Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein has been permanently banned from Twitter after publishing hacked documents from the Trump campaign, and now his material is being forbidden on Google and Meta. Plus, disgraced former Senator Bob Menendez is begging the court to toss out his recent felony convictions by claiming that he actually had the right to be corrupt as hell because of a Congressional rule called the “Speech or Debate Clause.” 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: Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein has been permanently banned from Twitter after publishing hacked documents from Trump campaign, and now his material is being forbidden on Google and Meta. Is this gonna be what finally gets the left to care about tech censorship? I love this story. This story to me is so instructive. By the way, Jacobin, do you follow that writer?
Farron Cousins: I have.
Mike Papantonio: I haven’t.
Farron Cousins: I’ve interviewed people from there many years ago on the podcast.
Mike Papantonio: This is brilliant writing.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, they’re great.
Mike Papantonio: It’s brilliant writing. Hugely liberal left wing kind of organization.
Farron Cousins: More of a Bernie Sanders left.
Mike Papantonio: Absolutely. Bernie Sanders left. But they’re really good at what they do. He’s a good writer. But here’s what he says. He says, chickens have come home to roost. Now, what he means by that is during the Hunter Biden years, there was this refusal for Meta and really everybody to say, well, we’re not gonna publish anything that we’re seeing on the laptop issue because it’s been hacked information and we think that it may not be accurate. Well, he comes and says, now this is the same thing. You had the left saying, oh my God, you can’t publish that. You can’t publish that because it’s coming from the left. This is coming from the other side and they’re saying, oh, wait just a second. Meta, how dare you not disclose? Facebook, how dare you not? It’s all of them. Instagram, Meta, Facebook, all of them that have made this decision to say, well, we’re gonna just, if it’s information that we think is hacked, we’re not gonna put it out there. What’s your take on this? I think it’s a good reasoning to tell you the truth.
Farron Cousins: Well, first of all, with the first suspension from Twitter, which is what happened initially, by the way, this is not the first time that Elon Musk has actually personally targeted Ken Klippenstein.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, really? I didn’t know that.
Farron Cousins: He had gone after him multiple different times. I believe this is not the first time he has suspended him, because Klippenstein has been very critical of him, and he is one of the best investigative journalists alive today.
Mike Papantonio: No question. I totally agree.
Farron Cousins: And, so yeah, Ken’s not taking sides here. He’s just reporting on the facts. And he took it upon himself because all these other media outlets said, oh, we’re not gonna touch the Trump materials. And Klippenstein said, oh hell, you are. This is journalism. This is what we do. Whether you like it or you don’t like it, whether it was hacked or not hacked, we have a responsibility to do this, so I’m gonna do it. So permanently suspended, because Twitter says you published information containing personal information, which is not true. He redacted all of it. So it’s total bs. But I appreciate his courage.
Mike Papantonio: Do you see his point though? The point to Jacobin is this is the same thing that we saw with the Hunter Biden laptop.
Farron Cousins: Oh, yes, absolutely.
Mike Papantonio: Deep State comes in and says, don’t publish that. Don’t do that. And then you have all of them fall in line. Everyone, Thread, Meta, Instagram, Facebook, all of them say, well, I’m kinda worried about the influence of the Deep State here. I’m worried about FBI, CIA, NSA, weapons industry saying don’t do this, so we’re not gonna do it.
Farron Cousins: Well, what was weird to me about the Hunter Biden thing, and I agree with this part, is obviously there was a lot of naked pictures. That you can’t do.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, he had prostitutes, he had naked pictures. He was snorting coke. Okay. That’s who he is. I mean, if that’s who he is, you don’t hide it. You don’t say, I’m not gonna allow the American public to see it.
Farron Cousins: Right, because they bought into the whole thing. They said, oh, well, this looks like Russian disinformation, and sure, Facebook says we’re not gonna do it. But they did allow back four years prior to that, 2016, all the Hillary Clinton hacked emails. So I think what we have right now, when you take 2016, 2020 and 2024, right. Whether it’s Hillary, Hunter or Trump’s campaign files. Three different standards from the media, from big tech on everything and this is part of the issue, is that nobody knows how the hell to react to any of this. So all of them overreact to all of it. And that is where we get this censorship.
Mike Papantonio: And you see, censorship is okay with the left, when it’s censorship about something that’s gonna hurt the left. Censorship is okay with the right when it’s something that’s gonna hurt the right. And now this dichotomy here shows how dangerous it is. What’s good for one is good for the other. In this story, hell, it’s an important story. Of course, Hillary’s up there saying, you see, this is what happened. Will she ever frigging go away, where she’s talking about you remember what they did to me? I just want to say, Hillary, please go home. Every time an issue like this comes up, and she’s the one, if you recall, that had Podesta, who was an idiot, the Podesta brothers. How do you lose an election against Trump? How did they take Hillary as a candidate and lose the election against Trump? Well, they did it. And she says, well, it’s because these emails were leaked.
Farron Cousins: Just a point of interest for everybody to understand here. After that hack came out in 2016 and it was published, her poll numbers went up.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, did they?
