WASHINGTON — Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) issued the following statement after day one of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s two-day, 14-hour transcribed interview:
“Dr. Fauci’s testimony today uncovered drastic and systemic failures in America’s public health systems. While leading the nation’s COVID-19 response and influencing public narratives, he simultaneously had no idea what was happening under his own jurisdiction at NIAID. Dr. Fauci signed off on all domestic and foreign research grants without reviewing the proposals and admitted that he was unaware if NIAID conducted oversight of the laboratories they fund. Clearly, the American people and the United States government are operating with completely different expectations about the responsibilities of our public health leaders and the accountability of our public health agencies.
It is also concerning that the face of our nation’s response to the world’s worst public health crisis ‘does not recall’ key details about COVID-19 origins and pandemic-era policies. Nearly 1.2 million Americans lost their lives to a potentially preventable pandemic. I look forward to asking Dr. Fauci further questions about mandates, his role in prompting the ‘Proximal Origin’ publication, and his policy positions related to masks and lockdowns. Tomorrow’s testimony will continue the Select Subcommittee’s effort to deliver the answers Americans demand and deserve.”
DR. FAUCI DAY 1 TAKEAWAYS
The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic questioned Dr. Anthony Fauci for seven hours yesterday (Jan 8, 2024) about his role during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Fauci’s testimony uncovered drastic and systemic failures in America’s public health systems.
Dr. Fauci claimed he “did not recall” pertinent COVID-19 information or conversations more than 100 times.
Dr. Fauci profusely defended his previous testimony where he statedthat NIH does not fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan.
He repeatedly played semantics with the definition of gain-of-function in an attempt to avoid conceding that NIH funded this dangerous research.
Dr. Fauci testified that he signed off on every foreign and domestic NIAID grant without reviewing the proposals.
A 2020 email, previously released by the Select Subcommittee, proved Dr. Fauci was aware of dangerous gain-of-function research occurring in Wuhan, China. Today, he backtracked by arguing he should not have stated that as “fact.”
Dr. Fauci was unable to confirm if NIAID has ANY mechanisms to conduct oversight of the foreign laboratories they fund.
Clearly, the American people and the United States government are operating with completely different expectations about the responsibilities of our public health leaders and the accountability of our public health agencies. More accountability coming soon!
The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual confab in Davos, Switzerland is set to kick off next week, and the program is rife with all of the usual suspects. Our aspiring global rulers are set to have a grand time once more calling for our collective enslavement, which of course is necessary for the “greater good.”
The 2024 program is one for the ages. Attendees will watch Pfizer’s Albert Bourla and Open AI’s Sam Altman talk about Artificial Intelligence (AI). They’ll see depopulation advocate Bill “Bugman” Gates advancing the climate hoax. John Kerry will appear on four different stages to discuss the “energy transition.” We will also see Klaus Schwab sit down for a 1 on 1with the second highest ranking Chinese government official.
But one panel in particular sticks out: Preparing for Disease X. The topic is both incredibly vague and incredibly disturbing.
The description for the discussion reads: “With fresh warnings from the World Health Organization that an unknown ‘Disease X’ could result in 20 times more fatalities than the coronavirus pandemic, what novel efforts are needed to prepare healthcare systems for the multiple challenges ahead?”
The panel will feature a high-profile lineup that includes WHO director “Dr” Tedros and the chairman of AstraZeneca.
The concept of a Disease X was adopted by the World Health Organization in 2018. Tedros, Dr Anthony Fauci, Jeremy Farrar of the eugenicist Wellcome Trust, and many high profile individuals on the forefront of Covid hysteria policy have been involved in advancing the Disease X hypothesis over the years.
Now, it’s easy for normal people to dismiss this lunacy. But given the powerful, maniacal minds populating the Davos gathering, it’s worth maintaining a level of situational awareness surrounding these events, as they can often offer some insight into the unguarded mindset of these technocratic tyrants.
