America’s Lawyer E93: The company that operated the vessel that recently destroyed a bridge in Baltimore has a history of retaliating against whistleblowers who reported unsafe working conditions aboard their boats. The state of Florida has passed a sweeping new law that restricts social media access to children under the age of 16, but the law might not survive a trip through the courts. And a new report has found that the intelligence community is changing their own intelligence findings to suit whichever political party is controlling The White House. 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. The company that operated the vessel that recently destroyed a bridge in Baltimore has a history of retaliating against whistleblowers who report unsafe working conditions aboard their boats. That’s a story that’s developing as we speak. The state of Florida has passed a sweeping new law that restricts social media access to children under the age of 16, but the law might not survive a trip through the courts. And a new report has found that the intelligence community is changing their own intelligence findings to suit whoever is in charge at the White House. All that and more, it’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
New reports have revealed that the company that operated the vessel that struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, well, they have a history of punishing whistleblowers who point out safety violations by the company. And this investigation continues. We’re probably gonna hear more and more stories about the company’s gross misconduct. I’ve got Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins with me to talk about this. So, Farron, what struck me about this story, okay, I get that there should be no, you know, we represent whistleblowers. I understand that very, very well. I don’t understand what the problem is if an employee says, look, you got problems with the boat and he tells the employer that, and at the same time he tells the Coast Guard. What’s, tell me about your take on this story. Maybe I’m missing something.
Farron Cousins: Well, we’ve got this law called the Siemens Protection Act. And what it says is that, hey, if you’re working on the water, on a boat, whatever it is, you go to the Coast Guard when you have issues with the company rather than going to company management. So it is a bit weird. You have the federal government saying, hey, listen, if you see a problem, don’t go to your boss. You come tell us. And it may have to, it’s a confusing law. And again, like you said, I’m not sure it makes total sense.
Mike Papantonio: It doesn’t.
Farron Cousins: But if we’re trying to rationalize it, it might be because of what’s at stake. Obviously, when you’re in a very large barge or vessel out there, a problem may immediately need a regulator to come in and fix it before the company could. Maybe.
Mike Papantonio: Right. Think about what you just said. We’re saying go to the bureaucracy first before you tell your employer. Yeah. The employer, I guess maybe this was done to protect the potential whistleblower, but the whistleblower has protection anyway, whether they go to the employer and say, look, you got something on barge that’s gonna kill people. And that’s what happened here. Six people were dead. And they had all kinds of problems on this barge. They got fire control problems. They had mechanical problems that were overwhelming. They had seaworthy problems that were overwhelming. So you go to the employer and say, you got these problems, at the same time you go to the Coast Guard. But I’m just not following this when they’re saying, go to the bureaucrats first. Right? Go to the labor department first, especially if it’s something as important and timely as this, it’s kind of exigent kind of problem, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins:: Yeah. And when you are talking about problems like this, obviously the person or or group who’s in an immediate position to be able to fix it would be the company itself. But with this particular whistleblower in question, it wasn’t necessarily about that particular boat. But this whistleblower had told the company, he said, listen, you’ve got problems with the safety features. You’ve got problem with the boats themselves. You got people drinking on the job.
Mike Papantonio: And they didn’t do anything.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: That’s different.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: So that’s the distinction in this story.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And so that’s what is weird about it is you’ve got this law that almost conflicts with common sense.
Mike Papantonio: It does. It totally conflicts because, I get in the end, the employee is paid $700,000 in damages and back wages, which should be. I mean, look, we have handled horrible whistleblower cases where the employer just victimizes whistleblower. But to say, wait, don’t tell the employer, tell the bureaucracy first. That is just a non-starter to me. I just don’t get that logic in this case.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. It is really weird. It’s almost like it doesn’t even give the company the opportunity to fix problems because problems happen. Right? Machinery does break down. Engines do fail. And rather than immediately running to the Coast Guard, it should be, hey.
Mike Papantonio: Fix this.
Farron Cousins: Look, we’ve got some bolts that are starting to come out here, company, let’s take care of this. It’s what we do. It’s part of regular maintenance. But.
Mike Papantonio: In this situation, he did that.
Farron Cousins: Yes, he did.
Mike Papantonio: And he did it. The employer says, okay, okay, okay, we’re gonna take care of it. Nothing happened. Which is, you know, you might expect that every time. But you at least go to the people that have their finger on the pulse that can stop that ship immediately and do something immediately about it. It’s just a bad law. It’s the way it’s written, I think the whistleblower is gonna be protected either way. So I don’t quite understand this.
