America’s Lawyer E78: Hunter Biden has been indicted on felony charges for his failure to pay taxes totaling more than 1 million dollars. These allegations are very serious and they could have a big impact on next year’s election. Insurance companies are working with drug makers to keep the cost of your prescription drugs higher than ever, and we’ll explain how they keep getting away with it. And a group of conservative media outlets are suing the Biden Administration for what appears to be a massive violation of their First Amendment Rights. 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 been indicted on felony charges for his failure to pay taxes totaling more than a million dollars. These allegations are very serious, and they could have a big impact on next year’s election. Insurance companies, well, they’re working with drug makers to keep the cost of your prescription drugs as high as they can, and we’ll tell you why. And a group of conservative media outlets are suing the Biden administration for what appears to be a massive violation of their First Amendment rights. All that and more, it’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Hunter Biden’s been indicted for failing to pay more than $1 million in federal income tax, and he could be looking at a 17 year stint in prison. But the indictment, well, it does more than just outline potential criminal behavior. It paints a picture of a man that was taking advantage of everybody around him. That’s the only way you can describe it. I’ve got Farron Cousins here to talk about it. Farron, your take was the same as mine. He’s just a hustler. He’s just a hustler. That’s all the guy is that’s been able to get by all these years buying exotic cars, escorts, luxury hotel rooms, clothing, and then getting his pals to loan him money to pay taxes.
Farron Cousins: And he still wasn’t even paying all the taxes either. So look, these are very serious charges, obviously, far more serious than that plea deal that kind of fell apart a few months ago. When you actually look at this, we’re looking at it without any kind of political blinders on, this is very serious. And it does show that that plea deal they were gonna give him several months ago, that was total BS.
Mike Papantonio: And Weiss, Weiss was the guy doing that. And all of a sudden, Weiss says, oh, well, now the judge has basically chastised me and let the world see I’m a frigging idiot. Let me do my job now. And he comes in with only tax charges. The foreign agent issue, I still, I don’t know why that hasn’t been pursued. These charges are serious enough. The worst thing about it, there’s so many crazy parts to this. First of all, who is this Kevin Morris? It’s like his sugar daddy or something. Biden gets into trouble, Kevin Morris comes to pay his way out, whether it’s child support or taxes. Who is this guy?
Farron Cousins: Well, it’s kind of a bit of a mystery right now. He’s a lawyer that obviously was kind of employed. I guess Hunter Biden was a client. But that kind of goes beyond the lawyer client relationship with what Mr. Morris was doing. It’s one of those things that I think as the trial goes forward, Mr. Morris’ role in whatever it is Hunter Biden was doing, is going to become far more clear, because it is very weird. Hunter Biden has all this money. There’s no doubt that this man made a lot of money. Yet at the same time, Morris is having to give him money to help cover his bills because Hunter Biden cannot, almost spending compulsively as fast as the money came in.
Mike Papantonio: If you read the indictment, I mean, if you read what they have in the indictment, they lay out a chart. It’s $750,000 that he spent on restaurants and beauty products. Almost $700,000 to women is the way it’s described. Nearly $400,000 for clothing and accessories. It’s got this chart. I mean, it’s $1.6 million in ATM withdrawals that ended up going to everything from buying hookers to buying exotic cars.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And he was taking that money out of his own company so that he, because he thought like, oh, if I just take the money out of the ATM, I’m not gonna have to pay taxes on it. That’s what they paint the picture of in this indictment. So it’s not quite embezzling from his own company, but man, it looks like almost embezzlement from his own company.
Mike Papantonio: It is embezzlement. They didn’t charge him with it, but it’s embezzlement. Here’s the problem. All this creates an opportunity for discovery. Alright. Depositions are gonna be taken. They’re gonna find out more and more. And you know why, the Republicans, all they’re waiting for is the hammer to drop. And that is to say, like they’re already raising, well, how did Joe Biden go from making a million dollars in 2016 to $500,000 in 2017? The only difference was he wasn’t vice president anymore. It’s things like that. It’s little things like that that they’re gonna focus on. You know, the guy outta fall on a sword and just plead guilty. I mean, if they’ve got him, rather than putting his dad at risk here because that’s what’s happening. And again, this to me, when I hear them say, oh, this proves the Department of Justice doesn’t have an agenda. Really? Does it prove it to you that the Department of Justice doesn’t have an agenda by being forced, forced, almost forced by the judge to do their job? What do you think?
