America’s Lawyer E62: Hunter Biden’s plea deal has been put on hold after the judge rejected the arrangement. This is a bad sign for President’s son, and his lawyers don’t seem to be doing him any favors. A popular drug used for weight loss and to treat diabetes could come with some serious health risks as a new report has shown that stomach paralysis is popping up in users of Ozempic. And our elderly politicians can barely function as human beings anymore, leading more and more Americans to call for age limits for our elected officials. 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. Hunter Biden’s plea deal has been put on hold after the judge rejected the arrangement. This is a bad sign for the president’s son, and his lawyers don’t seem to be doing him any favors as they’re working through all this. A popular drug used for weight loss and to treat diabetes could come with some serious, serious health effects as a new report has shown stomach paralysis, it’s popping up with users of Ozempic. And our elderly politicians can barely function as human beings anymore, leading more and more Americans to call for age limits at last, for elected officials. All that and more it’s coming up on America’s Lawyer. Don’t go anywhere.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that he bowed to pressure and removed Covid misinformation from his platform at the urging of the White House. Question is, was it misinformation? This news comes as courts are trying to prohibit the Biden administration from communicating with social media companies. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins joins me to talk about what’s happening along with this. You know, Farron, when I first saw this story, I actually was really pleased that the court said to the White House, hell no, you may not get involved in editing propaganda for the American public. I mean, this is America 2023. We still have a Constitution. Still is a First Amendment. And you got the White House saying, we wanna decide what is misinformation. We wanna be the gatekeeper for what the American public can hear. It is absolutely BS. And the Fifth Circuit, I’m shocked, I’m shocked that they even put this on hold at all.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, they put in the injunction saying, well, for now you can still talk to them. The lower courts, of course, had said, no, you cannot, you do not get to talk to them. But now that’s been, you know, postponed a little. So there could still be communications, that is still pending, obviously. But it is scary because you do have Facebook, you know, multiple executives have now said, yes, the White House was in communication with us. They asked us if we could get rid of X, Y, and Z, and we did.
Mike Papantonio: Of course they did. You know, it’s not like you gotta bring out the Army to get ’em to do it. The White House can put major, matter of fact, in the article that’s what Zuckerberg’s people said. We were concerned about what the ramifications would be if we didn’t listen to these idiots who were telling us what their take on misinformation was. Now, this is not just about Covid, understand. Don’t get.
Farron Cousins: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Don’t get hung up on Covid. This is misinformation about what’s going on in Ukraine. If we disagree with you, then by God, we can stop it. What happened in Afghanistan, if we don’t like what you say, then we can stop it. That is frigging propaganda by the White House. And you know what, Farron? There’s an entire generation right behind us that thinks that’s okay because they don’t even understand what the hell the First Amendment is about. It’s disgusting to me. And nobody, corporate media’s not even paying attention to this. They’re afraid to. They’re afraid of the White House, just like these folks were afraid of the White House.
Farron Cousins: Well, and it is interesting too, because look, the stuff they asked to have removed, I’m sure I probably would’ve disagreed with it, but I don’t disagree with it being allowed on there. And that’s where we have to draw the line. We’re free to disagree with information that we see anywhere, but once you have the actual government itself stepping into these companies saying, hey, we don’t like this, get rid of it. That is a line that every single person in this country should agree, that’s a bad thing. And we can’t get everybody to agree on it. That’s what’s so stupid.
Mike Papantonio: It’s a nanny government. Nanny’s gonna tell us what we can think and what we can’t think. Nanny’s gonna tell us, we’re too stupid to be able to delineate between what’s true and what’s not true. So, nanny White House is gonna come in and tell us what we can read and what we can’t read. That’s where we are. And you know what? The folks even working in places like Facebook and Twitter was saying, hell no, we didn’t agree with it. We thought it was a bad idea. We didn’t like getting calls from the White House saying, you know what, we really don’t like this article about Afghanistan. We need to do something about it. That’s where we are. And you know what, Farron? We have an entire generation who thinks it’s okay. And all that’s gonna do is it’s gonna blow this out of proportion. If this White House gets away with this, what about the next White House? What if it is a Trump White House? What if it’s a DeSantis White House? Can you imagine what this precedent does for them?