“No possibility of a vaccine being available in the first year”
On this topic, it’s worth recalling that another infamous predictive panel was announced at the 2019 WEF Davos conference. That panel concluded with the launch announcement of Event 201.
Event 201 was an amazingly predictive “war game” simulation in which a fictional coronavirus passed from an animal reservoir to humans.
Just weeks before the onset of COVID Mania, some of the most maniacal, power-hungry forces on the planet got together to war-game a “fictional” coronavirus with “no possibility of a vaccine being available in the first year,” warning of a “similar pandemic in the future.”
Event 201 became known for its impeccable timing. Just weeks after the simulation occurred, full-blown pandemic hysteria broke out.
The 15 participants in the Event 201 simulation included an interesting bunch:
George Gao, the director of the Chinese CDC
Hasti Taghi, a vice president for NBC
Avril Haines, the former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency
Chris Elias, a director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Timothy Grant Evans, a former World Health Organization and Rockefeller Foundation official
Lavan Thiru, the director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore
Adrian Thomas, VP at Johnson & Johnson
Brad Connett, the president of Henry Schein, Inc., a major distributor of health care products
Jane Halton, an executive with Australia’s second largest bank
Stephen Redd, a top CDC official
Sofia Borges, a top official at the UN Foundation
Eduardo Martinez, a senior executive at UPS
Matthew Harrington, the COO of Edelman, a marketing and PR firm
Martin Knuchel, a senior director at Lufthansa
Latoya D. Abbott, a senior employee for Marriott International
Of those 15 players, 13 worked in the upper echelons of private organizations or government agencies that would almost immediately witness an exponential monetary benefit or the tremendous absorption of political power.
Will the global ruling class attempt to foment another worldwide hysteria at Davos 2024?
While it might be amusing that the latest victim of a phony police call of a violent crime in progress was extreme-left Billionaire George $oro$ (who probably wasn’t even in the country at the time), “Swatting” is no joke.
George Soros’ posh Southampton estate was swatted over the weekend as the leftist billionaire became the latest high-profile victim of the 911 pranks.
Southampton police said they received the 911 call shortly before 9 p.m. Saturday, with the caller telling cops he had just shot his wife at the ritzy South Shore manse and was threatening to shoot himself — sending officers rushing to the scene.
The report turned out to be bogus, Southampton Police Detective Herman Lamison said Monday.
“Spoke to security, searched the premises. It was [a] negative problem,” one cop responding to the scene reported, according to a recording of police radio traffic obtained by The Post.
Lamison did not identify Soros as the owner of the home, but sources confirmed to The Post that it was indeed the 93-year-old billionaire’s Long Island estate on Old Town Road.
It is not clear if Soros or members of his family were home at the time of the incident.
The Southampton prank was just the latest incident of swatting — phony calls to police reporting crimes at a specific address — targeting high-profile individuals.
On Friday, police in Virginia responded to the home of George Washington University legal scholar Jonathan Turley after a bogus 911 call to Fairfax County police that someone had been shot at the address.
“Yes, I was swatted this evening,” Turley said in a statement. “It is regrettably a manifestation of our age or rage.”
On Christmas Day, police were dispatched to the home of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) following a fake 911 call from a man who said he shot his girlfriend there.
Four other Georgia lawmakers — Republican state Sens. John Albers, Kay Kirkpatrick and Clint Dixon, and Democrat Kim Jackson — were swatted the same day, according to reports.
Another victim of the Christmas Day pranks was upstate New York GOP Rep. Brandon Williams.
On Thursday, Georgia GOP Lt. Gov. Burt Jones was also swatted, with a bogus bomb threat called into police — one day after US Rep. Rick Scott (R-Fla) was the target of another call that sent police rushing to his Naples home.
Among the other recent swatting victims were Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat, and US Rep. Kevin Miller, an Ohio Republican.
Soros has backed dozens of far-left prosecutor candidates across several cities as part of his efforts to overhaul the criminal justice system, including Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, Kim Foxx in Chicago, former DA Kim Gardner in St. Louis and others.
However, Soros’ work to overhaul the criminal justice system extends beyond prosecutors.
