America’s Lawyer E90: A whistleblower against Boeing was found dead in his vehicle after testifying against the company last week, and the death was immediately ruled a suicide. But those who knew him said this man would never take his own life – we’ll explain what’s happening. Republican Congressman Ken Buck is leaving Congress early because, as he put it, the place has become too dysfunctional to get any actual work done. And a new report has revealed a tremendous amount of turmoil in President Biden’s staff, and the internal chaos is taking a huge toll. 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. A whistleblower against Boeing was found dead in his vehicle after testifying against the company last week. And the death was immediately ruled a suicide. But those who knew him said, this man would never take his own life. We’ll talk about it. Republican Congressman Ken Buck, well, he’s leaving Congress early because as he put it, the place has become too dysfunctional to get any actual work done. And a new report has revealed a tremendous amount of turmoil in the president’s staff. And the internal chaos has taken a huge toll. All that, it’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
A whistleblower against Boeing allegedly took his own life after testifying that the company recently had made a lot of mistakes. His friends and his family, they don’t believe this story. Something’s definitely wrong about this story. I’ve got Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins with me to talk about it. Farron, we’ve been doing media now together 20 years.
Farron Cousins: 20 years.
Mike Papantonio: 20 years. And we’ve seen these stories and I’ve heard you say from time to time, this is a story made for a movie, isn’t it? Talk about it.
Farron Cousins: Oh, 100%. You have this whistleblower 32 year former employee at Boeing, John Barnett. And Mr. Barnett was testifying, had been working against the company, basically as a whistleblower saying, listen, you’ve got doors flying off their airplanes right now. You’ve got other pieces of planes falling apart in the air. And it’s because they were using faulty materials. They would take the materials he testified from scrap yards, they would take it from junk piles and they knew that it was not up to par, but they’ve stuck it on the planes anyway. And so after telling the investigators this, after cooperating against the company, he’s found dead in his truck in a Holiday Inn parking lot. The day he testified. And the gun was in his hand. His finger was still on the trigger. Uh, but he had somehow still put a bullet through his temple.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Look, call on it. It is.
Farron Cousins: I mean, there’s no way.
Mike Papantonio: If the FBI doesn’t do their job here, and they won’t, by the way, they will not do their job. This has got too big of political ramifications. This goes all the way, all the way up the chain of command. This is something to where, if you look at this guy’s history, there’s never been a sign at all. He’s never had counseling. He’s never said to his wife, gee, I can’t take it anymore. I’m gonna kill. There’s no sign of it at all. But the sign is this, Boeing is under so much pressure right now. There’s never been a time in history, I dunno if you saw this, never a time in aviation, anywhere in the world where you’ve had this many failures by the same company. Now, what they try to say is, well, it’s the subcontractors. Right? Subcontractors aren’t doing their job. Tell the viewers why that’s nonsense.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This guy worked at the Boeing factory in Charleston. And he said, no. What happened was they brought in new teams a couple years ago, shortly before he retired. And these teams were nothing but the good old boys. They all came from the same former factory. They were all buddies, he testified. And so when they came in, the safety and the inspections kind of went out the window, which we have seen, my God, with every industry we’ve ever had to talk about. They bring in their own special guys. No more inspections, no more safety, no more following regulations. And that is exactly, based on what he said, what was taking place here.
Mike Papantonio: It’s hiding by subcontractors. That’s what it is. You say, look, we brought these people in. They didn’t do their job. Well, the subcontractor was set up not to do their job. They’re handpicked trolls that come in. They give Boeing cover. When Boeing is asked a question, why the hell did your windshield shatter? Why did your door fall off? Why did your wheel fall off? Well, you know, we gotta count on subcontractors. This is all, Boeing is making more money right now than they can spend. Okay. The profits are staggering. You know who helped them get there? Mrs. Haley, who just got knocked outta the race, I mean, she’s little Miss Boeing. And if you think about the way that they’ve progressed just in the last 10 years, their profit margins are skyrocketing. And so this man’s been murdered. There’s no question. Now whether Boeing did it, I don’t know, but he’s been murdered. And the point is that you’ll see the Feds aren’t gonna do anything about it.
Farron Cousins: Right. And the media is also not doing anything about this. You can only find this story, I don’t want to necessarily say in the fringe media, but in the independent media for sure. The corporate media is not touching this because they’ll tell you, well, we don’t want to get conspiratorial. No, it’s because you’re about to go to a commercial break and advertise a Boeing jet engine for some reason, acting like we’re gonna go and buy that.