Farron Cousins: Uh, no. I mean, this is something that needed to happen. It doesn’t show an agenda one way or the other. It just shows that, okay, the DOJ decided to actually do something after they were forced to do something, which is typically how the DOJ operates on pretty much anything.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, it is.
Farron Cousins: We both know that very well. So if they’re not forced to do it, they’re not gonna do it. But you’re right, I think about Hunter Biden, the best thing would be pleading guilty because look, President Biden said, oh, I’m not gonna pardon him. If you win reelection next November, you’re pardoning him the next day.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. No question.
Farron Cousins: So Hunter Biden should just say, okay, look, maybe it’s probably just a year. I could do that. I could just sit there. And then day after election, if dad wins, there’s your pardon. Get on out. Come home for Christmas.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly. And if he doesn’t, it puts Joe Biden at huge risk because of the discovery, because of things that are gonna come out that haven’t come out. Where the money came from, how it was split, split between his brother, Joe’s brother, or split somehow in the family. That’s what they’re looking for. That’s where this all, that’s where all this goes.
Farron Cousins: Well, that is certainly what they’re looking for, obviously. But look, even if you can’t connect any of it to President Biden, at least, criminally in any way, it does create the bad optics. Because one of the big talking points for Democrats next year is, look, we’re running against a guy with 91 felonies. Hey, but your guy’s son is also on. You see that moral high ground and you can’t do that.
Mike Papantonio: But, you know, that argument it’s his son, therefore, I think is complete BS. It’s Hunter and Joe. Okay. At this point, their goal is to tie Joe up to Hunter.
Farron Cousins: Oh, absolutely.
Mike Papantonio: And so, I think that, but these arguments that you hear from the right, oh, well, Hunter this and Hunter, he’s not a president. Okay. He’s just a dirt bag who just lived a life that has put his father in big risk right now, going into this next election cycle.
Senator Ron Wyden is asking the Justice Department to investigate how foreign countries could be spying on your phone data through your push notifications. Wyden’s office has spent years investigating this issue, and now they wanna take it to the DOJ and plead with the DOJ, please take action. I’ve been talking to you about it for years. Talk about how this works.
Farron Cousins: This is a really kind of complicated, yet, if you’re a foreign government, it’s actually a bit of a brilliant scheme here.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. It is.
Farron Cousins: Because we’re talking about in every country, essentially the public airwaves. So when your phone sends you a notification, hey, your game is ready for you to play. A reward is ready. Your map says you gotta take a turn. Those are push notifications that come through your phone. But by doing that, they’re of course, using this public space, these public airwaves, whatever. So foreign governments are allowed to say, oh.
Mike Papantonio: We want access to that.
Farron Cousins: Well, you know, this is coming across our towers. This is coming across our signals. We as the government have every right to see what’s happening. And Ron Wyden’s office said in a report last week, they said, listen, they’re using this to get your messages because your messages come across through a push notification. They’re getting emails, they’re getting your location data. They’re getting everything you do, because they can access these notifications.
Mike Papantonio: And Apple and Google, they have the information, but they’re unwilling to share it because they know where that goes. This is just the very tip of the iceberg. They can’t share this information. That’s why they’re refusing to do it. That’s why Wyden is trying to demand, tell us who has been affected by this. You have the information. We wanna know who the people are. Right.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And doesn’t this remind you a lot of, because we were doing segments back then, back during the FISA years where you had the AT&T and you had these other cell carriers say, oh yeah, we’ve given up data on American citizens, but we can’t tell you who, because that’s just a breach of confidence. But it’s the same thing today. It’s just different people doing different things for different countries.
Mike Papantonio: The tech industry has just become so arrogant.
Farron Cousins: They really have.