In what seems like an “uh-oh” realization that swatting call targets have been almost exclusively conservatives, there has been a sudden uptick in high-profile Democrats being targetted by these calls.
To long-time Disqus conservatives, this scenario sounds suspiciously like the infamous upvote theft bot of a couple of years ago that destroyed commenters’ ability to post on new sites because their ‘Disqus Rep” fell below the threshold of automatically going to pending — or marked as spam. When people started pointing out that all those losing their upvotes were conservatives, suddenly, a few token leftists were hit (and their vote counts were quietly restored soon after). Some conservative posters have had their upvotes restored, but only when an individual begged a Disqus staffer who was somewhat sympathetic to the user’s plight.
But while Disqus’s little dirty trick didn’t harm anyone in the real world, Swatting definitely could. And — sooner or later — it will.
In the interests of transparency, I have had this happen to me, and having a gun pointed at you for no good (ie, legal) reason is NOT conducive to a calm, well-thought-out analysis of the situation. Using one’s wife to hide the gun while standing out of the line of sight escalates an already bad situation.
Sooner or later, someone is going to get seriously injured or killed.
If it’s a conservative “MAGAt,” the story will be shrugged off. But if it happens to be a leftist, all hell will break loose, IMHO.
A Texas teen managed to safely steer her car off the road and save her passengers’ lives after being fatally shot in a road rage incident.
Louise Jean Wilson, 17, along with her boyfriend and a friend, were driving through Houston on Dec. 10 when the incident occurred, the New York Post reported.
According to police, Wilson unintentionally swerved in front of a four-door sedan to avoid getting into an accident on Interstate 45.
“The vehicle that they had cut off accelerated and overtook her on her driver’s side,” Det. Caleb Bowling said during a news conference. That was when the driver of the sedan opened fire.
Wilson pulled her vehicle off to the side of the freeway before succumbing to her injuries. She died at the scene.
“Louise’s last act was to safely pull over, most likely saving the lives of the two [passengers],” Bowling said. “It was a heroic act for her to be able to get that car to the side and stopped with the injuries that she sustained.”
A 17-year-old male passenger was hospitalized with a gunshot wound and released. A second male passenger was not injured.
“Our daughter was just trying to go to the beach to watch the sunrise with her boyfriend on her day off before she had to go back to work again,” said Wilson’s father, Daniel Wilson.
“She ended up dying a hero. She was shot through her heart, and she was still able to safely pull over the car and save people in her car and other people who were driving. She wanted to help people, and she helped them.”
Daniel Wilson also addressed his daughter’s killer.
“Just think about … what you took from this world and what she could have done,” he said. “Lay that on your conscience, whoever did this. Just know you gave an angel, but you took our baby girl.”
“Louise was a great girl, a wonderful soul, a great daughter, granddaughter and sister, and to have her life senselessly taken by a dirtbag — this should not have happened,” Wilson’s uncle, Leo Amoling, told KTRK-TV.
“I know it’s not just happening to us. There is a real crime issue in this country. We just want justice.”
The suspect, described as a black male in his mid-20s, is still at large, according to the Post.
According to Wilson’s obituary, she graduated high school a year early and was “just a few classes shy” of obtaining an associate’s degree. She hoped to work in law enforcement.
“Louise was a caring and gentle soul with a lovely personality that could light up a room,” the obituary said.
“Her life had far reaching impacts that only now we are able to comprehend. She is forever in our hearts and memories. We know she is up there with God singing and dancing in the perfect, peaceful landscape of heaven.”
The CDC’s most recent weekly vaccination update says that “receipt of the COVID-19 vaccine is low across all socio-demographic subgroups and has consistently varied by age, race and ethnicity, poverty status, health insurance status, and urbanicity.” As of December 2, fewer than 18% of adults reported getting the updated COVID-19 vaccine since Sept. 14, and about another 15% of adults said they would “definitely” get vaccinated.