Mike Papantonio: Right. Or a Boeing missile. You know, Boeing shows up, my God, they show up sometimes they’ll go through cycles. Okay. They’ll go through what I call war cycles. Okay, we’re going to go to war. Boeing comes on the air. Why? Because Boeing makes the missiles that go to war, and Boeing wants the network to support ’em in the war. It’s a cycle. If you watch over the years, it’s so predictable. But this is a case that this is a hell of a movie. It’s a hell of a book. It’s just.
Farron Cousins: Well, you got a new book that came out this week, “Suspicious Activity.”
Mike Papantonio: “Suspicious Activity.” This story is not quite as bad as, “Suspicious Activity,” because a lot of people were murdered. But the point is, it’s a story that’s gotta be told. And unfortunately, the Feds aren’t gonna do anything about it. There’s not gonna be a serious investigation here.
The Supreme Court handed down a ruling last week in a pair of cases dealing with public officials blocking users on social media. According to the ruling, public officials cannot block users if they use the account for official announcements. What’s your take?
Farron Cousins: I think this is actually surprisingly a pretty good ruling from the Supreme Court. And like you said, you had these two separate cases and it involved small time local officials. One out in California, one up in Michigan, and they just kind of combined the cases. But these officials were getting real bad with their own constituents calling them out on Facebook and Twitter. So they just said, well, I’m gonna block you, even though what I’m doing is I’m using my account for official business, doing the proclamations, putting out important community information. I’m blocking you because you’re just annoying me at this point. And so the constituents filed suit, they said, well, listen, I know, yes, I’m you off, but I have to have access to this information. You’re violating my constitutional rights. And the court overwhelmingly said, yeah, you can’t do that.
Mike Papantonio: It was a clear, look, why would it even get to the Supreme Court? Right? I mean, why would it even get there? It’s a clear First Amendment issue. It’s the idea of a politician being able to say, there’s some things you can’t say to me. A, I didn’t do my job right. B, something I’m doing is irregular, maybe illegal. You can’t do that. It’s a new policy in America. That’s where this was going because they were using this all over the country in little everything from, as you point out, city commissioners, county commissioners, councils,
Farron Cousins: School boards, everything.
Mike Papantonio: School boards. Well, we don’t like the fact that you called us idiots for some stupid move we make. So rather than fixing the problem, you’re just gonna go away. Right.
Farron Cousins: Right. And what’s so funny about this to me is that here in the state of Florida, we’re kind of trying to go the opposite way. We are trying to go the path where if you call a politician in this state, an idiot, they can now sue you for defamation. So they’re doing the absolute opposite on free speech here in Florida versus the Supreme Court. And what’s great about this too is, I love this, is that you actually had legal scholars on the left and on the right.
Mike Papantonio: Saying how bad it.
Farron Cousins: That both said, this is a good decision. Thank you for finally.
Mike Papantonio: Saying how bad the idea is of blocking out constituents.
Farron Cousins: Right. And the ACLU said, this is great. And this is what we need to have. And I will say the court made a distinction. They said, listen, obviously if you’re a public official, you haven’t always been a public official. So if you have your private Facebook or your private Twitter, and you’re using that just as a regular user, sure, block everybody you want. That’s your right. But if you’re using it either as your official account or you create an official account, you have to leave it open for everybody. And if you don’t wanna have these people getting mad at you, maybe be a better politician.
Mike Papantonio: You know, in Florida, and its not just Florida that’s trying to turn New York Times v Sullivan on its head. That’s what they’re trying to do. The law is very clear. If you’re a public official, you have stepped into a position where people can be extremely critical of you. It has to be malicious intent. That’s how bad it has to be. Something even more than that sometimes. So they’re never gonna change that. But the effort, even the effort, and it’s not just Florida doing it. Other states are looking at, well, you know, I’m a public official and you shouldn’t talk bad to me. Truth is it’s not gonna go anywhere. But again, it’s gonna be another Supreme Court issue. It’s gonna go all the way to the Supreme Court when it shouldn’t.
