America’s Lawyer E81: A new report has revealed just how bad insider trading has become in Congress, with Democrats and Republicans trading more than a billion dollars worth of stock in the past year – and they usually get better returns than anyone else in the market. Last month President Biden signed a defense budget that included an extension of the FISA program that allows the United States to spy on its own citizens without having to obtain a warrant. And states are joining forces to sue the drug companies that have artificially inflated the price of Insulin for decades – we’ll bring you the details. 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. And new report has revealed just how bad insider trading has become in Congress with Democrats and Republicans trading more than a billion dollars worth of stock just in this past year. And they get great returns. You’re not gonna believe the returns when you hear it. Last month, president Biden signed a defense budget that included an extension of FISA. It allows the United States to spy on its own citizens without having to get a warrant. And states are joining forces to sue the drug companies that have artificially inflated the price of insulin for decades. We’ll bring you the details. All that and more. It’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Congressional stock trading is at an all time high, and members of Congress are so good at trading stocks that they routinely beat the average market by miles. There’s little doubt that they’re using inside knowledge to do that. We’d be arrested if we were the average citizen for doing exactly what they get away with every day. The numbers are startling. I mean, this cat, the numbers are ranging, let me see here, with increases above the market average as high as 200%. In other words, if the S&P is at X, they’re beating the X by 200, 250% because of insider trading, right? This is what Nancy Pelosi fought so hard to try to make sure that we could continue doing that. Remember when it came up, Nancy, you’re making what, 70%, 65% above the market. You’re not doing that because you’re so smart. You’re doing it, Nancy, because you have information that no other Americans have, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, look, this report kind of makes it crystal clear. This is a big bipartisan thing here. You’ve got Democrats who actually are worse with, what was it, 7,000?
Mike Papantonio: Yes.
Farron Cousins: Versus 3000 for Republicans. And the top, as you pointed out, was Brian Higgins, Democrat from New York, 238.9% above average market return. You can’t make those numbers just guessing on stocks. You don’t.
Mike Papantonio: Let’s stop just a second. Average person’s at home, okay, they’re reading the news, they’re trying to talk to their broker. They may have their pension program tied up in there, their retirement program tied up in there. They’re counting on the money because if they retire, they’ve gotta live on that, right? So all they have is the information everybody else has. Same stuff you would have, or I would have. These cats up in Congress like Pelosi and this guy that, what was the number? 123% higher than the S&P. I mean.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. You got Higgins.
Mike Papantonio: Higgins, yeah, Brian Higgins. You’ve got, but these numbers are to where the reason they’re able to do that is because they got to committee meeting, right? In the committee, they say, well, we’re gonna sell a bunch of weapons to Saudi Arabia. So what does that person do? Hey, we’re gonna sell a bunch of weapons to Saudi Arabia, Mr. Broker, you need to know that information. That’s insider trading. Any way you look at it. It affects policy. It affects war policy. It affects economic policy. It affects health policy, right?
Farron Cousins: It does. And they also know things too, not just about the big things coming. They also know about the bad things coming. Like, hey, we just had a hearing. We’re going to possibly subpoena the heads of the pharmaceutical companies. I need you to dump everything Pfizer, dump everything Merck, dump it, dump it, dump it. So when this happens, those stocks are gonna tank and I’m not gonna be a part of it. I’ll sell while I can get out.
Mike Papantonio: They actually know the names of the people. They know the names of the company, with Silicon Valley, great example. Members of Congress sold, they sold SVB long before it became a problem, because that’s insider information. And so what do we say? Well, if we catch you, Mrs. Pelosi, we’re gonna hit you for the $200 fine. Are you kidding me?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. The Stock Act that is supposed to ban these people from doing it, if they get caught $200 fine. Okay, well, I just made a 240% on my a hundred thousand dollar investment. Yeah. I’ll give you 200 bucks. I’ll give you 400 bucks because I’m gonna tell you right now, I’m gonna do it again. Because there’s no punishment for any of these people.