Farron Cousins: See, everybody always forgets that that pendulum swings back eventually. You know, maybe it happens in 2024, maybe 2028, but you may say, oh, well, it’s good that Biden did this. We had to get rid of Covid misinformation. Once you establish that power, the next president takes it, runs with it. We saw it with the Patriot Act, the Iraq War powers.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, exactly.
Farron Cousins: The AUMF, all of it gets taken to the next level by the next guy.
Mike Papantonio: They put it on steroids. And if you don’t think that’s gonna happen, this precedent is really, really bad. And I’m telling you, everybody thought, well, COVID was the only, hell no, COVID wasn’t the only issue. Did you disagree with some move that that Biden made? Well, if you were, if you’re critical of it, they have the right to come and put pressure on social media to slow it down. Did you take, you took a civics class in school, didn’t you?
Farron Cousins: Of course.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, you were in a generation where they taught civics. You understood the importance of the First Amendment that we have a Constitution that says freedom of speech above all things is critically important. You were raised with that. I gotta tell you, there’s three generations after you that haven’t seen that. And you know what? This looks fine to them. Should a president be able to say what I can read and what I can’t read? Oh, hell yeah. Without even understanding how serious that is. It’s critically important. This issue, I can’t, and the Fifth Circuit, that’s what surprises me. Coming out of Fifth Circuit.
Two recent events have proven that elderly members of the US Senate are having trouble keeping themselves going as both Mitch McConnell and Dianne Feinstein showed the world the dangers of this gerontocracy. It is a government by old dying people. That’s what we have, government by old dying people. And you know what? I looked at this. I just wanted to take a look. I wanna see, what motivates them to stay there? Is it because they just love Washington so much? Is it they love this? Look at these guys. I mean, look at the turtle man. He’s absolutely on his last leg. So I took a look. What is it that keeps ’em there? So I started off, I looked at the money. I looked at the Feinstein money that has increased since she’s been there. I looked at Pelosi’s money that’s increased. McConnell’s money. I looked at Biden. Biden has been in government for 50 years, has never held a job. Let’s say his average salary over the years, you know, right now, what is it? A couple hundred thousand dollars?
Farron Cousins: 184, I think.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Let’s say, round it to $200,000. Let’s say his average salary in those 50 years as a politician has been a $120,000. Do you realize right now he owns a house in this McLean, Virginia. It’s just not a house. It’s a sprawling compound. He owns a beach house in Delaware. It’s a sprawling compound. He owns another house, so that’s the motivation. That’s why they stay. It’s all about money. How does a cat that’s never worked in 50 years, who’s been in government for 50 years, come up with that kind of money, come up with those kind, that kind of wealth? Compared to Bernie Sanders, I did, you know what the comparison is between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden? Bernie is worth barely a million dollars.
Farron Cousins: And that’s all from his book.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all from his book. And he doesn’t have sprawling houses all over the United States like our president does. Same way with McConnell. Same way with Feinstein. Same way with Pelosi. And we just have to stop this gerontocracy. It’s all about money.
Farron Cousins: It is. And, you know, we actually also found out in addition to Dianne Feinstein’s issue where she wanted to give her speech when they told her, hey, we already did speeches. You just have to vote now. Apparently she has actually given power of attorney to her daughter.
Mike Papantonio: No kidding.
Farron Cousins: So she is not trusted to be able to make decisions about her own life. But she’s trusted to be a lawmaker. That’s insane.
Mike Papantonio: How long has that been, Farron? Since, that’s the first time I’ve heard that.
Farron Cousins: It was just revealed, I think the Intercept. I saw it from one of their reporters.
Mike Papantonio: Wow.
Farron Cousins: A day or so ago. So yeah, this is, they don’t trust her to make her own decisions.
Mike Papantonio: And she’s making decisions about war. She’s making decisions about our health, our economy. All these guys, the turtle, we thought he died right at the podium.
Farron Cousins: I know.
