[Conscience of a Conservative]

I'm asking how this smears Toyota. The feds didn't raid Toyota, they raided several companies that supply Toyota, on an issue that (on its face) has little to do with Toyota and whose resolution is likely to help Toyota, if anything (collusion between Toyota's suppliers would likely increase, not decrease, Toyota's costs - get rid of the collusion, and you lower the costs).

If you think this is some part of a smear of Toyota, please explain how this is so. What's the FBI/DoJ's angle here?

[mbarker12474]

This will smear Toyota because 10,000 local radio stations and 10,000 local newspapers and hundreds of local TV news stations will have lead paragraphs reading:

“FBI... raid... Toyota... automobile... Toyota... recall... dangerous...Congress... Toyota... hearings... Toyota... acceleration.... Toyota.... problem...”

[chilltherats]

“On its face” is never the case with rats. There’s always an undehanded motive behind their actions. That’s number one. Number two is that, depending on what they find at those suppliers, the next step is jack-booting some more subpoenas only to Toyota. They’re looking for a nexus of collusion and the extent of the kowledge that Toyota had as the alleged deficiencies so they can nail them either from criminal negligence and/or RICO.

They’re going somewhere with this and Toyota is the target, not the suppliers. When the Feds come in with those subpoenas, they’re looking for cooperation in ratting out the target.