Mike Papantonio: They’ve just become so arrogant. That’s why I’m so excited about the lawsuits we’re bringing out, bringing against them, social media lawsuits. The stuff we’re finding already is appalling and what the DOJ won’t do, and what the government won’t do, we will do, we’ll do in a courtroom, and we will ask the questions and take discovery. I just don’t understand why the Department, why Wyden has for years told the Department of Justice, this is serious, man. Pay attention. They won’t do it.
Farron Cousins: Well, Wyden has been great on the whole range of issues with big tech. He is one of the few that’s always been solid. He was solid on the surveillance breaches and breach of trust on all that. And he is still just the loudest voice, usually one of the only voices sounding the alarm.
Mike Papantonio: Well, there’s one more I read that’s on this bill. I forgot who it was, but another Democrat. And of course, there’s no Republicans coming up and saying, yeah, we oughta do something about this.
Health insurance companies are working alongside drug companies to make sure that you can’t get a good deal on your prescription drugs. The process is complicated and it’s very shady. The end result is that you pay through the roof for the cost of pharmaceuticals. Now, here’s what people don’t, most people watching this would’ve never even heard of a PBM. Okay. We’re handling the insulin case. It’s where PBMs are setting drug prices, and they’re doing it through price gouging. It’s antitrust. As a matter of fact, I’ve got a book coming out following December, about this very issue. It’s in the series. But it’s focusing on, it’s fiction, but it’s focused on the heart of the problem. PBMs came up in the sixties, and they were supposed to be there to protect consumers to make sure that pharmaceutical company doesn’t overcharge. Now that PBM is taking kickbacks. So they want the price of the pharmaceutical to be as high as possible. They have three different avenues of kickbacks. One is just when they set the price. They put ’em on a list. Right. If you have your pharmaceutical on the list, you can sell it. These people can keep you off the list. And so it’s, I mean, it’s a extortion. We’ll put your expensive product on the list, but we want a kickback. They’re literally taking, they call ’em rebates, but they’re kickbacks.
Farron Cousins: Rebates. So yeah. These are pharmacy benefit managers. The PBMs. And what a lot of people don’t know, and the Lever did a beautiful job of explaining this.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, by the way, let me, if people, people always say, I can’t find the news, go to the Lever.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. It’s wonderful.
Mike Papantonio: This is an extraordinary source of news. I’m sorry to interrupt you. Go ahead.
Farron Cousins: No. It needed to be said. So you have these PBMs that are now increasingly actually being owned by the insurance companies. Now, they used to be kind of this independent group. The insurance companies are here, your PBMs, and then your drug companies.
Mike Papantonio: Right. Check and balance.
Farron Cousins: Right. The PBMs were kind of the intermediary saying, okay, insurance, you have to cover this. Drug companies, you gotta cover it at this price. Everybody’s happy. But the insurance companies said, well, what if we just owned the PBMs?
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: Let’s just cut out the middleman. We create our own system here. So as you said, they now own the PBMs, and the PBMs are going to the drug companies and saying, hey, we’re gonna have to drop your drug. But, if you come off the price a little bit of what we’ll cover, and you give us the difference.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. That the PBM said.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: It’s extortion. It’s nothing less than, they call it rebates. They, oh, this is only a rebate. No, it’s a kickback. You say to the pharmaceutical company, you’re not gonna be on the formulary list. We’re not even gonna recommend that your drug be able to be sold in these various pharmacies like CVS or whoever. And the people making those decisions also own the pharmacies. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: So we’re saying we want the most expensive drug. If you got a generic or you have a hundred times the cost of generic, we want that expensive one on the formulary list because the PBM gets a kickback and the pharmacy makes more money by selling the more expensive drug. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. So it’s, just to give kind of a little bit of an example here. Say you’ve got a drug that big pharma would charge you $500 for if you didn’t have insurance. Well, if you don’t have insurance, you’re not gonna be able to afford that medication. So the insurance company says, listen, we will cover it, and the cost of the consumer will be a hundred dollars. So you’re coming off $400. In exchange, we’re gonna get the rebate of $50 a prescription, that comes directly to me at the PBM. So you’re actually paying, or 150 instead of the five, but we get the difference there.
Mike Papantonio: Yes. Yes.
