White Collar criminal prosecutions from President Biden’s Justice Department are close to being at an all time low as Attorney General Merrick Garland refuses to take on corporate criminals. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: White collar criminal prosecutions from President Biden’s Justice Department are close to being at an all time low. The worst, the worst in 50 years since attorney general Merrick Garland refuses to prosecute corporate criminals. Well, there’s a reason for it. He used to defend them. He was part of the process. He made his living defending corporate criminals dressed up in suits with Armani watches and driving up in Bentleys. So there’s no such thing as throwing a corporate criminal in prison anymore. I mean, look at the opioid case, man. They killed 150 people a day. I handled the civil side of that case. I took the depositions. We gave all that material to the Justice Department. They have it. They’ve made movies about it. They’ve done all kinds of specials about it. But the Justice Department sits there and won’t do a thing. They’re dysfunctional. They’re useless, and all they’re looking for is low hanging fruit.
Farron Cousins: Right. And we’re talking about fewer than 100 white collar criminal prosecutions from the DOJ every year that Biden has now been in office, which is almost identical to Donald Trump. So, we’ve seen no difference whether it’s a Democrat in the White House, a Republican in the White House. We’ve been going down steadily since the year 2000. And there was a time when it didn’t matter if it was a Republican or Democrat, they did prosecute white collar criminals.
Mike Papantonio: Absolutely. How about Ronald Reagan on the S&L crisis, 800 bankers were prosecuted, 800. That hasn’t been done by Democrat or Republican since. And these people are, I mean, we’re talking about mass murder. We’re talking about manslaughter. Look, I could go on whether it’s with PFAS, how about the PFAS case? I tried that case. I know what it’s about. I handled the opioid case. I saw the documents. I saw exactly what they did. PFAS, they knew about it decades ago. They knew it was causing cancer. The people who were responsible for those decisions were never prosecuted. And the people that continue to make it happen are not being prosecuted. 12 pharma cases, I promise you, I’ve handled 12 pharmaceutical cases out of, I’ve handled many more, 40 or 50. But out of 12, the documents were so strong, we would send them on, hey, you need to look at this, because clinical data has been phonied up. They lied to the FDA. They made all this stuff up. This is fraud, and it’s criminal fraud. And people lost their lives because of it. You know what the Department of Justice has done? Zero.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Every now and then, they’ll throw a fine at a company if it’s something that’s so horrific, you just can’t get around it. But the fine will always be much less than what they made off of the crime.
Mike Papantonio: Some cat in a bow tie shows up, today we stopped whatever. How about fen-phen? Fen-phen killed thousands of people. Nobody prosecuted. How about the blood virus case that I handled, you know, Factor VIII? Factor VIII was a drug. You were with me. We handled, you were working with me then, right?
Farron Cousins: A little after that.
Mike Papantonio: A little after that. Okay.
Farron Cousins: But not long.
Mike Papantonio: Factor VIII was for hemophiliacs. And it was supposed to help a hemophiliac when they were having a bleed problem, it was supposed to clot the blood. Well, the companies knew that it was infected with HIV. They knew there was an HIV infection, and we got it off the market in the US. And you know what they did with it? They sent it all over the world. People died from AIDS all over the world because of these pharmaceutical companies that said, hey, we can get away with it. You know how many people were prosecuted in the US? Zero. Okay. So now this administration says, hey, we’re going to allow you to self-report. I want you to talk about this. Talk about the declination. Talk about declination.
Farron Cousins: What this is, is the administration basically cut a deal with all of corporate America.
Mike Papantonio: Criminals.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And they said, listen, we will not prosecute you as long as you are gonna engage in this self-reporting. So when you do something bad, when you break the law, come tell us you broke the law and everything will be forgiven.
Mike Papantonio: So they say, here it is. They say, there’s something called a declination we’re gonna give you. Only problem is the declination is hidden from the public. In other words, they declared we did this awful thing. How about HSBC? They were involved, I’ve got a new book coming out about it. It comes out in February. I think it’s a strong book. It tells this story. But the bank knew they were washing money for drug cartels and terrorists. Okay. They took the money, made a hundred billion dollars, and they knew people, American contractors were being killed, soldiers were being killed. It was being used for terrorism all over the world, that money that was being washed, they signed a document saying, yes, we did these things. Eric Holder under Obama put nobody in prison. Nobody went to prison. And so, at what point do you say, you can’t change that. It’s a culture. It’s a criminal culture that goes from Wall Street to the pharma industry, the weapons industry, you name it. And nobody goes to prison anymore. And so of course, if they have to pay a fine, I think in the HSBC case, they paid a $1.6 billion fine. Well, hell, they made a hundred billion dollars. It’s just the cost of doing business. When does the American public become so outraged that they do something about it? I thought after the opioid crisis, after they saw that these companies had killed 150 people a day, there would be public outrage about it. After movie, after movie is coming out. There’d be public outrage. Hell no, there’s not. It’s like one hand clapping, you know.
Farron Cousins: I think the public lost all faith in it after the financial crisis of 2007, 2008. Obama comes in like,
Mike Papantonio: I’m gonna do something by God.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And everybody thought, okay, good. All these criminal bankers, you guys are going down for it. And then they said, well.
Mike Papantonio: We can’t look back. Wasn’t that Obama’s? Oh, we can’t look back.
Farron Cousins: We need to look forward.
Mike Papantonio: Look forward. It sounded so positive. This statesman, politician, we need to look forward for the future of this country. Really? What did they steal? $3 trillion from mom and pop, basically.
Farron Cousins: And everybody in the country just had this collective realization, I think, that this is the way it is.
Mike Papantonio: And how many people went to prison? Zero. Zero. I don’t know how you change it, man. I mean, we’re out there. We’re out there swinging day in, day out, going after these companies. We can take their money away. Hell, we’ve taken a lot of money away from ’em. But until you throw uncle Joe in prison and he’s asked to wear stripes, and the next cat in MBA school says, you know, uncle Joe went to prison for 10 years for killing all those people with a dangerous drug. It’s gonna continue. It’s simply cost of doing business. And this Justice Department has been the worst of all of ’em. All the in the last what was it, 40 or 50 years that’s in that article? It’s something like 50 years.
Farron Cousins: It’s decades. Decades.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Decades.