Mike Papantonio: They had to carry him away from the podium. I don’t know what happened. I feel sorry for the guy, but by God, step down, make room for some younger people who have good ideas. The average age should be 50 to 60 years old. That’s what the average age should be up there. These guys put it over the top. And you know what? It’s pure selfishness. If you think that their decisions are looking 20 years down the road, their decisions are looking two years down the road because they might not make it two years. So the things they do are all immediate gratification. Whether it’s Biden, whether it’s McConnell, Feinstein, Pelosi, you name it, Republicans, Democrats, there’s no distinction. They’re all the same. And you know what? When I started taking a look at the money issue, again, how does a guy who averaged $120,000 a year have these sprawling compounds? These aren’t houses, these are mansions in places like Virginia, in places like Delaware Beach, places like that. How does that happen? And so you say, well, you know, maybe there’s, maybe this is a big money maker. Maybe somebody tell, ought to tell Bernie Sanders how he maybe should make more money as a politician. It’s disgusting to me, man.
More and more states are loosening child labor laws to allow teenagers to work in positions that were deemed too dangerous just decades ago. You know, this stuff that they’re doing is too dangerous. And now it’s all, it’s okay. Teens can work wherever you wanna work. Right?
Farron Cousins: And they’re getting killed. They’re getting killed by sticking their arms into this heavy machinery, trying to clean it out. They’re getting killed in the logging industry up North. They’re getting killed, we’ve had three in five weeks, three teenagers, 16 year olds who are now able to work in these jobs that just a few years ago were legally off limits. But we’ve got all these lawmakers say, we’ve got a labor shortage. Let’s fill it with the kids. What’s the worst that could happen? Well, this is the worst that could happen. Children are dying doing things that, again, a year ago would’ve been illegal for them to do.
Mike Papantonio: 16 year old died in a logging business, Wisconsin. Shouldn’t have even been doing what he was doing. 16 year old died, pinned into a conveyor belt in Missouri, should not have been doing, trying to clean the conveyor belt. 16 year old died in another conveyor belt in Mississippi. And so, but what’s interesting about this is Missouri, Wisconsin, some of these states are lobbying right now, big time to make this legal because they have all this influx of immigrants, right? They wanna take these immigrant kids and say, well, you know, you don’t have mommy or daddy. Why don’t you come work for us? I mean, that’s what’s happening. They’re putting these kids in these dangerous jobs.
Farron Cousins: That is a lot of it, obviously, because that’s always been the best source of renewable labor. You know, and you and I have talked about that a hundred times. You know, you bring them in, you don’t have to give ’em any training. A lot of them aren’t necessarily legal. So you don’t have to even pay ’em the legal amount. And then if they get hurt, you say, well, what are you gonna do? You can’t sue me because you’re here illegally. So we ship you back. We bring in the next guy.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. No compensation. Lost an arm. I’m sorry, Johnny. Your career working on conveyor belts is over. Yeah. You’re 16 years old. We’re gonna have to ship you back to Nicaragua. That’s why the US Chamber of Commerce loves this. That’s why the US Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries are saying, hell yeah, come on across the border. It’s inhumane what they’re doing to these people. But corporate media looks like it’s something benevolent. Like this is all benevolent United States. Bring us your tired and hungry. No. Bring us your people who are willing to work in jobs where they could easily be killed, maimed, die on the site and then ship ’em back. Those are the people we want. And that’s what nobody, the corporate media won’t talk about it because it sounds too ugly, doesn’t it? It doesn’t sound politically correct to really tell the backstory. That is the backstory. It is ghoulish. And that’s what’s happening to these kids. 160,000 kids, 160,000 kids injured on the job last year. Okay? We’ve got, with the major border crossings with taking these kids in and having them go to work, it’s gonna be triple that in two years.
Farron Cousins: Oh, it absolutely will. And part of the reason we also see this big push is because, you know, a bit morbid is something nobody wants to talk about, we lost over a million Americans from Covid. Most of those working age people.
Mike Papantonio: Interesting.
Farron Cousins: And, so we do have a huge labor deficit. You know, I know the numbers of unemployment’s at a 50 year low, but we have so many open positions because we just let the workforce die.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. So you got folks, you got an aging population, right?
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: You’ve got the covid issues. We haven’t had a major war that’s knocked out. Of course, you know, it’s interesting when you hear Kamala Harris and some of these folks talk about, the climate change. They say the biggest problem we have, we have to lower our population. Have you heard that talking point that we’re, there’s too many people.