Farron Cousins: So that’s how this scheme works. And as you said too, another part of it is the generics because they’ll go to the drug companies and say, listen, we got a $2 generic over here. We could put that on the list and it’s gonna be free.
Mike Papantonio: PBM says, no, we’re not putting you on the formulary. We want the one that cost a hundred times that because we make more money. And there are no regulations. The FTC has done nothing about this since the 1960s. And it’s evolved. And it is a mob control. I mean, it is literally. Matter of fact, in the book I’m writing, I actually have the Irish mob moving into this business because it’s a way for them to make big money and never go to jail for committing the most awful crimes. And so, but the point, until somebody takes a look at it, this is gonna continue. And doctors will tell you, this is part of the problem. I can’t even give my patient a medicine that works for ’em because in the middle of them taking that medicine, I’ll get a notice saying, you can’t give ’em that medicine anymore. He has to buy the more expensive one. That doesn’t work, by the way.
There’s no way around it. Americans are tired of watching the news. Boy, that is absolutely the truth. A new report says that news consumption for local news, cable news, newspapers, and even online news has gone way down just in the last year. Okay. Cutting, the old idea about cutting cables is come to true. I mean, it’s happening. People are cutting their cables at record level. They’re not watching traditional tv. They don’t tune into the nightly news. You’ve got an entire generation that if they get their news, they’re gonna get it online, you know, a show like this. Right?
Farron Cousins: Right. And even that is actually declining right now from where it was last year. What really shocked me because there is this new poll out that says, across the board, media outlets are seeing fewer viewers, whether it’s traditional newspapers or your local news, cable news. It’s all going down.
Mike Papantonio: What are they watching? Because it’s not affecting the, the media’s still out. I mean, the online media continues to climb. Are are they watching Taylor Swift and Kelsey, or, I mean, I really wonder. I’d like to see it quantified.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. See that is what’s interesting because we’re not seeing a dip necessarily in online activity or in tv viewership overall.
Mike Papantonio: Just the news.
Farron Cousins: It’s just, well, when you think about it, because look, we do news every day. It is depressing and it is horrible on most days.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Most days I don’t want to do it.
Farron Cousins: So I can’t really fault people for saying, you know what, I can’t take this any more. So I, look, I get it. We all want to be there. But what shocked me the most was that even the older population, those are the news consumers, right? No. They’ve dropped.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. My my age. I mean, they’re, 60 and up are supposed to be the news folks, but.
Farron Cousins: Even they are abandoning the traditional news outlets. And that is bad news for newspapers. But again, this is a problem that the media brought upon itself. And, so it could be that people are sick of the news, but I think a bigger part of it, like we always talk about, is that they’re sick of watching the news, but not actually getting the news.
Mike Papantonio: Now, I want you to watch this story. Al Gore is out on the speaking circuit. You know what his pitch is? That by Americans not watching mainstream media, our democracy is being hurt. That is his pitch. You must watch the nightly news or democracy will be at risk. Well, basically he’s saying, you know, terrifying people not to watch propaganda or ideological propaganda, whether it’s Fox or MSNBC, you must watch ideological propaganda or democracy. Where the hell did that come from? But the point, good luck with that. Because according to this story, people aren’t watching the news. They’re not.
Farron Cousins: Does he own stock in Comcast? I mean, is there something.
Mike Papantonio: I have no idea.
Farron Cousins: Is he trying to become the next CNN president?
Mike Papantonio: But who in the hell says you gotta watch corporate media, mainstream corporate media or democracy is at risk? Tell me how many times you can turn on the corporate media news, and see stories like we report, or that the Lever reports, or any of these other folks report that we do. It’s not there. They don’t even talk about it. So, what a peculiar thing for.
Farron Cousins: I mean, if people wanna be informed, the Lever, the Intercept, Truth Out, those are three just really great outlets.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. They are. And outta that, I would say Lever. That would be my first pick.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Lever’s definitely.