Farron Cousins: And in this case, the employee did everything right. The company did everything wrong.
Mike Papantonio: Well, that’s right. That right. But this falls on the Siemens Protection Act, 1984 Act, and it almost screams out, go to the bureaucrats first, which is what it’s saying. Go to the bureaucrats first. Don’t, you don’t even have to tell the employer, but the employer is controlling that boat. It makes no sense.
The state of Florida has passed a major new law that limits social media use for children banning popular apps for anyone under the age of 14. But can this law stand up in court? Okay. So here’s what you hear in response to this. It makes, again, I gotta look at it from a constitutional standpoint. They’re saying, oh, this Wasserman, they interviewed some guy named Wasserman about the First Amendment. Yeah. It’s a First Amendment issue. But you begin every analysis by saying, is there a standard where the First Amendment issue can be trumped? Where you can say, yeah, First Amendment’s important, but health, safety and welfare concerns are more important than that. And so for this, to say that this is simply gonna be analyzed from a First Amendment standpoint is absurd. It’s a ridiculous thing for this guy to say. Pick it up from there.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. So what we’ve got in the state of Florida, bipartisan legislation, Democrats and Republicans passed this legislation saying, if you’re under the age of 14, social media apps are off limits. 14 and 15 years old, you do it with parents’ consent, 16 and up, no problem there. So that’s the law and it goes into effect January 1st, 2025. And the critics of the law, which in spirit, I like what the law’s doing because I think it’s necessary. But the critics of it are, like you said, they’re saying, no, it’s a First Amendment issue. But at least, to the only time I’ll probably ever credit the government here in Florida, they’re saying, no, listen, we have a duty to protect, like you say, with the police powers.
Mike Papantonio: Health, safety and welfare, police powers. Right.
Farron Cousins: And we have reports off the charts of children being harmed by these social media apps. You and I have sat here and talked about some of the horrific things happen.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, dozens of stories.
Farron Cousins: So that’s why, listen, I don’t think this is a violation of First Amendment rights when you consider the police powers, and I think they may be going after the wrong group. It’s not the kids. They really should be going after the social media companies themselves. But if we can’t get that at this point, maybe this is the route to go.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I thought the reporter did a terrible job on this story. He focused on one professor, Wasserman, and Wasserman tells the New Times, well, this is all a First amendment. Well, it’s not. Okay. It’s not. Otherwise, how would you even control pornographic material? How would you control voting? How would you control driver’s license? How would you control alcohol or cigarettes? There’s some things that fall squarely within health, safety and welfare. And they fall under something called strict scrutiny. Okay. First Amendment is what you would regard as, when an appellate court looks at it, they look at it with strict scrutiny. The assumption is that this violates the First Amendment. You start there, but you say, wait, is there something that overpowers that? And of course, we wouldn’t have any of these laws. We wouldn’t have cigarettes. We wouldn’t have voting. We wouldn’t have alcohol where we’re driven by age. We’d have none of this. If all you said, or driving, you’d have none of it if you just said, okay, well, let’s look at the First Amendment aspect of something like pornography, or let’s look at the First Amendment of, you can virtually say that anything, you have some First Amendment in your expression, your desire to do something. But it’s just a wrong analysis. I don’t know. I think that this was defeated in Arkansas, wasn’t it?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And Utah’s got one that’s currently going through the courts. But again, they’re staying to the strict First Amendment, yes or no questions. They’re not trying to make the good argument, which is, we have seen the data, we have victims that we could call to come and testify here if you want us to. We have to keep these children safe. And again, the better way to keep them safe is to crack down on the perpetrators and on the social media networks themselves. They’re the ones allowing this to happen. But they have all the power, and we’re not gonna hold them accountable.
Mike Papantonio: It’s just, what bothers me is every knucklehead who thinks that there’s a constitutional protection to anything always being First Amendment, you know, that. And it’s just not true. There’s always a balancing act between what we call a strict scrutiny issue. Might be gender, might be First Amendment, free speech. So all of these, or race, those are when a court gets that, they say, okay, we have to look at this with a presumption that this is going to be a problem from a constitutional. But this Wasserman, it was like a 10th grade analysis. And this article doesn’t even look at the other side and really explore the other side.
Farron Cousins: You know, it is interesting you bring that up, because I think a lot of people think the First Amendment is absolute, steadfast.