Farron Cousins: Right. We have very important issues that the court does have to decide. Not that I have faith in anyone on that court. But this is just a waste of time. This should not, this is a Judge Judy Case. Really. That’s what it’s.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Google’s trying to get out of a massive lawsuit from consumers who allege that the company is illegally spying on ’em through their Google Home devices. But the company suffered a serious setback when a judge refused to force the plaintiffs into arbitration. Look, how many times have we talked about this? The Roomba, all of these access points that social media has, is there any question in your mind, if you go home and you tell your wife, you know, I really want a new Chevrolet, that you’ll be covered up with Chevrolet ads within five minutes. You can’t look at that and say, there’s not a problem here. People are listening. And then that material can be sold to other sources. It’s just that one conversation. Just the edge of that conversation can be sold to thousands of different places, both conmen and straight business people. But it’s just gotta be stopped.
Farron Cousins: Right. And sometimes it is harmless. Like you say, if I start talking about Chevrolet, I’m gonna get ads on my social media, but also a week or two down the road, I’m gonna get a flyer from my local Chevrolet dealer because they buy that data and okay, that’s annoying, but it’s harmless to a degree. But what happened in this Google case, and this is why the judge told Google, you’re not escaping trial. This case was being kind of litigated for four years. Four years Google was letting this happen. They were having hearings, filing motions.
Mike Papantonio: Even after it happened. Nothing changed though. Even after the lawsuit. But go ahead.
Farron Cousins: And so Google finally, after four years, they say, hey judge, they can’t even sue us because we gotta go to arbitration because that was part of the agreement. And the judge essentially laughed it out of court saying, you’ve had four years, you’ve wasted your money, you’ve wasted their money, you’ve wasted these lawyers’ time, now telling us that we’re going to arbitration. Hell no, you’re gonna take this to trial. And I will say, right now, the plaintiffs do have an uphill battle.
Mike Papantonio: It’s totally an uphill battle.
Farron Cousins: Because you gotta prove that Google’s devices were listening to you.
Mike Papantonio: Correct.
Farron Cousins: And that Google knew it and did nothing about it. You gotta prove the intent.
Mike Papantonio: The new norm, as you know, I handle cases bigger than that and of course, the new norm is to destroy all, if you have documents, you can prove intent. You can, just the indicia, you put the documents together, the emails, the whatever took place in private meetings. And you have plenty of information to show that yes, they had a plan. Yes, they knew they were gonna make money by getting that information and selling it to somebody else. The problem is that now the whole idea is destroy documents. They’re destroying documents as quickly as they generate ’em right now. There’s some companies that if I email you and I say, look, we got a problem in Toledo, something’s killing, our company’s killing people in Toledo, that will be gone in a nanosecond. Okay. So they’ve got it down to whole science. But when I first started doing these huge cases all the way back to tobacco, actually asbestos, we could tell what the company was doing by looking at their emails and looking at, but they’ve just gotten to the point to where it’s automatic destruction, to prove the kind of intent you’re talking about is difficult.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely. Especially for a company like Google that obviously is very tech savvy. So they don’t have to waste a lot of time. So unfortunately, again, for these plaintiffs, it doesn’t matter how good your lawyers are, and they do have some good lawyers on this case.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, they do.
Farron Cousins: It’s just the fact that Google is not necessarily sloppy. So, I don’t think they’re gonna leave these kind of things lying around with memos printed out saying, hey, we’re spying on people and that’s hilarious.
Mike Papantonio: One place you get a, that’s interesting, most of the time I get my information from third parties. Okay. They may be a subcontractor, they may be somebody not directly associated with the company who doesn’t destroy it. And that’s where you end up getting these great, great bits of information about what the company was up to. But in this case, the other part of it is arbitration. Wow. What a scam. Huh? What a scam. And we used to talk about this when the first idea of arbitration started. It was driven by the Chamber of Commerce. It was driven by associated industry. Let’s take the courtroom away from the plaintiff. Let’s take the courtroom away from the claimant where a jury never hears this. Instead they bring in these cats that are part of corporate. They’re just raised with corporate, all they know is corporate. And most of the time they have some association with very corporation they’re trying to arbitrate for.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely. And if you sign up for a new cell phone service, if you go buy a car, if you basically are signing any kind of contract, buying a house, you’re signing an arbitration agreement. And they’ll quickly say, okay, and here’s your, this arbitration agreement.
Mike Papantonio: And everybody just, yeah, sure.
