Justice Department brags about exposing pathetic Russian propaganda

The Justice Department announced last week that it has indicted several individuals who it alleges used Russian government money to spread propaganda in the United States. But even if everything in the indictment is true, those efforts have been tepid at best. Mike Papantonio & Farron Neven discuss more.

Transcription:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Mike Papantonio: The Department of Justice announced that last week they indicted multiple individuals who they allege used Russian government money to spread propaganda in the United States. But even if everything in the indictment is true, these efforts were so lackluster. I was happy to see that Ken Klippenstein, you know what I think of him, is a great writer. He’s just so to the point. But he says, look, he made a comparison. He said, all the money that these two people are accused of using, they were able to generate 2,000 videos. Okay. And the views were 16 million views on the 2,000 videos. He said, if that’s a success, Klippenstein said, I’ll generate 463 million views just doing what I do on my little blog. We’re kind of in the same situation. If we were to generate 16 million views just doing what we do, we’d be out of business.

Farron cousins: Right. And if we had 2,000 videos that only got 16 million views, it’s time to stop. We’re getting 16 million in about a week or two weeks.

Mike Papantonio: Precisely.

Farron cousins: And that’s from 50 videos. So it’s laughable how pathetic the plan was. And just so everyone knows, the podcasters and the people who got paid, none of them were charged. They basically did stupid things without even realizing it. They didn’t ask questions about where the money came from, and technically they didn’t have to. But common sense would say, well, wait a minute, where did you get $10 million? Oh well, they were just happy to get the money. But the two individuals were only charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent.

Mike Papantonio: That’s what I was going to say there. Okay, you had Garland. What a disaster. Garland is right up front, we’ve uncovered the largest spy network ever in America. Well, no, you really didn’t, Garland. You’re making an issue out of something that, yeah, it’s good that we’re paying attention to. But to tell the American public that the Justice Department has actually uncovered this massive conspiracy is a disservice. Because as I hear that, I want to say, you know, Garland, what about prosecuting, if you want to prosecute someone, what about prosecuting the opioid manufacturers who have killed 150 people a day for 10 years? Okay. More people addicted than we can count. They could easily be charged with manslaughter. I don’t think there’s any question about it. Why don’t you do that?

Or Garland, why don’t you address the thousands of people who died from exposure to PFAS, because the manufacturers knew exactly what they were doing. They put it in us, they put it all over the world, and people are dying from it. Why don’t you do something about it? Why don’t you do something about it HSBC or the banks, all the banks that were part of HSBC, that admitted, admitted, signed a document, yeah, we laundered money for terrorists? We laundered money for drug cartels. We laundered money for cartel traders who are involved in human trafficking. Why don’t you do something about that? Why don’t you prosecute them? Instead, every one of those, those three facts that I just gave you, they had all the information and they let them go. Nobody was prosecuted. And yet here we have them acting like this is just revolutionary. We have this massive spying ring that’s going on in the United States. It’s disturbing to me, man.

Farron cousins: And Boeing? Right. Boeing kills hundreds of people. The Justice Department announces this year, uh, we’re going to let them go. They violated the non-procurial agreement that we had. But we’re going to go along with it.

Mike Papantonio: Now, talk about that for a minute. Explain that a little bit, just to show how ridiculous this is. That’s why Klippenstein said, you guys are a bunch of freaks. You’re wasting our time.

Farron cousins: This same Justice Department that had a press conference about this issue, a couple of years ago they made a deal with Boeing after the doors blew off and hundreds of people were killed in crashes. And they said, look, we’re not going to prosecute you. We really, really, really just need you to make these changes. Put these kinds of bolts in. Do this, do the regular safety checks that you weren’t doing. Do that. We’re not going to prosecute you.

Mike Papantonio: And they said, okay, give me the document. We’ll sign it.

Farron cousins: Yeah, Boeing says, yeah, we’ll do that. And then Boeing didn’t do it. The Justice Department comes back and they say, well, you didn’t do what we told you to do and we said we’d prosecute you if you didn’t do it, but we’re still not going to prosecute you. You just give us some money. What was it, a billion dollars maybe? Or no, I think it was a couple hundred million. And now you’re free to go. But on this one, this issue here, and look, I’m not saying I condone what happened at all. This shouldn’t be happening.

Mike Papantonio: No, of course not.

Farron cousins: But the reason these people aren’t being prosecuted is because they didn’t fill out a piece of paper. If they had filled out the paper and said, yes, I’m a foreign agent here. Here’s the money. There’s your piece of paper. That would have been perfectly legal.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I’m just trying to say, if we’re going to call BS, let’s call BS. Okay. And if you really want to do something, Garland, do something about the kind of cases we’re talking about, go after some white collar criminals. They don’t look like criminals to the Justice Department because they’re dressed in Armani suits.

Farron cousins: And they are the people they often worked with in the past.

Mike Papantonio: That’s right. It’s like a revolving door. I don’t know, man. To me, Klippenstein got it. He made a joke out of it, and the column is great. It shows how ridiculous the whole thing is.