A recent investigation found that Tesla vehicles are failing at an alarming rate, and now the Senate is demanding answers from the company about what they knew and when they knew it. Then, the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars introduced the concept of IEDs and EFPs that seriously maim or kill. It appears that these bombs are still being made and utilized by terrorists overseas. Who is funding them? Is a reverse money laundering scheme in place that allows money transactions to bypass Department of Justice sanctions? Farron Cousins is joined by Mike Papantonio, along with attorney Chris Paulos, to discuss Pap’s new book, “Suspicious Activity,” which is a continuation of his Law and Disorder series.
Click here to order a copy of Mike Papantonio’s new book, “Suspicious Activity.”
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: A recent investigation found that Tesla vehicles are failing at an alarming rate. Now, the Senate’s demanding answers from the company about what they knew and when they knew it. Yeah. I gotta tell you something. I got problems with this story. Why don’t you lay this story out and I wanna tell you what my problems are. Okay?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Recently, Reuters came out, they did this big investigation. They found that there were steering failures with these Tesla vehicles that would almost render the entire vehicle inoperable, would become a danger on the roadway. So Reuters goes in, does their due diligence, looks at the internal documents, talks to people that work there. And what they said was, it looks like Tesla’s trying to shift responsibility from themselves and just saying, nope, the drivers, thousands of drivers all screwed up in the same way. So that’s where we’re at with what we know.
Mike Papantonio: You know, this is almost unprecedented. I don’t know if you realize that. Coming from Congress, now they’ve got, Musk has got a big ol’ zero on his back. He’s got a big target on his back. Let me give you the truth. The other side of the story. Faulty hidden defects are American cars, Japanese cars, they’re everywhere. Just some examples that I saw before we came in here where you had unintended acceleration in Toyotas. Killed 300 people. That went on for years. And there were complaint after complaint, went to Congress, went to regulators, they did nothing. Faulty ignition switches that caused the car to shut down and the driver would lose control of the car completely. That was complained about. You had regulators, you had Congress, no word, nothing was done. Okay. So what’s the difference here? Defective tires. The Firestone case. You remember that?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. God.
Mike Papantonio: Do you have any idea how long people, and it was 700 injuries. On the faulty ignition, 300 people died. I mean, we’re talking about far worse than we’re seeing with the Tesla case. But the Democrats at this point hate this guy and they’re going after him. And now this is what he’s faced with. I just think if you’re gonna do it, do it with everybody. Don’t center on Musk. The other one was the, you remember the bucking Bronco? That was, I mean, what, it killed a thousand people.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: 1000 people. And Congress knew about it. Regulators knew about it. The Pinto exploding gas tank, same deal. Plenty of notice what was going on. But Congress did nothing. And now they’re going after him. You gotta play fair. You gotta say, this is good for you and it’s good for everybody, and you can’t just pick favorites.
Farron Cousins: Right. I agree with you a hundred percent on that. And look, I understand Musk, he’s got his political leanings and yeah, he has off the Democrats. And they should be looking at this. But like you say, they ought to be looking at every single one.
Mike Papantonio: Everybody. Exactly.
Farron Cousins: There isn’t a single automaker in the United States that hasn’t, at some point, probably some of them even today, that are covering up significant dangers that eventually are gonna come across your desk here at the law firm. And you’re gonna have to deal with it and see the documents. But, I also wanna point out, by the way, the GM ignition switch, so everybody understands GM saved $2 and 13 cents per vehicle on that ignition switch that killed hundreds of people.
Mike Papantonio: 300 people.