Farron Cousins: Yep because you’ve already signed 800 things, you’re just ready to get out of there with your car or your new keys. And so you are signing these things. If you’re watching this, you’ve signed one of these and you probably don’t even realize it.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, dozens of them, dozens. Just like going on the internet where have to tag some, you hit a check mark here as arbitration. Judges are starting to say, uh-uh, we’re gonna go to court.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Republican congressman Ken Buck made headlines by announcing his early retirement last week, in his announcement, he blamed the fact that Congress has become completely dysfunctional. And he said he just couldn’t be a part of it anymore. It was pretty telling, I mean, we’ve known this. You and I have talked about how dysfunctional it is. Nothing ever happens. But can you imagine taking your life. Okay. You’re saying, okay, I’m gonna be away from my family for months at a time. I’m gonna be dealing with this problem for months at a time, knowing there’s really never gonna be a resolution. That’s basically what he said.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And it is very telling because we’re having more and more lawmakers, on both sides that have come out just in the last month or two saying, we are not doing anything. Look at what’s happening right now. We’ve still got another budget battle, which means for the, this was the fifth time in 10 months, we’ve been right at the precipice of a government shutdown. We can’t even get the budgets passed. They’re just kicking the can down the road each time, another month or two, five near government shutdowns in 10 months.
Mike Papantonio: Buck is not the first one. You understand, probably in the last year and a half, there’s been three or four of these folks. And they’ve all had the same story. Why am I wasting my life? That’s the headline. Why am I wasting my life in Washington DC with these numb nuts that really don’t want anything to move? Right.
Farron Cousins: Well, and it is so frustrating because these people should be leaving DC saying, wow, I’ve made a difference. I’m proud of my body of work. Instead they’re literally giving up because they look at the people around them and there are, it’s filled with freaks. Let’s be real. We have too many freaks in Congress. And they look at these people and they say, this is a circus. What am I even doing here? And Ken Buck even said, I think this place is dysfunctional. To me it’s important to get in the mix of this election cycle and start talking about the issues that people recognize are such a problem right now. So he says, I’m gonna go and I’m gonna work for an outside organization. Now, I’m willing to bet that outside organization probably offered a pretty big paycheck.
Mike Papantonio: No doubt.
Farron Cousins: But at the same time, at least he’s saying.
Mike Papantonio: Gonna look something like lobbying.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. He’s saying, look, I know we’re not doing anything. I know there are important issues that do need action. And I’m gonna leave. Whether or not he actually does it is one thing. But what he’s saying is true.
Mike Papantonio: I think it’s funny, over the years, I know you’ve been asked, Farron, why don’t you run for politics? Why don’t you run? The truth is, you accomplish so much more by doing what you do every single day.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Several members of Biden’s White House advance team have resigned following an investigation and complaints of verbal harassment and abuse of the staff. This story’s been kicking around a long time. And the first time I read it, I go, yeah, people are just so sensitive. But then, it’s these blast of GD and Fs, you know, the whole F slinging around. And you go, well, maybe there’s something to this. You know, he’s old, he’s tired. He doesn’t want to have any kinda resistance. I think the first time I saw it was when they said to him you’re getting your kicked. The polls are killing you. He went crazy. Right? What do you think of this story?
Farron Cousins: Well, in this particular case, we’re finding out like, yeah, okay, well we know Biden, he’s got a temper behind the scenes. And we’ve seen that throughout his career. But this one is actually, goes even deeper into the staff, into this weird, what’s called the advanced team, which is made up of both White House staffers and campaign staffers. It’s where they strategize on what he’s gonna do in the office versus what he’s gonna do on the campaign. So what we found out, through an investigation, which office was it here, the White House Council’s Office, had to investigate because they were.
Mike Papantonio: Required to investigate.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Because they got so many complaints from these staffers saying that their supervisors, led by a man by the name of Ian Mellul. He was not physically abusing them, but abusing his position, screaming at them, telling them, if you don’t do what I say, I’m going to ruin your life. Making them go pick up his dry cleaning and running his personal errands according to this report. So he resigned before the investigation could go too deep. But this is what bothers me so much about Washington DC because it’s not just about the dysfunction. It is these people.
Mike Papantonio: In a bubble, they’re in a bubble.
