You know the story on HSBC, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: They’re washing money for terrorists. American soldiers are being killed with that money, with bombs that are in place. A corporation kills 150 people a day with opioids. Those people should be in prison. But the corporate answer is, well now wait, not so fast. We want to be people. But you can’t put a corporation in prison. No, you can. You find out who made the decision. You put ’em in handcuffs and you put ’em in prison. But we’ve taken this whole Citizens United argument and we’ve turned it on its head. Everybody only thinks about it as it comes to donations. This is where they make the argument, you know, we’re a person. Well, if we’re a person by God, you need to go to prison for your conduct.
Farron Cousins: Well, exactly. And that’s why honestly, as much as I do like this legislation, I think Jayapal should come out with basically the exact opposite legislation as well. And say, listen, okay, if you won’t vote, House of Representatives, because we know they won’t pass this, unfortunately. Say, okay, if you don’t wanna make them, not people, let’s pass legislation saying they’ve got all the rights of American citizens. Basically trap them into voting for that because they won’t pay attention. And then at that point it does open them up for those kinds of prosecutions that need to happen. Because like you said, when you have companies that are out there killing people with cancer over the course of 30, 40, 50 years, killing 150 people a day, putting out other dangerous pharmaceuticals. Somebody needs to go to jail. If any human being in this country killed 150 people a day, they’re gonna be prosecuted.
Mike Papantonio: You know, I saw this for the first time as a very young lawyer. It was just, the argument was just really being propounded then. It was a case that was called Factor VIII. Bayer Corporation had made a blood, it was for hemophiliacs. It was for hemophiliacs, it was made to stop bleeding. Well, the problem is they knew that their product was infected with HIV. They sold it on the American market until we got involved. We stopped the sale of it. Got it off the market. They took that same stuff and sent it all over the world. People in Asia died of AIDS because of it. South America. Do you know how many people went to jail? One person, and that was a French citizen.
Had nothing to do with all the decisions that were made in the United States by these corporate pigs. Not one of ’em went to prison. But their argument was, you know, judge, we’re a corporation. I mean, how do you put a corporation in prison? All you do is follow, you just follow the memos. You follow the letters, you follow the conduct and you say you look like the guy who won. You’re going to prison. Because look at how many people they killed with that product. Sad, sad story. But we see it again and again and we hear the same argument again and again.
Farron Cousins: Well, yeah. You know, we’re not actual, we’re only people, we’re only, you know, having our personhood when it benefits us.
Mike Papantonio: And we have free, and money is free speech. That’s their argument.
Farron Cousins: Right. And I can’t, I still am in shock over that argument in general just because money cannot equate to free speech because at that point you’re saying some people have more free speech than others.
Mike Papantonio: That’s right.
Farron Cousins: You know, there’s an equal issue there. So that alone should have gotten this case tossed before it even made it.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. That’s a very smart analysis.
Farron Cousins: Well, thank you.
Mike Papantonio: If money is free speech, then the people with all the money, they have more free speech.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: Veterans groups are suing the Department of Defense for covering up the chemical exposure that our troops are subjected to at an overseas military base. Thousands of soldiers have reported illnesses of cancers and illnesses we don’t even have a name for. And the military refuses to help these troops at all.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This is a terrifying story because to this day, these American soldiers, you know, we’re supposed to protect these folks almost more than anybody else in this country. And we’re failing them because they’re at this base in Uzbekistan, it’s called K2 is the nickname. It’s the Karshi-Khanabad Air Base. And for years and years, thousands of soldiers every year would come down with these mystery illnesses. Many of them ended up developing cancer. And so the military came out a couple years ago and they said, okay, we’re gonna do some testing. We’re gonna be looking for asbestos, we’re gonna be looking for cancer causing chemicals. We’re gonna find out what’s hurting you folks. So they do the tests, they get all their results.
Mike Papantonio: They find everything.
Farron Cousins: They hide them.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly. They find everything and then they don’t disclose it.
Farron Cousins: Exactly. So we still to this day don’t know what’s in that report because they clearly saw it and said, oh God, we can’t show this to anybody because we’re killing people.
Mike Papantonio: Let me tell you our experience with the Department of Defense and it’s just, it’s really, really ugly. We handled the terrorism cases where, you know, American citizens are killed through terrorism, that’s funded by banks, it’s funded by Iran. We don’t get any information from the DOD unless we beat it out of them. They’re always protecting whatever that thing is that they want to protect, which is the government mostly. Same thing on Camp Lejeune, big case up in North Carolina, where entire families are dying of cancer. They died of brain tumors. They died of birth defects because the DOD did not disclose to the soldiers that were on that camp, that were on that base, that all of these toxins were in their drinking water.