RSV — respiratory syncytial virus infection — is another one of those bugs that poses its most serious risk to the 60-and-over crowd. Although a serious RSV infection might require hospitalization, the uptake rate among the eligible 60-plus cohort is just 16%.
Vaccinations for the ordinary flu are down a bit, too. “Adult vaccination rates for influenza reached their peak for the 2020-2021 cycle,” the Washington Examiner reported on Monday, “with 50.2% of those over 18 getting vaccinated. For the 2022-2023 season, however, only 46.9% of the same population obtained their shot.” Rates are expected to be about the same or lower for the 2023-2024 flu season.
The drop isn’t huge, but the trendline is clear: Americans don’t seem to be all that worried about the flu — and aren’t concerned at all about COVID or RSV.
That’s not for any lack of effort on the part of our public health system.
The CDC began its big vaccination push over two months ago with this tragically hip tweet from CDC director Mandy Cohen.
Fetch? Retch!
Whatever your opinion about the safety or efficacy of this or that vaccine, we can all agree that seeing a 44-year-old medical doctor/public health official try to be hip is painfully cringeworthy. Besides, as any “Mean Girls” fan could tell you, “Stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen! It’s not going to happen!”
Chicago health officials took a more traditional (and much less wince-inducing) approach on Monday, with Dr. Colleen Nash, associate professor of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases at Rush University Medical Center, warning, “We’ve now been lucky enough to kind of live with COVID but still enjoy normal life and activities and things. And that is directly attributable, at least in part, to vaccinations. So I would really encourage people to do that if they haven’t already.”
While reports show that Illinois’ hospitalization rate for COVID is “ticking up,” the actual numbers aren’t anything like 2020, with an additional 1,251 COVID hospital admissions this week statewide. And yet, according to the Chicago Tribune, only about 11% of city residents are fully current on their COVID-19 vaccinations.
The CDC tried on Twitter/X again on Saturday, reminding readers, “‘Tis the season for joy and family. Now is the time to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and flu before you see your loved ones again.”
While the replies were all over the place in tone, this one reasonable-sounding tweet captured the general sentiment.
When vaccination rates are down even for the innocuous (and generally trusted) flu shot, it’s clear that the CDC no longer enjoys the clout it used to with the American public.
On a personal note, I’ve done everything a columnist can do to keep this piece 100% evenhanded. The only strong opinion expressed here was a joking one about Dr. Cohen’s use of “fetch” in her October 4 tweet.
Dr. Maha Almasri was fired from her position as a math tutor for her posts supporting Palestinians. - CNN
Story by By Alaa Elassar, CNN (Arab/Muslim, per CNN)
The Council on American-Islamic Relations has requested the US Department of Education investigate the expulsion of a Palestinian American high school student over pro-Palestinian content his mother posted on social media.
Jad Abuhamda, 15, was expelled on November 19 from the Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. His mother, Dr. Maha Almasri, was fired from her position as a math tutor at the school after she made posts criticizing Israel’s “collective brutality” against Palestinian civilians and children in Gaza during the ongoing war, CAIR said in a Wednesday news release.
The private school issued a statement saying they considered Almasri’s social media posts to be “hateful and incendiary,” which Almasri has denied. “We viewed some of this individual’s posts — including, for example, an image of a soldier pointing a machine gun at an infant inside of an incubator and an image with commentary suggesting that some wanted to roast babies in an oven — as having the possibility of inciting hatred and creating a climate of fear,” Pine Crest School said. “Her behavior was also such that the School believed it could increase the risk of violence in our community and compromise the safety of our students, employees, and families.”
Almasri told CNN her posts were taken out of context and her son has been subjected to wrongful treatment.
CAIR Florida managing attorney Omar Saleh said during a Thursday news conference they have not received a response from the school to their letters requesting more information on why Jad was expelled. The school responded to CNN’s request for comment with a link to its news release.
“For these reasons, the Student Handbook and enrollment agreement make clear that if a parent engages in behavior that is ‘disruptive, intimidating, or overly aggressive’ or ‘interferes … with the School’s … safety procedures, responsibilities, or the accomplishment of its educational purpose or program,’ the School may take the action that it deems necessary to address the situation,” the school statement said.