Farron Cousins: I’ve heard it from, from some nutty folks.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Yeah. There are too many people out there. So maybe as we analyze this, I’m thinking that your point about we have to replace the job market is all about folks coming over the border, especially kids, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely. And plus, you know, you mentioned the war factor. Look at everybody who died in Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, in the early days of that 20 years ago. Those people going over there, 18, 19, 20. They’d be my age right now, members of the workforce. But oh, guess what? Now they’re not because we lied to ’em, told ’em they had to go find WMDs and they went to their graves 20 years ago.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
The state of Florida is suffering from one crisis after another. Residents of the Sunshine State are paying the price. The state’s now facing a massive homeowners insurance crisis as top insurers are leaving the state over fears of climate change. Okay. I know an awful lot about the insurance industry. I’ve been going toe to toe with the insurance industry my entire career, whether it’s massive corporate global insurance, whatever it is. This is really more about interest rates. When you have, you see, what an insurance company does is they say, we have projected this much in loss. Okay? So they take that money and they invest that money. It’s a set aside. They don’t pay taxes on it. Okay. It’s just money that’s set aside. And they make all their money because of the way the stock market allows ’em to make it on that little cash of money. When interest rates are high, they’re not making it. So they coming up with all kinds of problems about why we have to increase insurance rates. But the point to what we’re talking about here, leadership in Florida is not tough enough to say. We know what you’re doing. This has nothing, very little to do with climate change. This has to do with the fact that your investment portfolio is not doing well because insurance rates are up. I mean, because the interest rates are up, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely. And that is of course, something that’s not mentioned in any of this stuff that you see about these stories. So we do have two crises really with the insurance companies. The first one is the companies who say, we’re done. We are leaving Florida. Farmers Insurance was the most recent to do that. So a lack of available alternatives is hurting Florida consumers. And that’s not much that any of us can do anything about. So when you have that lack of supply, suddenly those few that are left can do exactly that. They can say, okay, I know your insurance rate last year was $1,200 a year. Uh, now it’s $4,800 a year. And we can do that to recoup our losses from the stock market. And we can do it because we can. Because who else are you gonna go to? Everybody left.
Mike Papantonio: And your position is, that’s mine, there’s no leadership in this state. There’s nobody that’s gonna stand up to the insurance company. Look what happened to consumers in the last legislative cycle. There was no leadership by DeSantis. No leadership in Tallahassee. Consumers got cremated on things like auto crash. You’re killed in an auto crash, your case now is worth about 25% of what it used to be. The value of your life is diminished to where, it’s, it’s almost unspeakable the way that they handled that. But they did it all for the insurance industry. They made it difficult for you to even sue your insurance company when the insurance company does wrong. That was the kinda legislation that came outta Tallahassee under the leadership of DeSantis. So if we believe that this is going to change, because we have great leaders here. We’re in La La Land. Right now, I think the average in Florida, I think the average is over $4,000 for home insurance. And it’s almost three times what the national average is, if my memory’s right. Is that right?
Farron Cousins: It is. And we have, you know, struggling residents here that are now saying, listen, I’m hitting a point where if this happens one more time, one more increase, I’m priced out of this state. You know, I’m priced outta my hometown. I’m priced out of all of this. I will have to leave. Now, I don’t think we’re looking at anything, you know.
Mike Papantonio: Mass exodus.
Farron Cousins: Tens of thousands of people leave, but every individual person, you know, contributes here. These are local people. They go out, they go to local restaurants, they buy local, they contribute to these economies. We lose five or six here and there. That does hurt. And that hurts these people. They shouldn’t be in this situation because the insurance companies.
Mike Papantonio: Look what’s happening in California. Have you followed that story? They’re losing billions in tax base because there’s a mass exodus from the place. The crime issue’s a problem. The housing issue’s a problem. The cost just to live there is a problem. The tax issue’s a problem. The fire issue’s a problem. Their tax base is disappearing. Newsom is actually panicking over it. He’s trying to figure out a way to keep people there. It’s like, we’re gonna keep you prisoner here whether you like it or not. But you’re right. That same thing could happen to Florida if somebody doesn’t step up and show some leadership and this is a perfect story. Tell the insurance company, hell no. What you’re saying is nonsense. We know why you’re losing money because interest rates are high right now.
