The Department of Justice has reached a $139 million dollar settlement with the victims of Doctor Larry Nassar. This settlement happened because the FBI repeatedly failed to take action on the numerous complaints they received from gymnasts about Nassar’s abuse. 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: The Department of Justice has reached $139 million settlement with the victims of Dr. Larry Nassar. This settlement happened because the FBI repeatedly, repeatedly failed to take any action whatsoever on the numerous complaints that they received from the gymnast about Nassar’s abuse. They heard it firsthand. They heard the stories firsthand. They had pictures. They had videos. FBI had everything they needed. They had girls lined up saying that this guy is a predator. They did nothing. And you know what? The agent or the agents who failed to do nothing, there were no sanctions. I mean, they got their retirement, they moved on and had they done what they should have done, hundreds, hundreds of people would’ve been protected from this predator.
Farron Cousins: Right. And it’s not just that they went to the FBI one day and the FBI ignored it. This was years of complaints they were making to the FBI, to the Department of Justice, like you said, providing all of this evidence and information. And the FBI did absolutely nothing. They dismissed it. They thought, oh, well these young women, they’re making it up. You know, this guy, obviously can’t do this.
Mike Papantonio: 12 people, oh, they just made it up. 20 people, oh, they just made it up. They had pictures for God’s sakes. They had tangible evidence of what this guy was doing and said, eh, you know, we got other things to do. We’re gonna, whatever that is. I have no idea. But the point to this whole thing is this is a pattern that we see with the FBI and it has to do with, if we look at opioids. Okay. They had tons of information to say that the company’s manufacturing opioids were killing 150 people a day. They had the documents that showed the CEOs that made these decisions. This went on for a decade. FBI did nothing. PFAS, one of the, this chemical that now is in all of our blood, it’s in all of our drinking water. They had all of the information to say, let’s find out who’s doing this. Let’s prosecute, maybe even prosecute the people that are doing this. Zero happened for decades. I mean, we could go on forever. Money washing, terrorist money washing. HSBC caught for money washing, washing money for terrorists and drug cartels. They knew it was going on in the United States too. They did nothing. They just let it roll. Let it ride. And so, one point you say, what the hell do these folks do? I mean, this is the very thing they’re supposed to do, keep predators like that off the street.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And it does make me wonder too, why did they not take action? Why were they trying to protect this guy? Why were they protecting USA Gymnastics? I feel like there’s more to this.
Mike Papantonio: Do you have an answer? Because those are good questions.
Farron Cousins: I really don’t. But there has to be a reason why the FBI did not do this. And I think that’s what needs an investigation. And of course, I think that’s why the DOJ came out with this settlement. Like, oh, okay, we screwed the pooch here. Here’s a bunch of money. Go away. We’re done with this issue. Nobody’s gonna look into it now. We’re not gonna get answers to those questions and we need them because there’s more to this than we know.
Mike Papantonio: Do you think it had to do with the influence of the world gymnastics?
Farron Cousins: It may have it. It may have been, we don’t want to tarnish our reputation heading into an Olympic competition, then we are the focus of all this horrible behavior. Maybe it’s about that image, or maybe it’s something even grosser.
Mike Papantonio: Either way, it’s completely unacceptable and it’s further unacceptable just to say to the guy that dropped the ball, hey, it’s okay. Go into retirement. You’re a good agent. Well, really?
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.