CNN has independently viewed the social media posts, which discussed the mounting death toll of children in Gaza, the number of explosives dropped on Gaza, and the history of Palestinians who were “violently expelled from Palestine in 1948 to form the state of Israel.”
One of the photos the school alluded to is a cartoon graphic depicting an Israeli soldier pointing a gun at a baby in an incubator, a metaphorical reference to the premature babies at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, whose incubators stopped working when Israeli airstrikes cut off the generator powering the incubators. At least three of the babies died, according to previous CNN reporting.
Almasri says her posts were referring to the mounting humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where in response to Hamas’ October 7 attack that killed 1,200 people, Israel has launched a siege and war that has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, 70% of whom are women and children, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza.
“None of my posts were inciting violence, they were merely shedding light on what was happening, the humanitarian crisis that was happening in Gaza,” Almasri said during a CAIR news conference Thursday. “It didn’t call for hate or violence or any of that. I feel that, again, criticizing a government or a set of people should not lead to any retaliation against that person who’s trying to express that and also take it upon themselves to also punish her child.”
Saleh said the group’s call for an investigation is about the expulsion of Jad, who Saleh says did not say or do anything to warrant the expulsion, as well as what CAIR described as inaccurate accusations regarding Almasri’s social media posts.
Jad, who is in 10th grade, has been unable to attend classes since November 19. The expulsion has interrupted his studies and college preparation, his mother told CNN, adding they now have to find a new school.
“He gets very depressed and withdrawn. He doesn’t know what to do with all this time,” Almasri told CNN. “He misses his friends a lot, he misses the school corridors, he misses everything. He’s trying to be strong, but he feels betrayed. At the end of the day, this is about expelling Jad for nothing he did.”
‘It’s almost like a weight lifted off my chest’ Jad, who was born and raised in Florida and grew up at the school, said he had always hidden his Palestinian identity until he was expelled as a result of his mother’s social media posts.
“Most people at Pine Crest had no idea that I was Palestinian, because I never felt safe to say that I was Palestinian at Pine Crest School,” Jad said. “Now that it’s out, it’s almost like a weight lifted off my chest … Now I feel that I can finally come out as who I am, which is a Palestinian kid who was wrongfully expelled by Pine Crest School.”
“Pine Crest School was my home, is a place where I was very comfortable, since 1st grade, since I was six years old,” Jad said during the news conference as he stood next to his mother.
“The friends I made there became family, even the people who I am not as close with there are still my community. They are the people I’ve seen every day of my life for the past 10 years. To have that taken away from me, for no reason at all, is heartbreaking,” he added. “I didn’t do anything at all.”
A petition started by an anonymous person calling for the school to reinstate Jad garnered more than 31,000 signatures in over two weeks and the family has received “overwhelming” support from community members, Almasri said.
“Think about the other Jads in that school and around,” said Abdullah Jaber, executive director of CAIR-Florida. “Our main concern is suppressing the right of Americans to express what they feel within their heart is to be decent human rights.”
The treatment of pro-Palestinians who speak up, Saleh said, is dangerously “one-sided” and the same discipline is not applied to those who post or make pro-Israeli commentary.
Both CAIR representatives and Almasri denied accusations her social media content condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza incited hatred or violence and instead advocated for the rights of Palestinians.
CAIR has recorded more than 2,171 requests for help and reports of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias in the nine weeks since October 7, including students and faculty being targeted for supporting Palestinian rights.
In Maryland, the advocacy group filed a discrimination complaint on behalf of a Black Muslim, Arab American teacher who was placed on administrative leave for her email signature, which included “from the river to the sea,” a controversial phrase supporting Palestinian rights.
By requesting a DOE investigation into Jad’s expulsion and the accusations made against Almasri based on her posts, CAIR said it hopes to protect other Arabs, Muslims, and pro-Palestinian people from receiving unfair punishment for condemning Israel’s actions.