Mike Papantonio: You can almost pick up, you can read the Lever regularly and know what’s going on in the world. And it’s stuff that you will never ever find on the nightly news because they tell, they go after corporation, the nightly news, they have to worry about advertisers. They can’t do it. The Lever doesn’t care about politics. They’re not Democrat, they’re not Republican. If the Democrats screw up the Lever talks about it. If Republicans screw up, Lever talks about it. So they’re indifferent, and that, it’s that Switzerland mentality that really allows them to be as good as they are. David Sirota started this, I think he was the founder of it, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Anyway, that’s the state of the media today.
The immigration debate is one that’s been going on in America for decades with no end in sight and part of the reason that we never get any real solutions is because immigrants mean big money for corporations. I mean, massive money. Now they’re getting ready to make more money. Okay. You and I have talked about this so many times. It’s the essential, it’s the bottom line for immigration. Okay. We used to have corporations shipping jobs overseas. They’d ship ’em to China, India, they still do, but they’re running into some deep water there. Okay. Because finally those people are saying, hell no, I’m not gonna work for 50 cents an hour. I wanna be paid like you would pay folks in the US. So now the Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industry said, I know what we’ll do. We will just bring ’em over the border. Okay. So what, five, 6 million, 7 million people over the border. The numbers in here, I’ll take a look in just a minute, but it’s millions of people coming over the border to work for low wages and corporations that, as we’ve said before, they lose an arm, hell, just ship back to Nicaragua. It doesn’t make any difference, you know? They don’t have any kind of protection. Pick it up from there, would you.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And so now a new industry says, hey, well, look, we see the automotive industry getting this. We see the factory farming industry. We want a piece of this. And of course, that industry is the private prison industry. Because most of these people who do come through and they go through the system legally, they still have to go through monitoring, GPS monitoring, for most of them that are released back into the United States pending their immigration hearings.
Mike Papantonio: The number, by the way, is 5.7 million. That the actual, that’s the number. So.
Farron Cousins: So we’re looking at hundreds of thousands of people per year that essentially get outfitted with these GPS monitoring devices. So the private prison industry, GEO Group, CoreCivic, they say, listen, we actually kind of own the companies that are doing this anyway.
Mike Papantonio: We’re in the money.
Farron Cousins: Well, they do own it. So they’re trying to lobby the administration to tell them, hey, why don’t you release even more people for the GPS monitoring? We’ve got all the devices here. We’re more than happy to monitor two.
Mike Papantonio: Ankle monitors.
Farron Cousins: 3 million people a year.
Mike Papantonio: We’re gonna give you a phone. You must have it on all because we wanna monitor. You have to have the ankle bracelets that we monitor you. And while your case is pending, this is what we’re gonna do. And they’re gonna make so much money doing this that they’re moving, I mean, first of all, the lobbying they’re doing to improve their possibilities of doing it, they’re spending millions.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Just this year. Millions of dollars on lobbying for that.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. So they know how, what the payday is on this. So if you’re an immigrant and you came over here and you said, well, I want a better life, question is, well, do you mind doing it with an ankle bracelet, with an ankle monitor? Or do you mind us putting a chip in you so we know where you are all? That’s where it’ll come to. That’s really where it’ll come to.
Farron Cousins: And part of the other lobbying pitch for the private prison industry is, hey, not only give us the contracts, but that way, obviously we’re monitoring the devices. If they become unresponsive, well, we own the jail. We’ll just throw ’em in here.
Mike Papantonio: That’s right. That’s right.
Farron Cousins: So, they get double.
Mike Papantonio: They’ve done such a great job with prison, right? The prison, these are the same people. The prison people who have been doing private prisons, which has been a disaster, are now saying, well, maybe we didn’t get that right, but we can do this. We can do this. That’s kind of their pitch right now.
Several conservative media outlets have filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration state department alleging that they’re actively trying to censor ’em for having government label them with information. Whether you like these websites or not, it’s irrelevant. We have a constitution. The government can’t decide what we see and what we don’t see. We’re not a bunch of brain, well, there are some brainless children out there. Part of our American public right now really believes that, oh, I can’t look at that. I want the government to tell me that this is bad. I want the government to think for me. Let the government decide whether this is information I should read. Almost like they can’t get around to critical thinking and understand, well, I can decide this myself. Can’t I?