Mike Papantonio: All the time. Yeah.
Farron Cousins:: Just total. When I was doing pre-law, I had to take a course for a whole semester, First Amendment freedoms. And the entire course, every, three days a week was only about all of the exceptions
Mike Papantonio: Exactly.
Farron Cousins: To the First Amendment. And that was just one course on that. So.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. So they always, if you notice in these articles, they always call some professor who hasn’t really practiced law at all. They teach some law school, willing to say, well, what about First Amendment? It’s just like that knee jerk reaction This is a case that, I don’t know, man. I think the analysis is a tough call.
A new report’s found that intelligence communities regularly distort their own findings to fit into the political policies of the administration in power. And they’re doing it for both Democrats and Republicans. And they’ve been doing it for generations, haven’t they?
Farron Cousins: Yes, they have.
Mike Papantonio: Pick up this story.
Farron Cousins: So what the folks at The Intercept found via this new RAND study that came out was that it doesn’t matter who was in the White House. And it actually, what they said is it kind of turns the tables on the whole deep state theory, which is the intelligence community’s not necessarily the deep state. It is the person in the White House. Because specifically they looked at both the Trump years and the Obama years, and they found that what the intelligence community actually had, the real intelligence ran counter to what the administration’s narrative of the day was. With Obama, they found all this horrible stuff about Russia, but he was trying to make peace with Moscow, open up relations. So they went to him and said, okay, uh, it’s not that bad. Things are actually pretty good. They left all the real intelligence of the horrible things Putin was doing behind and just told him, hey, they love your policies. You’re doing wonderful. Good job, Mr. President.
Mike Papantonio: And then when they needed it, when Hillary Clinton lost the election, and they had to say, well, God, that’s because of the Russians. They turned all that. But that was driven by the White House, is the point.
Farron Cousins:: Yeah. And with Trump, it was with the Khashoggi murder.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly.
Farron Cousins: He wanted to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia. They had all this intelligence that they murdered Khashoggi
Mike Papantonio: Oh, yeah. Murdered him, dismembered him while the Prince was sitting there watching it on television. And so the agency comes out and says, well, you know, we can’t be sure. We don’t know. The, we don’t know is always the safe haven isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: We don’t know. But we do know this. We know that that soulless, shameless psycho Cheney manipulated the intelligence organizations to verify that, yes, we need to go bomb the hell out of Iraq, that had nothing to do with 9/11. They manipulated that, they manipulated all the agencies and those agencies came to Cheney and Bush at that point and said, well, what is it you want? Well, we want weapons of mass destruction. It was an absolute lie. The agency knew it was a lie. I mean, the articles that are coming out, books that are coming out now, say, yeah, we knew it was a lie. We knew when we showed up at the UN and talked about these tubes, that was all. We knew that. But that is manipulation. That’s the kind of manipulation we’re talking about. And Cheney was able to kill a million people. The soulless freak of a person was able to kill 1 million people by manipulating these gutless wonders at the CIA and the NSA and the FBI. That’s the headline to this story, I think.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And I think it created a bit of a culture change within those agencies, rather than Cheney having to direct them, make your intelligence fit around this, they learned, and the generation that came up after them that did serve in Obama and Trump administrations, they knew, okay, rather than us having to be told to cook the intelligence, let’s cook it first.
Mike Papantonio: Is he still alive, by the way? Is he still? The last time they gave him a pig heart or some kind of mechanical heart, he’s like Darth Vader. Is he still alive?
Farron Cousins: He is.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, my God, what does it take for this guy just to move on? The ugliest story in American history was the product of this very concept in this story. That is the White House manipulating intelligence and a million people, a million deaths because this shameless psychopath freak Cheney took advantage of that and said, yeah, we need to invade Iraq, even though he knew it was an absolute lie.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: A popular heart pump used on cardiovascular patients has now been linked to dozens of deaths and possibly hundreds of injuries. But the FDA refuses to pull the device from the market. No surprise to me. I mean, how many times have we said, yeah, you got an organization that doesn’t work. The FDA is dysfunctional. Now lay the case out. Lay this out and let’s talk about it just a little bit.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This is involving the Impella heart pump, which is a small little device that they implant into the heart of heart patients undergoing surgery. It’s a temporary implant. It does not stay in permanently. And what the FDA has found over and over and over again is that this thing is tearing the walls of the heart. And when that happens, I think it’s what, 80 to 90% fatality rate.
