Ep 268 - Rudy Giuliani & The Lost Opportunity to Make Them Pay

In 2006, Purdue Pharma was under fire for falsely advertising the addictiveness of its opioid, OxyContin. Many families believed that handcuffs were the only justifiable punishment, and the Department of Justice (DOJ) seemed to agree.

Yet, somehow Giuliani Partners LLC managed to reach a settlement for Purdue Pharma and it’s top three executives. Effectively telling all of Big Pharma that the deaths of thousands of Americans were just the cost of doing business.

However, in August 2019, The Weekly, a New York Times documentary TV series, released an episode profiling a leaked prosecution memo. The memo detailed that government investigators believed Purdue Pharma knew OxyContin was fueling a rise in addiction and had damning evidence to prove it.

Why did this memo take more than a decade to come to light? Had its contents been exposed, would it have mitigated the opioid crisis? Who was behind the decision to settle with the drug manufacturer responsible for igniting our country’s worst health crisis in history?

We’re joined today by Paul Pelletier, the former Deputy Chief of the DOJ’s Fraud Section of Criminal Division, and by returning guests Dave Aronberg, State Attorney of Palm Beach County, and Chris McGreal, award-winning author of American Overdose, and opioid crisis expert.

Together, we explore what really happened with the proposed indictment of Purdue Pharma and their three top-ranking executives, and the lost opportunity to make them pay.

Tune in to our PPT podcast for an inside perspective on NYT’s leaked prosecution memo, and the many unanswered questions left by the 2006 case against Purdue Pharma.