Farron Cousins: Well, it’s leadership that we’re lacking on really any of the issues facing Florida. I actually did a segment recently just talking about the laundry list of crises that we’ve got. We’ve got leprosy spreading around the state. We’ve got malaria. We have the water temperatures off of the Keys to the point where we’ve got coral bleaching, which is going to kill the reefs. Kill the islands, kill the tourism. We’ve got the insurance crisis. We’ve got the immigrant crisis where everybody’s leaving and construction sites are barren because there’s no workers. Not once have we had any of these crises addressed. All we hear occasionally is DeSantis say, I’m gonna stick it to Disney one more time. Even his own Republicans are now saying, shut up about Disney. Because our constituents are yelling at us because we’ve got real problems here. And Tallahassee is silent. You’re off in Iowa making weird faces.
Mike Papantonio: I have a prediction though, and you might not like the prediction. The prediction right now is DeSantis is having a hard time getting his legs under him. But he’s got a lot of time. I think the prosecutions of Trump, you can say what you want to say, it’s inevitably gonna interfere with his ability to be president of the United States. To even run for president. DeSantis, I think is a real possibility. I mean, I think that’s what’s developing. His numbers, you know, the press, all his numbers are depleting. Trump talks about his numbers are depleting. He’s finding his equilibrium. That’s my prediction. And he’ll continue to find his equilibrium. And the difficulty is, we know, because he’s been our governor now for so long, what he’s capable of, and it’s not a pretty story. But this guy could certainly be the next president of the United States, regardless of what the media’s saying. Like he’s, you know, he can’t find his footing. He can’t get money in. All that is is passing. I think it’s a transient issue. He’s got plenty of time to recover.
The pharmaceutical industry has been pushing several new blockbuster drugs that they say can help people lose weight fast. And like other treatments we’ve seen over the years, these promises come with a price and that is death and really serious injury. Patients are now reporting cases of stomach paralysis over taking drugs like Ozempic. And there could be more reports on the way. We’ve been watching, our law firm’s been watching this case pretty closely. The, you know, we handled the Fen-Phen case which is literally thousands of women died from this Fen-Phen drug. We handled the opioid case where tens of thousands of people died. And it all came down to one thing, just like we’re seeing here, doctors are not telling these patients the dangers of this product. Saw it with, saw it with, just finished, I just basically have finished the opioid litigation. The last part of it’s still in the works. But what we found there is doctors did not, they didn’t stay up to speed with the literature. They got busy and they couldn’t see that all this nonsense that they were told from the beginning was just a lie. Same thing here. Same thing with Fen-Phen. I’ve handled 87 major drug litigations in this country, 87. Every time I’ve seen it, it’s because somebody’s lied on clinical data, management has overlooked bad clinical data. They’ve done a computation, Farron, here it is. We’re making $10 billion. If we kill this many people, it’s only gonna cost us $2 billion. So we’re $8 billion ahead. That is what we call the ghoul transition. The ghoul calculation. That’s what’s happening here, I promise you.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And with BP it was the three little pigs, was the scenario they used. So what we’ve got here is Ozempic, Wegovy, massive report comes out saying these women are now reporting stomach paralysis. Several of them have been officially diagnosed. Some have not yet been. But what it does is these drugs that are originally, Ozempic specifically for diabetes, and it did well with diabetes. But then the company started noticing, well, wait a minute. These folks are losing weight. That’s a good thing. Okay. Maybe instead of just a diabetes blockbuster, we may have ourselves a weight loss blockbuster. Weight loss drugs are the holy grail of the pharmaceutical industry. If you can make a medicine that can make people lose weight without killing them or hurting them, that’s their holy grail.
Mike Papantonio: If you go, people watching this show right now, if you go and you ask 10 women, are you taking Ozempic? If they tell you the truth, three of ’em are gonna be taking Ozempic. If they’re trying to lose weight. It is just so ubiquitous. And what, look, doctors understand, doctors are, it’s all about immediate result. Right. You’re overweight. Okay. Mary, well, take Ozempic. Well, why don’t you look into what the science is on this? It’s bad science from the very beginning. You know, you’ve got this, it’s called GLP-1. I think it is. It’s a hormone that’s in the body and what it does is it tells your body to slow down digestion because if you don’t slow it down, you won’t get the nutrients you need out of the food. Right. So what this does, what they’ve done is engineered their own manufactured hormone kind of result. And the difference is, when you took a look at it, it’s a best thing I can tell you, this is very clear. They did a placebo test and then they did a test with people, they’re clearly taking Ozempic and took 70 minutes for the digestion process to take place. It took four minutes for the regular digestion to take place. And what it’s causing is paralysis of the gut. It’s causing paralysis of the stomach. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And it’s actually kind of interesting because as per usual, we already see big pharma in the, you know, medical industry. Their PR spin is out there saying, well, you know, these women could have had slow stomachs to begin with. They are already on the front end of this trying to paint it as, yeah, these women already had problems. They were never diagnosed, but they probably had these problems. So we’re already seeing their defense be crafted in the media. But it could be because we’re, you know, this is early. We do not know if there’s a full, you know, cause effect. It could be these women are very unlucky. I mean, that is what one of the doctors said, but it could be this drug is doing it.