Mike Papantonio: You’ll die. You will die. There’s no question you will die. And there’s, is there an alternative? Yes. There’s something called a balloon pump. They don’t need this thing that they put in the heart. It ends up, as you can imagine, it tears into the artery. Once it tears in the artery, you cannot stop the bleeding there on the operating table.
Farron Cousins: They have minutes to act before its death.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. You are gonna think I’m making this up right now. But you read this story. Viewers are gonna think I’m making this up, but it’s right here in the story. The FDA said, oh, we have the solution. Let’s put somewhere in the warnings that this might happen. This is a warning to the doctor. It’s not a warning to the patient. The warnings are this big. Okay. So the patient’s supposed to say, well, let me see all the warning. No patient does that, especially when they’re under anesthesia and they decide we’re gonna use this thing. This is the mentality of the FDA. They are so owned and operated by the pharmaceutical industry, that it’s beyond belief. And so medical device industry, same thing. And they’re all looking for another job, Farron, they all wanna say, oh yeah, well let’s give these people a pass. Let’s let ’em keep using this thing that’s killed what, 46 people?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: 46 people have died. Other people have barely just barely gotten away with their lives. And they say, well, we’re gonna keep it out there because these, what we call key opinion leaders from Harvard or Yale and Princeton are out there on the speech circuit saying, well, this isn’t so bad. And all you have to do is ask yourself this. There’s already something on the market that prevents this. It’s called the balloon pump. It does exactly what this thing’s supposed to do. Okay. But the FDA says, no, there’s no risk here because we’re gonna warn, somewhere in the warnings is this issue. The patient has no way of knowing that. Has no way of saying, doc, wait a minute. Don’t put this in my heart. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And another thing about it too is the FDA does what they usually do. They say, okay, we know it’s killing people. We’re gonna slap our warning on there. And when the public comes asking about it, we’re gonna say, we need more studies.
Mike Papantonio: Yes.
Farron Cousins: We need more time. And in that time, people will die. That’s what’s happening. And you have cardiovascular surgeons before the warning was put on that have now spoken to the press that said.
Mike Papantonio: We told them it was gonna be.
Farron Cousins: I’m not, I won’t use it because of how dangerous this is.
Mike Papantonio: And we told ’em it was gonna be a problem.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And at the same time, you have these medical whores or science whores that are coming from Harvard and Yale and Princeton. They pay ’em a million dollars and they say, doc, would you go out and talk about how brilliant this is and how important this is? And of course they sign up. Yeah, I’ll be glad to do it for a million dollars because I’m only making a quarter of a million dollars, but I’ll say any thing for a million dollars. That’s what’s happening in that case.
Farron Cousins: Absolutely.
Mike Papantonio: And unfortunately, the FDA’s not gonna fix it because they’re dysfunctional. They don’t, the FDA doesn’t work. And we believe it works, but it doesn’t. Just like the EPA and SEC, doesn’t work.
The latest presidential polls don’t provide any good news for anyone regardless of who you’re supporting for president. In fact, the public seems to favor, there’s no favoritism either way on who’s running, you know, they’re not crazy about Biden. They’re not crazy about Trump. But they add one more factor and that’s third party. Right? Add that into this.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Once you, when you look at the two-way races right now, I think recently Biden’s pulled ahead by a couple points in the overall aggregate. But then you throw in the X factors where you have Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, possibly even Jill Stein, suddenly you got a very real competition taking place here where the public says, oh, good. I don’t have to pick one of the men that’s knocking on the door of 80 years old. I can go to somebody else. And it does, right now, the way the polls are looking, it definitely takes a bigger bite out of Biden’s crowd than it does with Trump’s crowd.
Mike Papantonio: I don’t have to go to somebody who’s certifiably crazy or certifiably on death’s bed. I now have an option. Even though the point is this, it’s a one point difference in favor of Trump, whoever you put in there. When you put a Kennedy, isn’t it two points? And if it’s just Kennedy, it’s two points.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: So, the point being to all that is that the polls are hard to understand right now. You said, well, Biden’s ahead. Well, not in the key states. The key states, he’s having real problems and the swing states is where this is gonna matter. Don’t you think? Tell me if I’m wrong about that.
