Parents in Connecticut are absolutely irate after an elementary school teacher was spared a jail sentence, even after the former teacher was accused of sexually assaulting students. Also, President Biden is taking on the issue of corporate price gouging, and consumers desperately need some relief. 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: Parents in Connecticut are absolutely irate about an elementary school teacher that was spared a jail sentence even after the former teacher was accused of sexually assaulting students. I looked at this story and I tried to find that there was some reason for all of this break that this guy got. Did you see it?
Farron Cousins: You know, that is the first thing that popped into my mind too, is what actually happened here? Why is he being given this break? So, just so people understand, we’ve got this small town in Connecticut. This individual was an elementary school teacher, started in 1998, 54 years old, been teaching for decades. And the children, the little girls year after year would come in with these complaints, listen, he was touching us inappropriately. He was shoving his crotch in our faces. He was a big hugger, they said, taking lewd photographs of us in adult poses. And the administration did nothing. The fellow teachers that were told about this did nothing. They got indicted. But this guy gets off with zero days in prison.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. So when I look at this story, the thing I do love in Connecticut, what is the Alford exception?
Farron Cousins: Alford plea. Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: The Alford plea. The Alford plea is it’s no plea of guilt. Is no plea of anything. It’s just we’re gonna let you go, basically. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: We’re gonna let you go because we looked at the facts. The facts were pretty overwhelming. He was doing things like touching their breasts. He was doing things like having them sit on his lap, inviting them over to his house. This guy’s a child predator. I mean, there’s no difference.
Farron Cousins: Well, and he had the photographs of these young girls on his computer.
Mike Papantonio: Yes.
Farron Cousins: So, there’s no question. There is no question at all that this is what happened.
Mike Papantonio: So, what do you make of it? Why does a prosecutor say, or a judge, now the judge acted like, I didn’t have any, the judge could have stopped this plea. The judge tried to tell the dad who was really angry about it, no, I can’t do anything about it. This is awful. She could have, she had total discretion to stop the plea. Just so if this story ever gets out, you know this judge had the absolute discretion to say, this is ridiculous. Her argument that, gee, this is shameful, is a ridiculous argument.
Farron Cousins: Well, it’s reminiscent of the Hunter Biden plea deal. The judge in that case said, absolutely not. You’re not gonna.
Mike Papantonio: I’m not gonna allow.
Farron Cousins: So judges can do that in a heartbeat and it’s over. But to me, there’s more to this story. Unfortunately, we don’t have it.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, don’t you like at least the part that the people that were supposed to be, the administration, they were pulled into it too.
Farron Cousins: Yes.
Mike Papantonio:: And they should have been. They should have been prosecuted as well, because apparently they let it go on for years, didn’t do anything about it for years.
Farron Cousins: Right. And they had their warnings. They understood what was going on. It was almost overt with what this man was doing. And so I want, I’m putting out a call to action right here, some good investigative journalist.
Mike Papantonio: I’d like to know this story here.
Farron Cousins: Track this down. Find out who his connections are, if there’s any family tree, if there’s any business going on. There is a reason he was let go with no prison time and there’s gotta be some kind of connection there.
Mike Papantonio: Right now I’m not seeing the connection because there’s not enough in the story. But some journalists needs to take a look at this. When you go as far as saying, well, we’re gonna bring in the administration too, because they overlooked all of this. There’s favors going on when it’s that serious.
Mike Papantonio: President Biden’s taking on the issue of corporate price gouging and consumers desperately need some relief. But the question is whether he’s serious about tackling the issue or is it just a campaign stunt? I don’t know, man. I look at this story and I’m happy about it. I’m happy that Biden said, you know, he’s been talking about inflation, inflation, inflation. He’s been beat to death on inflation. They’re gonna probably, if they win the election, the Republicans win the election, inflation’s gonna be a big part of it. But you know what? He’s been told year after year in his administration, you have something available to you. You have executive orders. You have ways to do price controlling. And now on this very late date, it’s almost too late to me. People aren’t gonna get how important this story is, but pick it up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. He’s got this new task force that he has announced, and the task force, their job is gonna be investigate this price gouging that we already know is happening with these corporations, the grocery store chains, the manufacturers, electronics, all of it. And we know it’s happening, by the way, because they’ve openly admitted it. We sat right here standing in the same spot doing the story of the executives that are on tape saying, well, in times of rapid inflation, we inflate our prices anyway, so that we.
