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 having to obtain a warrant. Also, Harvard University appears to already be having problems with their latest interim president after it was revealed that he has made millions of dollars while serving on the boards of several drug companies. 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: 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.

Mike Papantonio: 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.