Farron Cousins: Well, and on that note, by the way, I saw a study that came out yesterday, I think it’s one in five school kids, school age kids, don’t know that the Holocaust actually happened.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, wow.
Farron Cousins: So we’re talking about 20% of our kids don’t even know that that’s actually a real thing. But this lawsuit, listen, I don’t like any of the outlets that filed this.
Mike Papantonio: No. I don’t either.
Farron Cousins: And I hope they win.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, of course.
Farron Cousins: They have to win.
Mike Papantonio: It’s the Federalist Society. I mean, we talk about their craziness all the time.
Farron Cousins: But what’s happening here and this is horrifying, and people need to understand this. Take off your blinders, because this will kill media if the government is allowed to do this. So the state department has this new power that was enacted, I think it was like 2017 officially.
Mike Papantonio: Yes. It was.
Farron Cousins: In that first Defense Authorization Act or whatever. They put together this office that’s job is to monitor foreign propaganda. But as part of monitoring foreign propaganda, they’ve started slapping labels on.
Mike Papantonio: Domestic.
Farron Cousins: American media outlets. Saying this is misinformation. So the government is literally telling these outlets, you are misinformation. And that is not allowed.
Mike Papantonio: We did a story on this. There was a woman that was making this circle all over the United States preaching about our show. You know that.
Farron Cousins: Oh, yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Attacking me that we’re destroying democracy by talking about corrupt corporations. I mean, giving speeches. I got a call, she was in California. She was talking, of all things, she’s talking to a room full of lawyers of organization that I’m in. I know most of the folks. She puts my picture up there and they, I guess she doesn’t know the connection, puts my picture up there and starts talking about how we’re destroying democracy by talking about corporations. And we should be censored. I mean, what the hell? How have we gotten here to where you have part of the American public saying, oh, that’s okay? There’s some things you shouldn’t say. No, you ought to be able to say what you wanna say. And then we ought to be intelligent enough to say, well, that’s nonsense. Or it’s not nonsense. Maybe it’s the truth.
Farron Cousins: Well, see and that’s the problem, is the government thinks at this point, like, well, we have to baby everybody. Everybody’s so dumb that if we’re not watching them every second of the day, they’re all gonna walk off the bridge.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Or they’re gonna go to their safe space. You know, I can’t hear this. It’s too bad. Or I can’t process it.
Farron Cousins: But all of these websites, they have a right to exist. They have a right to report on what they wanna report on.
Mike Papantonio: And there’s not one thing you and I would agree with them on, I mean, these are right wing websites.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: There’s not much we would say, yeah, that’s, we’re with you on that. But they have the right to do it.
Farron Cousins: And look, a lot of people watching this are saying, but guys, they are misinformation.
Mike Papantonio: So what?
Farron Cousins: But listen, if the government can slap it on them, then guess what? The Democrats aren’t gonna be in power forever.
Mike Papantonio: That’s right.
Farron Cousins: We’ve already been slapped with misinformation labeling by people.
Mike Papantonio: For telling, oh God. What, we had a story pulled, what was it pn TikTok?
Farron Cousins: On TikTok, yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Where we had done a story, it was created by the FDA. Right. The FDA put out a warning about baby formula, a type of baby formula.
Farron Cousins: Killing premature infants.
Mike Papantonio: Killing premature infants. And some jack leg that worked for the industry, got them to take it down. We had to write ’em back, say, here it is, you idiots. This is the FDA saying it. But that’s the problem. When censorship and these are infants dying all over the country from these probiotics. And we said, well, we ought to be able to tell that story, shouldn’t we? Not only did the FDA say it was true, we have a lawsuit that has almost proven that it’s completely, utterly true. And the industry’s known about it for decades. But that’s the risk with censorship.
Farron Cousins: Yes.
Mike Papantonio: But you have, I swear to God, you got these people, they can’t think. They’re almost child-like, I mean, they literally are child-like, don’t say those words. They offend me. Let me have my safe space. It’s this whole snowflake mentality that puts us in a position where we’re actually arguing about whether or not the government should decide what we read. We have gotten to that point.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And people don’t realize the irony of that.