The levels, Farron, were so far off of the chart that when they looked at it the first time, they said it had to be some mistake. Then they looked at it three times and every time they looked at the levels of toxins that caused cancer, neurological disease, birth defects got higher and higher. They hid that. They hid it from the American public, from these soldiers, for about 50 years. Then come along and you’ve got this, these, these soldiers are in tents, they’re in tents on the ground and this toxic sludge is coming up underneath their tent. They’re taking it up through dermal exposure, inhalation exposure, drinking water exposure. And the DOD won’t tell ’em even what the hell was in it so a doctor can treat them.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And all we know right now is that if you served at this K2 base in Uzbekistan, you have a 500 times greater chance of developing cancer than the average person in the country.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Yeah, we asked them to go put their lives on the line for us. You know, go leave your family. Two years, three years, some of these people have been signed up three terms to go fight for America. And then when we do these things to ’em, we treat ’em like they’re second rate citizens. I see it all the time. I’m working on that, the case up in North Carolina, Camp Lejeune case. And it’s just unbelievable to me that you would have a government that would hide how dangerous this exposure was, not only to the soldier, the soldier’s wife and children.
Farron Cousins: Well, and you know what they do instead, we get the US military, the government that says, hey NFL, you’ve gotta have a salute the Veterans Week. Major league baseball, you gotta have your, your military day. This is what we do to them. We give them parades. But we’re also killing them with cancer. But it’s okay because we got to do a fun parade for you.
Mike Papantonio: Virtue signaling.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: We give them virtue signaling.
One of the most outrageous pieces of information from the recent indictment of Donald Trump is that a former doorman at Trump Tower claims to have evidence that the former president fathered a child with a housekeeper. And the entire country is wondering, what the hell, is this true? You always begin anything with Trump, you say, well of course it’s true, you know, of course it’s true. The thing I found weird about this story is when they confronted the woman that she was supposed to, he was supposed to have a child with, she said, no, I don’t remember anything like that. I don’t have a child. And it went through my mind, if you have this orange orangutang on top of you having sex, that’s something you probably remember. Pick it up from there.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I don’t think that’s an image any woman’s gonna get out of her head.
Mike Papantonio: I can’t even get that image outta my head right now.
Farron Cousins: But yeah, this was, you know, when the indictments were read, okay, we expect the Stormy Daniels, the Karen McDougal stuff, we get it. But then wait whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You kind of glossed over this whole possible Trump love child out there in New York City. A kid that looks like Trump.
Mike Papantonio: That he paid money to make go away. He paid $30,000 to kill the story. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Which is, you know, I gotta be honest, that doorman really sold low because Stormy Daniels got 130, McDougal got 150, he only gets 30. But he did pass a polygraph with National Enquirer, so.
Mike Papantonio: But there is that issue. The woman he said was supposed to have had a child with said, hell, I don’t remember it. That ain’t something you forget. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Well, and that’s the thing too, is look, all the National Enquirer had to do when they were vetting this story, instead of making it a possible criminal activity is they could have said, okay. Well, we’re gonna go talk to the woman and be like, excuse me ma’am, do you have a kid? Well, no, I don’t. Do you mind if we look at your hospital records to make sure you haven’t given birth? Yeah, sure. That would’ve been the end of it if she didn’t have a kid.
Mike Papantonio: Right, right.
Farron Cousins: And if there was a kid running around, we’ve seen his other kids. You can tell a Trumper.
Mike Papantonio: Well, you remember the Pecker guy? What’s his name?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, David Pecker.
Mike Papantonio: David Pecker. Okay. What an appropriate name. So David Pecker was in charge of the National Enquire. And so there is that question. Okay, did Pecker, was he involved with it? Because he went to prison for another coverup for Donald Trump’s. So you just gotta wonder. It’s an interesting part of the story, I guess.
Farron Cousins: It’s not outta the realm of possibility. But.
Mike Papantonio: No, it certainly isn’t. But again, I gotta come back and say, mm, that’s something you’d probably remember lady. Right. Farron Cousins, that’s all for tonight, thank you. Appreciate it.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week, but all these segments are gonna be available throughout next week and make sure you 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 can’t tell you because their advertisers won’t allow for it or their political connections, whether it’s Democrat or Republican, they’re so connected politically that they’re afraid to tell stories that offend their political party. We’re not. See you next time.