Mike Papantonio: They actually have something called the Pelosi Act. She was so bad about it. It’s the Pelosi act of 2023. And this other cat, the Democrat that says, look, I did pretty good, 238% above the market. But, you know, its okay because I’m retiring, I’m not running again. Now, you see how patently unfair this is. First of all, it affects the market. People are counting on this money. Most people are counting on, it’s somewhere that they’re counting on for retirement and their pension programs. But we don’t have the same benefit. And if we do this, we go to jail. I mean, I’m talking about serious jail. Pelosi has gotten so good at it, and this article talks about it that she has figured out, let me do all of this at a time during the holidays where it’s not gonna be reported. Let me send in that, hey, I just sold 300 shares of something and made a gazillion dollars, but let me report that on a Friday during the holidays. That’s part of this story, is how they game the system. So they clearly know how wrong it is. Is patently wrong, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, it absolutely is. And look, I have to give credit where credit is due. The two people that have been pushing the hardest, a Republican and a Democrat joined forces to try to stop congressional stock trading altogether, it’s AOC and Matt Gaetz.
Mike Papantonio: Wow.
Farron Cousins: They have been a very unlikely duo, but they’re actually pushing for this. So full credit to both of them. Gaetz still talks about it regularly. He has been highlighting this report calling out his fellow Republicans. But it has to be a bipartisan effort. But when you only have these two, three, or even 20 people pushing for the ban, you got 415 who say, hell no, we’re not gonna do it. I’m making too much money.
Mike Papantonio: It’s like the Haley story. What’s her name?
Farron Cousins: Nikki Haley.
Mike Papantonio: Nikki Haley. Okay. So she comes into Congress with no money. We’ve told this story before. It was a great story, a great investigative story on this. She has no money. She has $15,000 in the bank. She owes about a million dollars. But within four or five years, she’s living in a five, $6 million mansion. Now, where did that come from? It came from her relationships with big corporations. This is no different. This is, in a sense, these people, they get calls, they get calls that nobody else gets. They hear testimony that nobody else hears. And they’re able to skulk into, you know, skulk away, quietly make that telephone call that any one of us would go to prison for doing.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: Something’s gotta be done about it.
In late December, president Biden signed a new defense bill that included an extension of a controversial domestic spying program that allows the government to spy on US citizens without a warrant. Okay. This, there’s some good and bad to this. And you and I both have always agreed to that, I think, and that is that there has to be something in place to where we can capture information that’s going, that’s being used in foreign governments. Okay. It tells us something’s coming. The Hamas thing, I don’t know how they didn’t catch that, because there’s just so much activity there. But that’s what it’s supposed to be. Here though, they’ve taken it and they’re finding out that they’re using it against private citizens. And you and I have talked about the Church Hearings that took place. Frank Church, he has these hearings and he finds out the CIA, FBI, are not only spying on American citizens, they’re actually interfering with their lives. They’re following ’em. They’re causing all kinds of political pressure for ’em. This is kind of the same thing, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: It really is. Except the difference now is that when people find out, oh, the government could be spying. Okay, well, I’m not doing anything wrong. What do I have to worry about?
Mike Papantonio: That is the average.
Farron Cousins: You know, we have come so far since the Church Hearings when this kind of news was shocking. Everybody couldn’t believe that the government was doing this. They wanted answers. But now, again, late December, president Biden signs this, we’re still in FISA over 20 years after the launch of this war on terror. And what are we even looking for anymore? Obviously we’re not doing a good job with it. It is not yielding results. It’s violating our civil liberties.
Mike Papantonio: Well, that was my point about the Hamas deal. If it had been working, we certainly would’ve caught that, right? But the point being, we’re living at a times where there’s so much volatility. I get that. But you kinda have to know what’s going on. But somebody’s gotta say, you may not under any circumstances use this warrant, use this FISA avenue without a warrant to spy on Americans. It’s pretty simple, isn’t it? But it’s been abused so many times. The record of abuse by the Feds on this is overwhelming.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Two years ago, a million, there were a million Americans that got swept up in the FISA. And then the past year, oh, we did a little bit better. We only had tens of thousands instead of being up to the million number. But this is, the issue is not having a warrant. If you actually have any kind of probable cause, if you have reason to believe something exists, getting a warrant is not that difficult for these individuals.
Mike Papantonio: You know, Wray of course, he was called before Congress, and they kept asking him, well, what about these Catholics? What is this with your spying on Catholics, that you’re tapping their phones? I don’t know if that went through FISA or not, but I think it did. I think there was some element that even was used, went through FISA where they were tagging Catholics for, I suppose anti-government statements, anti-government conduct. What was it? Do you recall?