Mike Papantonio: Well, look, you can go to any university, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, I don’t care where you go, Georgetown, the most elite universities and you can say to a scientist that’s working there, or a professor that is an expert in a particular area, would you say this for me? Would you please lie to the American public for me? And they’ll say, well, it’s gonna cost you, it’s gonna cost a million to $2 million. That’s typically what they have to end up paying. But then these doctors that are, they’re just charlatans. I mean, they’re frauds. They create this literature and the literature is always based on, we can’t know, understand. That’s their safest position. Well, we don’t really know. There’s not enough information. There’s not enough epidemiology to tell us that this is the problem. And they do that, Farron, because they understand that if they delay the knowledge during the period of time, they’re delaying that knowledge it may be three or four years. The company they’re working for that gave them the million dollars to say that is making billions of dollars. And so the company’s making billions. They’re saying, well, when this is all over, we may have to pay out two or $3 billion. And it’s still a good business decision. So it’s called an interruption. These experts interrupt the process of science by saying, you know, I’m the best in the world and I’m telling you, I can’t know because there’s not enough science.
Farron Cousins: And it really, as you talked about earlier, it comes down to the doctors too. The doctors are not staying up to speed on this. This information is now widely available. It’s been reported. Doctors have no excuse, even if it’s not reported, the doctors have a duty to their patients to stay up to speed on this stuff. And their failures can easily lead to deaths or irreparable harm.
Mike Papantonio: It is. You can’t just give these doctors a free pass here. They get literature all the time that tells them, look, this is developing literature. You have a duty to know about it. What ends up happening is they have, they’ve got this, they call ’em detailers. They’ve got it down to a real science. They’ll have these perky, cutesy little types coming in. Doc, I brought you some cupcakes. Oh, by the way, we have this new product that you can use off label. Now Ozempic is for diabetes. It’s not for weight loss. But you know what, doc? You might want to try it. You might get a good result. It’s called off label. These people are trained to pitch off label. They’ve got it down to a real science. It’s always a cutesy little deal. Let’s have dinner. You know, let’s talk. And it’s disgusting. It’s disgusting. You know, doctors, you know, they’re in their, they’re in their zone. They’re working every day. And then all of a sudden some perky little cutesy comes in with birthday cake or something like that and they’re friends for life.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And they say, oh, we have a conference coming up in Bora Bora over the Weekend.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, how’d you like to go. Yeah, exactly. We saw that big time with opioids. And it was, it’s just disgusting. If you figure 150 people died every day, probably more than that because the doctors didn’t do their job. And it wasn’t just about doctors. It was about the, it’s always the company at the head of the awful story. It’s always the company. And then they take advantage of the doctors and then it flows from there.
Hunter Biden’s received a sweetheart deal, a big sweetheart deal after being caught not paying his taxes for several years. But that deal was tossed out of the court after the judge determined that Biden’s lawyers weren’t being honest. Can you imagine? The deal is still on hold, but things aren’t looking good for the President’s son. Now, okay. I look at this like a lawyer. They went into court and they didn’t even have the boundaries of what they were agreeing to. The lawyers, and these are supposed to be, you know, this is supposed to be great lawyers representing this guy. They show up in the courtroom, the judge says, well, tell me about the deal. And he says, well, does this include future investigation? Does it include everything? Biden’s lawyer say, yeah. Yeah, it does. The prosecution says, hell no, it doesn’t. Can you imagine being the lawyer caught up in that where you look like such an idiot?