Mike Papantonio: No. And I think if you’re young enough, you of course, I’ve grown up with that my whole life. This is normal, isn’t it? That’s almost where we are.
Democrats in both the House and the state have introduced legislation that would prevent Wall Street from owning single family homes in this country. A move that could put home ownership back on the table for millions of Americans. There are so many young people that are coming outta college, taking a first job that can’t afford a house. And there’s no, nothing in sight for them. There’s a reason for it. This is one of the reasons. Wall Street has been buying up all this property. 600,000 single family units. 600,000. Okay. Well, in the past, what they wanna do is rent ’em. They wanna rent ’em. Amazon’s into this big time.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. That’s, we don’t need Jeff Bezos. I mean, he already owns the Washington Post. We don’t need him owning all of our homes too.
Mike Papantonio: All our homes. You said there’s whole neighborhoods, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. We’ve talked about stories, I’ve done ’em with Ring of Fire about how these groups, what is it, the BlackRock? They’ll come in and they’ll buy up. Okay. There’s this little subdivision, 30, 40 homes here. We’ll buy ’em all. So they own their whole little community here. But we’ve seen this epidemic, and I’ve interviewed people on this in the last couple years, and it’s happening more and more frequently that by the year 2030, it’s projected, if it’s not stopped, Wall Street will own 40%, 40% of the single family homes in this country will be owned by these nameless, faceless banks.
Mike Papantonio: And you have a.
Farron Cousins: In seven years.
Mike Papantonio: Congress and Senate that aren’t doing anything to stop it, except Jeff Merkley.
Farron Cousins: Yep, Merkley.
Mike Papantonio: He says, let me call your attention to it. Also, in fairness, Adam Smith from Washington, Washington State saying, we gotta stop this, man. You’re, if you’re moving into the time in your life, when you’re trying to acquire assets, you wanna own a home, you wanna have all this American dream start coming true. They don’t have a possibility now. And this is getting worse.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And another part of it, the other side of it, even when Wall Street doesn’t purchase the home, taking it away from a homeowner, they still drive up the price. Because we have homes all over the country selling for way above asking price. Just so the consumer can outbid the Wall Street bank. So you’re paying 50,000 more.
Mike Papantonio: Than you should.
Farron Cousins: Than the home’s even worth.
Mike Papantonio: Because you are bidding against Wall Street.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And they’ve got endless money.
Mike Papantonio: Wall Street is like a flock of locusts. They’re locusts. We’ve talked about this before, they’re moving into every part of American life. They, it used to be doctor run hospitals, right. 10 doctors would run a hospital until Wall Street said, hey, we can make a lot of money by buying everything up. So they bought up 80% of all those hospitals. They bought up the healthcare industry. And now some cat in New York has to say whether or not you can have your appendix removed or have heart surgery. They’re trying it with a legal, in the legal space. And I’m fighting like hell, having some pretty good success stopping ’em. They’ve done it in, you see these big startup, these optical plants, these optical massive structures. Go get your eyes fixed. They’re buying up all the obstetricians. They’re buying up the dental business. I mean, it’s just, they are like locusts. And we don’t have an FTC that has any courage, and we certainly don’t have Congress or Senate that has any courage to stop it. They can, but they don’t.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And then if they don’t pass this legislation, again, we are six years out from nearly half of the entire home industry in this country, it’s gonna be owned by Wall Street.
Mike Papantonio: Owned by Wall Street. Yeah. That’s amazing. Farron, thanks, man.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week. But all these segments are gonna be posted right here on this channel in the coming week. Make sure you’re subscribed. I’m Mike Papantonio, and this has been America’s Lawyer where we tell you stories every week that corporate media can’t tell you because their advertisers simply say, you tell that story and I’m gonna pull the advertisement. Or their political connections are so Democrat or so Republican that they can’t tell the story because they’re afraid they’re gonna offend someone, they’re gonna offend somebody in their party. But around here, it doesn’t make any difference. We’re gonna tell you the story, whether you liked it, whether you, whatever side you’re on, and we’re simply gonna report the news as we see it. Hope we see you next time.