Farron Cousins: That to me, I’m not too familiar with that, but.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Wray was in front of Congress and they were talking to him about that. I never got a good answer. I don’t think he ever gave a good answer that supplied the reason why we would be spying on American Catholics because of what appeared to be terrorist conduct. I suppose it has to do with abortion bombings or something like that.
Farron Cousins: It’s possible. But look, we do know, obviously we have activists of all kinds all over the place, especially environmental activists. We saw it with Standing Rock in the Dakotas. We’ve seen it with the whole Keystone movement. These people get spied on and infiltrated. The labor movement, another huge one. And FISA just gives these people the green light, like, hey, we can get into this labor leader’s phone because they had a contact overseas. We don’t know. Maybe they’re bad. So let’s just look.
Mike Papantonio: One contact.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: That to me is ringing some bells about the Catholic story. It’s just crazy. And we just at some point have to say, hell no. But you’re right. I don’t think the American public gives a. I think you got two generations behind us, it’s a normal thing. It’s just absolutely normal. And we’re not worried about it because, A, we don’t understand the right to protection of privacy. B, we don’t understand the first amendment. C, we’ve never taken a civics course. I don’t know what the hell it is, but it is a sense that it’s not a big problem. Don’t you get that sense?
Farron Cousins: Oh, absolutely. Look, we did a story months ago about the Roomba that’s now owned by Amazon. And it’s mapping your house, and it’s learning what you have in your home to essentially spy on your house. And people are like, okay. Well, yeah, sure. But I’ve got a robot vacuum. I don’t have to vacuum anymore. Yes, I’ve got my Alexa sitting here listening to every word I say. It’s just, people are used to being spied on now that they welcome it.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, isn’t it a fundamental of democracy? I mean, really, the right to privacy, isn’t that one of the pillar fundamentals of democracy?
Farron Cousins: It’s supposed to be.
Mike Papantonio: And I wonder, how do people get to the point to where it just doesn’t matter anymore? When you were coming through school, you took civics classes, didn’t you?
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I did too. And I suppose they’re still hopefully having some civics classes out there. But it’s almost like it’s a disconnect, isn’t it? They’re teaching to the test. That started happening, what, 30 years ago? We’re gonna teach to the test. In other words, you have to take these periodic tests, and we’re gonna teach you everything you need to know about the test. But we’re not gonna teach you anything about basic constitutional concepts or literature, basically, history of this. There’s tons of history about this being abused. Go figure.
Harvard University appears to be already having problems with their latest interim president after it was revealed that he was paid millions of dollars while serving on the boards of several drug companies. Wow. What a deal this guy has, right? So he’s making a salary as a professor at Harvard in a department where he’s overseeing research, right? So Eli Lilly or whatever company calls him and says, hey, I hear you’re working on some patents, right? I hear you’re working on some things at Harvard that maybe we can get in and buy. Well, he has his Vertex and Exelixis. Those are the two companies he’s looking out for. But he’s on the board and he’s paid $2.7 million to sit on the board. You know the problems. We’ve talked about the problems, what it means in a typical lawsuit. Go ahead and pick it up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. What people have to understand why this is so bad is because these universities, especially Harvard, the most prestigious college in the country, that title of being a Harvard graduate carries a ton of weight across the planet. So what these drug companies do, or chemical companies, whoever it is, they go to these prestigious universities, they look at what they’re doing, and they do one of two things. One, as you pointed out, they say, hey, you’ve got a lot of really good cancer research here. You’re developing things that might fight off cancer. Uh, we wanna buy this. So could you sell this to us? So they use it as their R and D department without having to pay for it. And the second, well, the second thing is the most important. They then, when problems arise with that cancer drug or whatever it is, they say, hey, listen, we’ve got this paper we wrote that actually says, if you do it this way, everything’s fine. No problems with the drug. It’s your drug. Could you, I mean, just sign your name right here on the paper. We’re good to go. We gotta send it to the FDA.