CNN has reached out to the Department of Education for comment on the request.
“We have to get real. Speech because it’s sympathetic to Palestinians or because it’s critical to Israeli military or because it evokes a sense of conscience for humanity, it doesn’t make it antisemitic, it doesn’t make it anti-Jewish, it’s not disruptive and it’s not inciteful,” Saleh said. “You can wish peace to Israel and say free Palestine at the same time.”
REBUTTAL:
Screenshot from footage taken in Gaza NICU showing a stashed gun hidden in an incubator.
Hospital workers admit: Weapons hidden in NICU incubators intended to treat premature babies.
It would seem that that “paragon” of Journalism (insert LMAO meme here), CNN, is on the same side as this woman. This isn’t surprising; after all, the reporter is also a Muslim. An Egyptian -Palestinian, to be exact.
I couldn’t find the actual cartoons — for some strange reason, nobody has reposted them. Yet, there are at least four major listings for this story.
And isn’t it strange how this arrogant woman thought she could get away with posting libelous cartoons in a conservative state with a large Jewish population? And isn’t it also strange that the boy was “afraid to admit he was Palestinian?
I also have to question the claim: “A petition started by an anonymous person calling for the school to reinstate Jad garnered more than 31,000 signatures in over two weeks…” I would love to know how many of the IP addresses associated with these “signatures” come from outside Florida and how many of them come from OUTSIDE the USA.
Israel has launched a siege and war that has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, 70% of whom are women and children, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza.
After it’s been shown that Hamas has been using hospitals as “Human Shields” for C & C centers and weapons storage, why would anyone with more than two brain cells believe anything they post?
Iranian protesters burn an Israeli flag during an anti-Israel rally at Enqelab-e Eslami (Islamic Revolution) Square. (Sobhan Farajvan via Getty Images)
(Left) Special counsel Jack Smith in Washington on Aug. 1, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) / (Right) Former U.S. President Donald Trump. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)
(Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Pool via Getty Images)
Reported by THE EPOCH TIMES
The special counsel’s office is preempting former President Donald Trump’s appeal of his case to the U.S. Supreme Court by petitioning the high court for a writ certiorari before judgment—an immediate ruling—of whether the former president can rely on his presidential immunity defense.
Special counsel Jack Smith has charged President Trump on four counts regarding his actions to challenge the 2020 election results; President Trump has filed four motions to dismiss the case. Several were rejected by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, and the defense has since appealed the motion to dismiss based on presidential immunity to a federal appeals court.
The prosecutors are asking the Supreme Court “whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin.”
President Trump had asked the district court to pause proceedings pending appeal, noting that he would seek that pause from the appeals court if the district court didn’t grant it. If granted in either court, the legal strategy would certainly throw off the trial schedule.
Prosecutors are now asking the Supreme Court to issue judgment before the appeals court makes a decision.
“This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy,” the special counsel’s team argued in the new filing. “The district court rejected respondent’s claims, correctly recognizing that former Presidents are not above the law and are accountable for their violations of federal criminal law while in office.”
They argue that President Trump’s legal strategy in the appellate court now jeopardizes the March 4, 2024, trial date.
“It is of imperative public importance that respondent’s claims of immunity be resolved by this Court and that respondent’s trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected,” the prosecutors argued.
They claimed that President Trump is “profoundly mistaken” on the law and only the Supreme Court can “definitively resolve” the issues at hand. The court’s granting the writ of certiorari before judgment would “provide the expeditious resolution that this case warrants.”
he former president issued a statement describing the move as a “Hail Mary” on the prosecutor’s part, “by racing to the Supreme Court and attempting to bypass the appellate process.”
He also noted Mr. Smith’s poor record at the high court, which he stated “has not been kind to him, including by handing down a rare unanimous rebuke when the Court overturned him 8-0 in the McDonnell case,” in which Mr. Smith prosecuted former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.
President Trump reiterated his belief that the prosecution is politically motivated.