Farron Cousins: Oh, absolutely. What I’m talking about is just the overall aggregate polling. There was more that came out this morning where he has two to three points, again, nationally. But yeah, you start breaking it down to the swing states and suddenly you’ve got Biden may pull ahead. Like recently he pulled ahead in Pennsylvania by I think 10 points. But another problem we have right now is they’re calling a lot of states swing states that are not swing states. They’re calling Georgia a swing state. That was a fluke. It is a red state. Florida’s a swing state. No, it’s not. Come spend some time down here. You’re gonna realize quickly.
Mike Papantonio: What, we’ve got a million more Republican people signed up in Florida.
Farron Cousins: Right. Like, forget Florida. So you’ve got some weirdness happening there. But we spent a lot of time ahead of the 2020 election and 2016 election talking about these polls almost on a weekly basis. But I think this year we’re dealing with so much uncertainty that I don’t know how much stock I put into any of these. Things could be much worse for Biden than they look, they could be much worse for Trump than they look. They could be better for Bobby than they look. So, who knows?
Mike Papantonio: Well, okay. So Bobby right now is what, 10 points, 10%?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I think that was.
Mike Papantonio: Ross Perot got to as high as 20, but he got to as high as 20 during this period of time. That’s where he really started climbing. The media, of course, has blocked Kennedy out, totally. At least I do remember when Ross Perot could at least get on stage and you would listen to Ross Perot. You’d go, what the hell is he talking about? He’d have charts and all that kinda stuff. But they gave him access. And here the media, they won’t give any of these candidates access. Matter of fact, with Bobby, it goes as far as his mother showing up at the White House, having the whole family in a shot, and I thought about, you know what that’s about, it’s about their need for celebrity access to the White House. That’s what that’s all about. This is your son you’re talking about, and you say, okay, I’m gonna go to the White House with my whole family to support Biden. Great. You know, but if you drill down, it’s about their need for celebrity access to the White House. And it’s really an ugly story. It’s kind of an understory that we’ll do. At this point, the numbers for Bobby, they’re not high enough to do anything but potentially change the election. They can do that. And I think Bobby’s numbers will continue growing. I think he’ll reach Ross Perot’s numbers. But I don’t, and it presents a problem, I think, more for Biden than it does for Trump.
Farron Cousins: Well, there is a big opportunity for Bobby coming up here. You know, we’ve got Donald Trump’s first criminal trial starting soon. And if he gets that conviction, which it’s New York, so I think that’s pretty much.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, of course.
Farron Cousins: It’s gonna happen. But when you look at.
Mike Papantonio: Judges up there.
Farron Cousins: When you look at all the polls, they show that these moderate Republicans say, listen a conviction on anything, and I’m out. And I think at that point, that’s when you see people who say, well, listen, I’m a Republican. I can’t stomach Biden. But there’s another guy. Or maybe, well, I don’t think they would go to Cornel West or Jill Stein.
Mike Papantonio: No, they’re not going to.
Farron Cousins: But that I think is Bobby’s opportunity here.
Mike Papantonio: Could be. I mean, you don’t know. This is such a weird setting for an election. Again, you got crazy guy. You got guy that if he makes through the election, great. But Kamala Harris may be that next one up. So people are thinking about that. That’s what the polls are showing. That’s not me just talking. The polls are clear on that. So all of a sudden Bobby could be a contender.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And I do think in general, wherever you stand, whoever it is you’re supporting, most people on both sides of the aisle are like, man, I’ll vote for my guy, but my God, I wish I didn’t have to.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And that’s no way to hold elections.
Mike Papantonio: Someone, did you tell me or somebody told me, I think Scott Millican, who is one of our producers said that Bobby has become the podcast candidate. Did you see that? Where he is the candidate that, I think Cenk Uygur’s now out for him. Most of the podcasts are heavily going that way. I think that could have an impact too. But it’s just, right now, he can’t get access to media. You know, the corporate media is trying every thing they can to just freeze him out because he’s anti-war. Okay. He’s pro climate. He’s anti corp. He wants the corporations to be responsible when they harm people. And you don’t hear these other guys talking about any of that. So I think he’s got some talking points that the corporate media is afraid to allow him time with. That’s a big problem. 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 subscribe. I’m Mike Papantonio, and this has been America’s Lawyer, where we tell you stories every week that corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers don’t let ’em. Because if they tell the story, the advertisement’s gonna be pulled or their political connections don’t allow for it. They’re either too Republican or too Democrat, and they can’t color outside those lines. Around here, we don’t have that problem, as you watch one of these shows, you say you can understand, we don’t really have sides. We try to call it as we see it. 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.