Mike Papantonio: I don’t want people to miss what you just said. The company writes the clinical data. Okay. They have these folks signing off on the clinical data. They didn’t even write the article, but it appears in all these big journals with their name on it, Harvard, Yale, Princeton. And I’m always across the table from ’em. This is what I kinda specialize in, is cross-examining these cats. And if you look at their history, they’re making so much money, they will say anything for a million dollars, anything. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a situation where the conduct and causation is so overwhelming, the corporate type has caused clear harm to the consumer. And the clinical data shows it. The memos, the data, all the papers, all the transactions in the company show that that’s the case.
But these cats, they show up at a deposition and say, oh, no, no, no, no. We can’t know that Yaz is really killing women through, you know, through a whole host of problems. Or we can’t be sure that Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder is causing cervical cancer and we need more information. That’s all they want ’em to do is come to trial, go to deposition, and say, we need more information. That is exactly what they’re paid to do. And they’re nothing but whores. They are whores for the pharmaceutical industry. And this guy opened that. But, I think the bigger story, Harvard’s right now, I think in a bad way, I really do believe. This thing with Professor Gay, I just have not gotten my arms around it. I mean, here’s the history that at least is being reported.
10 documents, clear plagiarism that the board took no action on. Now, that’s before it really started heating up. This board of out of touch millionaire screwballs living in their own elite bubble. They’re so totally out of touch with realities of every day. They say, okay, that’s okay. That’s okay, Ms. President, we’re gonna support you in that. Any other student would’ve been kicked outta the university immediately. Their career would’ve been over. Here it gets worse than that, 50 documents after the 10, another 50 documents show up. And it’s the silliest thing. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. It’s entire pages, Farron. She is taking entire pages out of somebody else’s work. Some other scientist who’s done the research and she’s putting it to her use. And now this is called, racial animus, really? This is racial animus?
Farron Cousins: I’ve seen so many articles from websites that I respect that have talked about this, like, oh, well, the right started a culture war here. And that’s, it’s like, okay, listen, if that’s even what the cause of it was, does it matter when they find horrible things? Guess what folks? People on the left can also be horrible, and we can call ’em out and that doesn’t make us any less of a leftist to say, listen, what this person did was bad. As you pointed out, any student at that university is gonna be expelled on the spot and they’re not ever gonna get in another college.
Mike Papantonio: Their career could be over.
Farron Cousins: Their life could be over.
Mike Papantonio: Their life could be over. But here we’ve got a professor who her entire, it started early on, man. Her entire career, she’s plagiarizing. And this idiot bunch of board members said, you really need to look at this, because what you’ve done is you’ve created this open season to plagiarize. What’s gonna happen when the next student comes up and says, you know, yeah, this is a paragraph, I plagiar? They’re gone, man. They’re gone. There’s no way that you can bring legitimacy to the process anymore. I think this kills, there’s so many things about that. And then they keep her on. They’re paying her $900,000 to continue being a professor. What the hell? And to call this racial animus is absurd. Had it been a Hispanic, had it been an Asian, had it been anybody else, oh my God, you know, you would have been gone. But this is not racial animus. This is just common sense. We shouldn’t have the president of a university at Harvard saying it’s okay to plagiarize. And I’ve done it 50 times and I’ve built my career around it. How have we gotten there? That’s what I wonder.
Legislation has been introduced that would limit the amount of weapons and military equipment the United States can sell to Saudi Arabia. And the legislation specifically cites massive human rights abuses that the country’s been engaging in for so long. And we just seem to ignore it. I don’t know who in the hell has got it in their head that these are our friends. I have no idea. They’re not our friends, are they?
Farron Cousins: No, absolutely not. And look, it’s not only the human rights abuses, which we’ve covered extensively. It’s not only the human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, it’s also the abuses that they’re carrying out in Yemen and all over the Middle East. And they’re doing it with our weapons, with our bullets, with our jets and missiles. We are supplying the ammunition for Saudi Arabia to kill their own people and the people in the neighboring countries. That’s what folks have to understand here. And think of it this way too. Remember earlier this year, maybe it was last year, everything runs together at this point. But when Biden went to Saudi Arabia and said, oh my God, gas prices are insane. Saudi Arabia.
Mike Papantonio: Please help us.
Farron Cousins: We’ve given you so many weapons, everything you’ve ever wanted, could you just help us? And they said, no.
Mike Papantonio:No.
Farron Cousins: No, we’re gonna make prices a little higher, actually.
Mike Papantonio:That was after Biden, after he said, well, Biden called him the pariah. Remember he was running for.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. He said he was gonna make him a pariah.