“There is absolutely no reason to rush this sham to trial except to injure President Trump and tens of millions of his supporters. President Trump will continue to fight for Justice and oppose these authoritarian tactics,” he stated.
Trial Date
The trial on March 4, one day before Super Tuesday Republican primary elections in more than a dozen states, would be the first of the four criminal cases against President Trump.
The 45th president, who has pleaded not guilty to 91 criminal counts, was also facing a May trial date in a federal criminal case in the Southern District of Florida, which is almost certainly going to be postponed as the judge is set to revisit the trial schedule in January.
In Georgia, prosecutors have pushed for an August 2024 trial start, which President Trump’s attorney has argued falls too close to the general election, likely putting jurors in the position of voting for or against him while they attempt to try the case objectively.
President Trump is also facing criminal charges in Manhattan; prosecutors originally set a March 2024 trial date, but the court is set to postpone the case around the schedules of these other criminal cases.
On top of that, President Trump faces several civil lawsuits, one with trial ongoing in New York and another two set to go to trial in mid-January.
Presidential Immunity?
On Dec. 1, a federal appeals court ruled that presidential immunity doesn’t shield President Trump from lawsuits regarding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach and noted that the court wouldn’t be the final authority on the issue.
In November 2022, Mr. Smith was appointed special counsel on issues related to the Capitol breach, just days after President Trump announced his candidacy. This summer, he unsealed the indictment against President Trump alleging criminal conspiracy in his actions to challenge the 2020 results, tying much of the case to Jan. 6, 2021.
U.S. Circuit Judge Sri Srinivasan ruled that President Trump was acting as candidate Trump in much of what he is being sued for and that his actions weren’t official acts of a president.
“When a sitting president running for re-election speaks in a campaign ad or in accepting his political party’s nomination at the party convention, he typically speaks on matters of public concern. Yet he does so in an unofficial, private capacity as office-seeker, not an official capacity as office-holder. And actions taken in an unofficial capacity cannot qualify for official-act immunity,” he wrote, rejecting an appeal filed by President Trump, who is also facing civil lawsuits related to Jan. 6, 2021.
The judge added that the rejection of presidential immunity in this case assumes truth in the plaintiffs’ allegations against him, which will need to play out in district court.
“When these cases move forward in the district court, [President Trump] must be afforded the opportunity to develop his own facts on the immunity question if he desires to show that he took the actions alleged in the complaints in his official capacity as President rather than in his unofficial capacity as a candidate,” he wrote. “At the appropriate time, he can move for summary judgment on his claim of official-act immunity.”
The special counsel’s office argues that President Trump sought to “overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud” and that he conspired with several people outside of office to do so.
They rebutted President Trump’s presidential immunity defense by arguing that a former president doesn’t have the same immunity and that if he did, it “would be narrower than the ‘outer perimeter’ standard” afforded a sitting president.
The defense argued that President Trump has a history of taking allegations of election fraud seriously, pointing to several investigations he approved while in office, and argued that the speech about election fraud during the end of his term fell squarely within the duties of a president. The special counsel frames the situation quite differently, arguing that President Trump was aware of having legitimately lost the election when he made allegedly false claims about election fraud and “stolen” votes.
In the petition to the Supreme Court, they are also arguing that President Trump has been impeached on similar issues and that the immunity argument is “undercut” by the impeachment clause.
The special counsel has argued, and the district court affirmed, that to grant President Trump presidential immunity here would be to put him “above the law.”
If the Supreme Court agrees to issue judgment before the appeals court rules, it may throw off President Trump’s plans to stall the case past the general election.
On Thursday afternoon, The Gateway Pundit was notified by friendly sources on Capitol Hill that our website was being censored by the House network.
A staffer from Congressman Paul Gosar’s office sent the following email to The Gateway Pundit:
Hello Jim,
Wanted to notify you that I have been unable to access the Gateway Pundit on the House network for the past two weeks.
Included in the email was a photo from their computer of the Gateway Pundit censored by the House internet.