Mike Papantonio: We’ve done that story several times.
Farron Cousins: Exactly. And so they’ve openly admitted it. There is no question about it. But what we’ve got now with this task force, it may be too little too late. And that is why there is a part of me that feels like, I think this is being done for political reasons.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I don’t really care about that. Whether it’s political or not, it’s the right thing to do.
Farron Cousins: It is.
Mike Papantonio:: I’m proud of Biden for doing it. It’s just like everything else right now. He’s playing catch up. And you don’t have time. I mean, I don’t think you have time. I think the last State of the Union speech moved the numbers favorable to him by four points or something like that. But you can’t, it’s gotta be a long game. You don’t have that much time left. And I’m glad to see that he comes up with this and says, yes, we can control prices. We can threaten corporations. We can tell ’em that if you don’t do this, we’re gonna go after your money that’s offshore. If you don’t do this, we’re gonna change your tax code in a way that you’re not gonna like. If you don’t do this, we’re going to investigate and we’re gonna regulate more. There’s all kinds of threats that he had that he’s had the entire time. And while the Democrats have been beat to death, I mean, they have been.
Farron Cousins: Oh, absolutely.
Mike Papantonio: It’s like number, it’s like way, way high in the list of what people, inflation. And he could have controlled the inflation where it came, when fuel went out of control. He had just, it’s an executive order. There’s ways you can do that. But he hasn’t done it. And he’s, and I don’t, it’s hard for me to always blame him when he’s surrounded with advisors that are supposed to be telling him this. He’s, like it or not, he is not getting up every day thinking about how do I improve this problem or that problem. His advisors should be doing that. Right?
Farron Cousins: Right. And look, Elizabeth Warren has been on top of this particular issue for several years now.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Good example.
Farron Cousins: And so it’s not like they didn’t know about it. It’s not like it was something that they just stumbled upon a couple weeks ago. They have known for a very long time. And Elizabeth Warren basically handed them the roadmap and said.
Mike Papantonio: She did.
Farron Cousins: She said, here are the bad guys.
Mike Papantonio: And they ignored her. They ignored her.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Not only did she hand here’s the bad guys, Farron, she says, this is specifically how you deal with it.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: She told him that. She told the administration that three years ago. So now where are they left? They’re left with this late date of doing something that’s very important, that might be one of the best things he’s done as president. And all of a sudden it almost becomes meaningless because you don’t have time to sell it. You don’t have time to even talk about it. People are gonna see this segment, maybe they’re gonna, oh, well that’s good. Or maybe they’re gonna, you’re not gonna see it written about. Corporate media’s not gonna write about this. You know, it’s not blood. It doesn’t sell.
Farron Cousins: Well, what he’s gotta do is not just form the task force and say, I’m done. He has to get out there at the podium and not just talk about the issue. He’s gotta name names.
Mike Papantonio: Yes.
Farron Cousins: And he has got to point fingers. He has gotta say, this guy at this company, this woman at this company. They’re overcharging you x amount of dollars.
Mike Papantonio: Pictures, photos and names. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: I agree with you. It’s what we do on this show. Thanks for joining me, Farron. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all 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 every week corporate media won’t tell you because they’re advertisers, they don’t allow it. They just said, no, we’re gonna pull advertising if you tell this bad story about one of our products that we’re selling, or they’re either, they’re so connected to a political party, they’re too Democrat or Republican, and they can’t tell the story, they can’t color outside the line of the talking points for that political party. We don’t have that problem here. If you followed us, you’d understand that. Hope to 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.