Farron Cousins: I mean, just, you know, from the, like, from a client’s perspective, you’re going in, you’re also thinking like, okay, good. My lawyer’s got this. They’ve handled it all. I’m covered for everything. Then you have to look, you didn’t know that I’m not protected from everything else? Like, I’m still under investigation, possibly for foreign influence pedaling?
Mike Papantonio: Look, talk about, we’ve done so many stories on FARA. It’s, we’ve talked about all the people that have gone to prison, right? Because of FARA. So, it’s a lot. It’s an easy, easy conviction. Okay. A FARA conviction is an easy conviction. Talk about it a little bit.
Farron Cousins: Well, so what we’re dealing with here, obviously when the plea agreement was announced, everybody said, oh, that’s too light for not paying taxes. But you and I had talked about like, well, wait a minute, isn’t something missing from this?
Mike Papantonio: From the beginning.
Farron Cousins:: Where is the possible influence peddling working for a foreign company with ties to the foreign government?
Mike Papantonio: His partner is going to prison because of it. Right?
Farron Cousins: Exactly. And so we had brought that up and now, now that this plea deal’s been thrown out, what is this, Vox finally mentioned too, like, well, wait a minute. He was never covered in this plea deal from the, you know, FARA violations. And so there could be more coming down the pipeline, which is why of course, you know, his lawyers and the prosecution met together for about an hour. And they came back to the judge, judge, we got a new deal. And the judge basically says, I don’t care. This, no, this is crap. I’m not doing this.
Mike Papantonio: Any federal judge would’ve done that. Any federal judge, when you got the defense saying, yeah, we’ve got a deal here. The prosecution says, I don’t think we got a deal. That is the most embarrassing thing that this criminal judge or this criminal lawyer could possibly experience. What does that do to his career? Do you go hire that guy? Okay. So, as we look at it, a lot of this turns on, it turns on the entire history of this case, doesn’t it? The history of this case is complicated. It goes all the way back to, what was the FD 10 23? That’s the whistleblower that made the accusation, that actually gave rise to the FARA claim. I mean, and other claims, but it gave rise to the FARA claim. Lesley Wolf, this female prosecutor that tried to run interference for, that’s the only way you can describe it. She absolutely ran interference for Biden. She would not even allow, she would not even allow that information to surface when the investigation was going on. So now you have Weiss, this is his, you know, this is his deal. Weiss has to make sense of all this and go back and start his investigation again. This has potential to go really bad for Biden. I think.
Farron Cousins: It really does. And based now what we know about his legal team, um, it’s not looking so good for you. I mean, he.
Mike Papantonio: I don’t think so.
Farron Cousins: Look, you know, you’re in the trial lawyer hall of fame. I’m willing to bet the guy’s representing Hunter Biden, they’re probably never gonna get there.
Mike Papantonio: I’ve not seen them in the trial hall of fame with me. I can put it like that. But they’ve got so much information, Farron, here’s where it gets ugly. They’ve got information of his contact with Ukraine, with China, and with Kazakhstan. So that’s what had Lesley Wolf, this woman who obviously has an agenda, had she not interfered with the investigation, you know, Weiss is taking all the heat right now. He’s the guy taking all the heat. But right now, Weiss better make sense of it. The DOJ better make sense of it. Or this judge, I just, just looking at this judge, this judge is not gonna give up on this issue. There’s gonna be a lot more digging going on. So I think this has potential to really, you know, if it plays itself out, if the Republicans win, oh my God, this guy’s going to the hoochie for a long time, isn’t he?
Farron Cousins: I think no matter what happens right now, things are gonna get worse for Hunter Biden before they get any better, on this particular issue here. Because there were a lot of stones, it seems weren’t quite overturned and now that prosecutor’s gotta go back and try to figure it out.
Mike Papantonio: And it’s a shame because it came down to this one woman that said, hey, I want to, I don’t want to do things right. I want to do things to favor Hunter Biden thinking she was gonna do him a favor. I’m sure that’s what it was. But Lesley Wolf has put him in a position right now that it’s untenable. It can’t get anything but worse right now. Farron, thanks for joining me.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week, but all of these segments are gonna be available throughout the 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 won’t tell you because their advertisers don’t allow for it. Their advertisers get mad when they tell some of the same kind of stories we tell, or their political connections don’t allow for it. They’re too Republican or they’re too Democrat, and therefore they’re so tribal they can’t tell the story. But we will. We’ll see you next time.