Mike Papantonio: He says, President Biden campaigned in 2020, making Saudi Arabia a pariah. Okay. This is Ken Klippenstein with Intercept, who I think is brilliant.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, he’s wonderful.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, he’s really a great reporter. And then that he only focuses though, when he’s calling him a pariah, and he says, there’s very little social redeeming value in the present government. This is Joe Biden, very little social redeeming value. Then he turns around within a matter of months and gives them almost $600 million worth of weapons to be used any way they want to use them. Even though he’s also told, oh, by the way, these weapons are, we’re finding these weapons in the hands of terrorists. How’s that happening, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And that, by the way, was another huge report from a couple years ago that went largely under the radar that Saudi Arabia was selling weapons to terrorists. Those terrorists were then using those weapons to kill American citizens, to kill US soldiers, to kill US contractors. We are being killed across the globe by our own weapons, because Saudi Arabia, once we sell it, there’s no regulations, there’s no limitations. Here is our best of the best. You do whatever you want. And then when we ask you for a favor and you say, no, we’ll shrug our shoulders and we’ll sell you some more.
Mike Papantonio: We always look the other way. I remember the story with the Philippine, the two Filipino women that were held slaves. They were actually, this piggish looking Saudi of the royal family. I mean, absolutely hoggish, piggish looking guy. He’s holding them slaves in his house. Okay. Now there’s laws against that. But instead of that, instead of us charging him, well, no, he has immunity. He has diplomatic immunity. So we let him go. Just like after 9/11. What’s the first thing we do? We take all the Saudi Royal family and we fly them out of the country. Why did we do that? Why? Because at that point, everybody’s talking, this is Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. No, it wasn’t. It was Saudi Arabia. And this history just doesn’t end. When Biden says that they are pariah, he was right.
And it’s almost like he’s changed his mind because corporate America’s told him, the weapons industry said, you must change your mind. It’s almost like he reacts to everything corporate America tells him to do. This is the weapons industry that’s telling him, you may think they’re pariah, but we want you to sell more weapons. Same thing with immigration. I mean, look at the major policies, weapons, we know what that’s about. Immigration, we know what that’s about because corporate America wants more slave labor in the United States. They can pay somebody $10 an hour rather than $15 or $5 an hour. And if they lose an arm, you ship them back. These are policies. Big pharma, I’m talking about Biden administration policies. This is a policy reflection. And they don’t look any different than that crazy man Trump. Okay.
Trump was doing the same kind of stuff, and we’re thinking, well, okay, we’re gonna see something different. No, we’re not. Big pharma, oh, it’s almost like he’s a hero because he required that 10 pharmaceuticals, we could control the cost of 10 pharmaceuticals. And there’s thousands of them. And whatever else you want, forget it. But these are policy issues. You see to me, big tech, his favoritism to big tech. And so I just think that this is, I don’t think we’re gonna change it. I don’t think, we haven’t seen it change with Republicans. We haven’t seen it change with Democrats. It’s just a way of life here in the United States.
Farron Cousins: Well, and part of that also ties back to the stock trading story, because every single thing you mentioned here, well, all these members of Congress, House and Senate, they own stocks in all these companies. So they don’t want any change. All they want to do is be able to go out there and sell people on an issue. Like, man, if we just had five more people from our party in this body, boy, we could really do something about it. But, oh man, we just don’t have it. So we can’t. But really, they don’t want the thing to happen.
Mike Papantonio: Well, you’ve said it many times. You’ve said it. If you take both parties, from the standpoint of social issues, yes, the Democrats are distinctly different than Republicans on social issues. But where it comes to just bread and butter kitchen table issues, Dems are just as bad as Republicans. This last article we did says maybe they’re worse. Who knows?
More and more states are joining a major lawsuit to hold the makers of insulin liable for price gouging. American consumers for decades have been putting up with that price gouging. These lawsuits could force the companies to pay up big time. Full disclosure, this is my lawsuit. This is our lawsuit. We originated this, but talk about it. Why don’t you talk about it, PBMs and that type of thing.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Well, what we have right now is we have state attorneys general that are joining into this lawsuit. So entire states, Oklahoma just announced a couple days ago, they’re the most recent state joining in on this. Because what’s been found is that, again, for decades and decades, the drug companies, along with the PBMs, the pharmaceutical benefit managers at the health insurance companies.
