A whistleblower against Boeing allegedly took his own life after testifying against the company recently, but his friends and family don’t believe this story at all. Also, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling last week in a pair of cases dealing with public officials blocking users on social media. 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: 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.
Mike Papantonio: 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 is.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
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.