Farron Cousins: For less than $3, is what they saved. But look, we could be looking at something similar with Tesla. It has all the signs of yeah, they probably knew something was screwed up and yeah, this many people could get hurt. It’s what they all do. But if you’re gonna call them in and say, come answer questions, say, oh, by the way, after you, we’ve got GM, Ford, Toyota, everybody coming in after.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly. I mean, play fair. As you know, I’m no big fan of Musk. I’m just saying, look, how many times have you seen us involved with a lawsuit that’s outrageous? I mean, completely crazy. Like the CPAP lawsuit that’s going on right now that we’re handling, that’s the mask that you put on because you have apnea, hell, it’s causing all kinds of lung diseases. So we take that kind of information. We put it in a box. We send it to the right people. Invariably they do nothing about it. Okay. So this bothers me a lot because this is targeting, and when you start targeting and weaponizing the process, that’s all that’s happened here. Whether I like him or not, you know what, doesn’t make any difference. Let’s be fair across the table.
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Farron Cousins: I wanna touch back on something you said because you brought up the issue of IEDs. And when we’re dealing with these terrorism lawsuits, they’re very complicated and it’s very difficult because you’ve gotta be able to prove that the money that came from this bank that went to this individual was used to purchase the materials. And with the IEDs, we’re talking about improvised explosive devices. So they buy bits and pieces here, they buy a few more pieces here and a couple here, and they lay them out almost like landmines. We saw the disaster of landmines during the Vietnam War. And we’re almost back in that era and it’s much more difficult to track these things here is, isn’t it?
Mike Papantonio: Half to two thirds of all Americans that are killed or lose limbs in areas like Iraq or Afghanistan, half of them are from IEDs that were financed by organizations like this. Matter of fact, that’s something Chris has done as he’s put together this really sophisticated way to find out what the story is behind there.
Chris Paulos: Yeah. In terms of Iraq and Afghanistan, we have established that Iran was providing the militant groups in those areas with sophisticated IEDs, with the training to assemble them, with the component parts to assemble them. The sophistication far exceeds what one might think when they hear improvised explosive device. There are particular types of IEDs that are remote controlled, radio detonated, can be detonated from a thousand miles away from a cell phone, and they involve high, very expensive specific types of metal that will melt in the explosion and cause devastating injuries that can target armored vehicles and defeat the most armored vehicles, at least in the US militaries lineup and do so and cause catastrophic injuries. With the difference between a landmine and an IED is a landmine is something that’s passive, that’s laid in the ground and can essentially blow up when anything steps on it or triggers it.
These IEDs are put in a roadway or along a path or a, what we’ll call a choke point in traffic, and those who are using that IED can target specifically the vehicle in a convoy carrying a particular individual that they’re wanting to target. And they have the ability and the training to do that time and time again, and over and over and over, and then change their tactics, techniques, and procedures to address the countermeasures that are put in place. The level of sophistication, not only the individuals that are using those weapons, but the weapons themselves requires extensive infrastructure, which requires extensive money, and then also access to the materials to create it. And that is where these legitimate banks or semi-legitimate companies or front companies come into play in creating the supply chain for organizations like Hamas and Al-Qaeda and the Taliban to, you know, and place these, have access to and place these, and use these, sadly so successfully against our troops.
Mike Papantonio: What happened in Vietnam is they understood that the use of landmines, and we’re coming up on Vietnam Veterans Day, for example, and the use of landmines were so effective. They just, they devastated, devastated American soldiers. So what they did is they took the whole concept of landmine, and they simply put it in, as Chris is talking about, into something that’s an IED. And what the book does, and I think the reason you’ll be interested in the book, is it has a character, he’s a Pararescueman. His name is Michael, and most people don’t even know what a, they’re called PJs. And the PJ is a specially trained special ops soldier. As a matter of fact, they try to find the special ops soldier that is best at independent operation. Started in Korea.
They would have these PJs drop in from 40,000 feet in a HALO dive, and then they’d move into the area to rescue pilots, rescue whoever had to be rescued. But these are independent operators. They’re not like a SEAL team. Most of the time they operate, one or two of them will go into an area and rescue these folks. So in the book, in the series of books, Michael works for Nicholas Deketomis, he works for that law firm. And so he speaks their language and he understands exactly what’s going on with the whole IED story. He understands what’s going on with the financing. He’s the guy who’s kind of the front man in this litigation. And it’s not just litigation. It’s not, we’re not in trial. We’re in a fight for the life of everybody in the law firm by the end of the book.