Mike Papantonio: Explain, take a minute and explain that just a tad. Just gimme a little 10,000 foot because people don’t know what a PBM is.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. We did a big segment on it about couple weeks ago. The PBM is the person that works at the health insurance company that says what drugs we will cover, how much of each drug we cover. And usually they’re tied at the hip, not just with the company they work for, but with the drug companies themselves.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: They negotiate these prices like, hey, we’ll cover 50% of it. You get the rest, I get some, the insurance company gets a little bit.
Mike Papantonio: It’s all kickbacks.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, it is.
Mike Papantonio: They wanna call it rebates. It’s kickbacks. It’s pure kickbacks. You do this for me and we’re gonna pay you money that’s kickback money. And so what they do is, the competitors out there, if you’re a drug company, you want the PBM to endorse, have a formulary to endorse your product. Right. And so the PBMs make money by scaring the hell out of all the competitors. If you don’t give us these kickbacks, then you may not be on the list. And if you’re too cheap, if your price is not high enough, you might not be on the list because the PBM makes kickback money based on a percentage of what they’re able to put forward. Right?
Farron Cousins: Right. And what we found out, again, that this has been taking place with insulin for a very long time. Because obviously insulin is one of the most widely used drugs in the United States. Millions of people every day are taking insulin. So yeah, the pharmaceutical, or excuse me, the health insurance companies pretty much have to cover it. So these PBMs and the drug companies have all the power to set the price. And over the last 20 years, we have seen over a 1000% increase in spite of the fact nothing’s changed with the drug. The cost to produce it has gotten lower. But we are getting screwed hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars a month.
Mike Papantonio: And so what Eli Lilly says, oh, well this is R and D. There hasn’t been R and D. This drug’s been around a hundred years. As a matter of fact, the interesting part about the guy who developed the drug gave it away. He said, I shouldn’t have this. This can save people’s lives. He gave it away. But then all the bottom feeders, they came in and said, well, you can’t give something away. We need to make millions. So Eli Lilly made $22 billion on it last year. $22 billion where people weren’t even getting enough insulin to be able to keep themselves healthy because they couldn’t afford it.
Farron Cousins: Right. They had to ration it.
Mike Papantonio: They had to ration it. 5,000, almost $6,000 is what the, for insulin, what some of these folks are paying. These companies are making 20, 30, $40 billion selling these products, and they still want more. And when you say, well, you need to pay more. They say, oh, no, no, no. We can’t do that. We have R and D, our research and development. Hell, there is no research and development. But why is it that we don’t have any body in Congress with big enough kahunas to say, look, you gotta stop it. This is one that should have been stopped by this administration.
Farron Cousins: Absolutely. And look, they’ve done studies, they found that the cost of insulin to still give a big profit to the drug companies should be anywhere between $48 and $71 a year. And drug companies would still pull in massive profits off of it.
Mike Papantonio: Can you imagine having somebody in your family, or somebody you know, that says, I can only take half of what I’m supposed to take to keep myself alive because I can’t afford it. Now there’s special programs. But when you look at, and I remember them coming out, like a week after we filed this lawsuit, they came out with this big PR deal. And that’s, well, we’re gonna be lowering prices. It’s smoke and mirrors. They’re not lowering anything. They’re still making a killing. PBMs are killing this country. And the companies like Eli Lilly, they’re right in there with them and nothing seems to be able to change that, is it?
Farron Cousins: Nope. Not as far as we’ve seen. These lawsuits are probably the best hope to do that.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I’m hoping it is. We’ve done a lot of good things with cases like this. Farron, thanks for joining me. Okay.
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. So make sure you’ve subscribed. I’m Mike Papantonio, and this has been America’s Lawyer, where every week we tell you stories that corporate media simply won’t tell you. It’s not tough. Advertisers don’t let ’em tell the story. They threaten the company of pulling advertising dollars if they tell stories about companies like, pharmaceutical companies or weapons industry. The other part is that their attachment to their party, Republican or Democrat, is so deep that they can’t be objective anymore. They can’t tell other parts of the story. But you know what? We don’t have that problem here. We’re gonna tell it just as we see it. Hopefully we’ll see you next time.