Farron Cousins: You got two separate kinds of people that get into work as staffers for members of Congress or for the President. You’ve got the people that for some reason, think they’re gonna make a difference. And those are the hopeful, optimistic, they will be crushed soon enough. But then you have these power hungry little freaks, like this guy who go in there, they get on this power trip and they say, well, I’m in charge of five people. So obviously I am the king of this castle. Go get my dry cleaning. You go get me coffee. I am the king of the Biden White House.
Mike Papantonio: Isn’t the Biden White House the kinder, gentler White House? I mean, isn’t that kinda, wasn’t that supposed to be the deal?
Farron Cousins: See, that’s the thing is it never actually works out that way because you have too many of these power hungry weirdos that latch themselves onto the Democrats. They latch onto the Republicans and they help destroy things from the inside out.
Mike Papantonio: Republicans just as bad. It is, you hit it on the head. It is this power trip. Right. They really think, they really think that what they do really matters. They really think that what they’re set out to do is gonna have a big impact. It most of time has zero impact. But the criticism where you see with Biden, I mean, the first time I saw it, I think was the Anita Hill hearings.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I saw a side of him, I’m going, what the hell? Him attacking this woman who has been, Clarence Thomas had clearly victimized this woman. There wasn’t a story here that she’s making up. And Biden jumps on the train. Anita Hill this, Anita Hill that. Basically stands up and starts making these speeches about what a, how awful she is. She was just there trying to protect herself and try and tell the story that Clarence Thomas had tried to, was making all kinds of advances to her. I’ve never seen anything like it. But then you start, and then I think he disappeared at that point. But now you’re hearing these stories again. And it’s not just him, it’s his entire staff that you’re hearing stuff like that.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. You see the dysfunction decaying the administration from the inside out. And that is one thing, look, we get it. These people, especially, he’s old, he’s crotchety, he’s mad sometimes, and sometimes he’s eating ice cream and he is happy. But if you can’t get good enough people in your, as your staffers, then you’re going to have this dysfunction. And we saw it a lot and I talked about it a lot during the Trump administration. That’s when things boil over and it becomes a massive story. And it’s because you picked bad people, you did this, you are ultimately responsible.
Mike Papantonio: It all flows from the top. It all flows from the top.
Farron Cousins: And we just don’t have people in DC, again, left or right that are picking good enough staffers to keep things running. And they do think they’re too important too.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. They don’t pay ’em anything. They have a sense of importance. They’re in a bubble that is so weird, where they really do believe that what they do really does matter and they’re just passing through. And there’s, you know, this was awful during the Trump administration too. We did a story on this on the Trump administration. It was the same kind of thing. All the way from Trump down to his staff just absolutely abusing people as if this is the new norm. Feed him more ice cream, maybe that’s gonna help. Thank you for joining me.
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’re subscribed. I’m Mike Papantonio and this has been America’s Lawyer where we tell you stories that the corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers won’t let ’em tell the stories. Advertisers are gonna say, I’m gonna pull our money if you tell this story. Or their political connections are so Democrat or so Republican that they can’t color outside the lines at all. As you can tell, we don’t have that problem around here. We’ll always color outside the lines and call balls and strikes. Hopefully we’ll see you next time.
Suspicious Activity: That it had helped dirty money flow through its branches around the world, including at least 800. Plaintiffs allege that the defendants provided money and medical goods to terrorist groups, Hezbollah and Jaysh al-Adl. This is a well organized business for these individuals that carry out these attacks. Terrorism is a business and they run it like a business. They knew about what was going on for a decade. They absolutely, absolutely no question about it knew that HSBC was washing money. They had every reason to understand it was for terrorism and it was for drug cartels. Took no action whatsoever.
These banks are involved, their accounts are connected, and they’re using them to mask the transactions. The more complicated they can make the transactions, the more distance they could put between the bad guys and a seemingly legitimate purpose of these funds. They pay $1.9 billion, which is a drop in the bucket compared to what they’ve made. And nobody goes to prison. These CEOs, these bankers that made this decision, they’re safe at home. They know what they’ve done. They know it’s resulted in the death of Americans, contractors and soldiers, not just hundreds but thousands. And we look the other way because they don’t look like criminals. The die cast, the people that are responsible for it, are on Wall Street. And they don’t look like criminals. It’s almost a suspension of disbelief. Sometimes I’ll have people call me and say, is this, is this real? Do they really get away with this? Yeah, they do.