Farron Cousins: Her poll numbers went up a couple of points after the hack and the publishing of that information. That is not what put the final nail in the coffin of her campaign as she likes to think. It actually, people felt almost sorry for her. So it helped her. But it also helped expose a lot of the corruption from the inside of the DNC, corruption that I don’t think we have gotten rid of yet.
Mike Papantonio: No.
Farron Cousins: But this story to me, expanding beyond Twitter, going into Meta and Google as well Klippenstein says at this point, this is such a broad censorship effort against this guy for materials that didn’t have anything crazy. All it showed basically was that Trump’s campaign did not do a very thorough job of vetting JD Vance.
Mike Papantonio: It was nothing. It was a big nothing burger. Okay. And Klippenstein even in the article said, look, people, you need to understand, I got this. I know this has been hacked material. But his point is, and anybody with a brain, it should be their point, without this kind of material, we would’ve never had the Panama Papers. Right?
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: We never would’ve known that you had all these fat cats all over the world that were skating on taxes while everybody else was paying taxes. We wouldn’t have had the Pentagon Papers never would’ve seen any of that information. Time after time, well, we’re gonna do story on WikiLeaks. You wouldn’t have a vehicle like that that allows us to take a look. See their position and this is what is incensing to me, their position is the American public is so frigging stupid. They’re just hopelessly stupid and they don’t have the intellect to understand all the parts of it. That this, hey, you need to know this is hacked from Russia. This was hacked by Iran. This is up there in front of you. You have to read it and understand that there might be something you want to think about here. But their conclusion is the American public is so helplessly stupid they don’t have the ability to do that. Only the tech geniuses do. But they don’t.
Farron Cousins: And that honestly, that is probably the best point, the best takeaway from all of this. They do this because they think, and maybe to a degree they’re right.
Mike Papantonio: Could be. Well, I’m wondering, are they right? Have we been so dumbed down that you’re always hearing about critical thinkers are a thing of the past. Right? Maybe that’s what they’re talking. Maybe they’re right. What do you think?
Farron Cousins: But these people, the tech people, are just as dumb as the general public. They’re not, they know coding. They know how to make a website. That does not make them geniuses.
Mike Papantonio: Have never read a John Steinbeck novel.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: Have no idea who Kafka is or why he’s significant.
Farron Cousins: They couldn’t tell you how many people are in the House of Representatives.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly.
Farron Cousins: But they’ve got billions of dollars because they made a good website.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. But the American public’s too stupid to process this information.
Farron Cousins: And those people are the ones making that decision and that’s terrifying.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Mike Papantonio: Disgraced former Senator Bob Menendez is begging the court to toss out his recent felony convictions by claiming that he actually had the right to be corrupt. He had the right to steal from people. He had the right to commit bribery. He had the right to put gold bars under his bed and stuff cash in his jackets to hide it. That was his right, Farron. What’s your reaction to that?
Farron Cousins: This, we have seen so many high profile court cases in recent years, everybody from members of Congress to former lawyers and hell, even the former president, this might be the dumbest argument I think I’ve ever seen. And it truly is just dumb. And it shows how desperate he is because he had his lawyers march into court and tell the judge, listen, this guy had a right to take bribes from a foreign country that he then gave favors to because of a little thing called the speech or debate clause. Which means if he is doing research for a pending piece of legislation or even just a future piece of legislation he may introduce, he has the right to do whatever the hell he wants. So they’re trying to expand speech or debate beyond what it was created for and just say everything is legal if our people do it.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. It’s called the official act exception. Right. The official act. He was saying when he was committing bribery, this is my official act. I’m speaking to you in my official act. I’m taking your gold bars and putting them under my bed to hide them as an official act. And under the interpretation of official act, that’s appropriate and you can’t prosecute me. This dirt bag has been prosecuted, what, this is the second time he’s been prosecuted?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: They finally got him this time. This is not gonna be overturned.
Farron Cousins: Well, what’s funny too is that now this speech or debate argument actually runs contrary to what he said during his trial because during his trial, he tried to say, oh, it was all my wife. She did all this. Okay, well, she’s not protected by speech or debate, buddy.
Mike Papantonio: That’s brilliant. In other words, I’m gonna throw my wife under the bus. She did all this, let her go to prison. This guy is such a dirt bag.
Farron Cousins: He is.
Mike Papantonio: And if you look at his history, I’m always talking about this because if you really believe what I’m saying, and you’ll take a look, he’s one of these people that came into politics with nothing. He was a pauper and all of a sudden he starts building his career and obviously we know around him, he’s not only taking lobby money, he’s taking bribery money. And he’s a multimillionaire now because we don’t know how much of that multimillionaire has to do with bribery money. But it’s become the norm now where these nothing, nothing people, I mean, that’s the only way you can describe ’em. Absolute lack of character, have accomplished nothing in their lifetime and all of a sudden some party says, well, let’s put their name up to run. Let’s put Bob Menendez up. You know, he is a loser, but we can make him look like a winner and all of a sudden he’s in politics forever.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