TGP Washington DC reporter Jordan Conradson contacted Rep. Gosar’s Communications Director, Anthony Foti, who confirmed that some government-issued computers used by Gosar’s staff displayed the error code seen above upon visiting our site. According to the individual who sent the aforementioned email, this also occurs on his government-issued laptop when connected to his home network.
Additionally, one House IT specialist told Conradson that the firewall installed on the computers blocks webpages that are deemed “unauthorized” by the House Admin Office.
Conradson reached out to the House Administrative Committee on Thursday. We are still awaiting a response.
This is not surprising, as they have also refused to provide Conradson with press credentials to cover Capitol Hill since we applied nearly four months ago in August.
On Friday, Rep. Matt Gaetz confirmed that The Gateway Pundit website was being censored by the House of Representatives in his office too! “If you try to go to the Gateway Pundit, the website is blocked according to House of Representatives policy,” said Gaetz.
Rep. Gaetz spoke about this on his podcast and said he was going to investigate.
Gaetz: The Gateway Pundit, a website that I read; they do breaking news, they do investigative reporting, they do opinion pieces, they publish op-eds. The Gateway Pundit is a great website. It’s a great source for analysis, and information, and opinion. Well, we went back to harvest the clip to show you on this program from the Gateway Pundit, and I have breaking news for you. The United States House of Representatives has blocked access for congressmen and congressional staff to the Gateway Pundit. That’s right. If you try to go to the Gateway Pundit, the website is blocked according to House of Representatives policy. So we’re going to fix that. I don’t know who thought that was an appropriate action. But we’re gonna get to the bottom of it. I’m going to be speaking with the House Administration Committee Chairman [Bryan] Steil, Speaker of the House if necessary. We’re not going to have the House censoring our access to conservative news and to conservative analysis.
It should be noted that The Gateway Pundit is the lead plaintiff in the Missouri-Louisiana v. Biden lawsuit on government censorship of speech in America today. The lawsuit is expected to reach the US Supreme Court early next year.
The Gateway Pundit is a leading conservative website in the United States. The Gateway Pundit has over 2.5 million page views per day and is closing in on nearly one billion page views per year. The Gateway Pundit is one of the most prominent grassroots websites and is supportive of President Trump and the MAGA agenda.
A portent of things to come as the election draws nearer? –TPR
*Ohio has reported 142 cases in one county alone. Massachusetts hasn’t quantified them officially, but one doctor reported it as “a whole lot” of cases.
Experts say a mixture of several seasonal bacterial and viral bugs are hitting at once, putting pressure on hospitals.
A mystery outbreak of pneumonia has hit several parts of China, and now Ohio is the first American location to report an outbreak of the illness, with an ‘extremely high’ number of children being hospitalized.
The strain of pneumonia, now dubbed ‘white lung syndrome,’ has spawned 142 pediatric cases in Warren County since August.
Warren County Health Department said that not only is the number of cases above average, but it also meets the Ohio Department of Health’s definition of an outbreak.
This highlights the two locations where rises in pneumonia cases in children have been reported in the US so far. They are Warren County, Ohio, and East Longmeadow, in Massachusetts
Meanwhile, in western Massachusetts, physicians are seeing ‘a whole lot’ of walking pneumonia, a milder form of the lung condition, which is caused by a mixture of bacterial and viral infections.
Neither outbreak is being caused by a novel pathogen and not all of the pneumonia cases are being caused by the same infection. Experts say a mixture of several seasonal bacterial and viral bugs are hitting at once, putting pressure on hospitals.
SIDE NOTE: A recent ruling by a New York state appeals court effectively upheld the right of state officials to arbitrarily seize and detain pretty much any person they deem necessary.
And, of course, it’s in the name of public safety.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that nationally, cases are not out of the ordinary, but the spread of cases has raised fears that an outbreak can overwhelm American hospitals.
Dr Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, said: ‘I would caution against extrapolating one Ohio county to a country of 330million people.’
But he would not be entirely surprised if ‘some places in the US are above baseline’ this year, as it appears several bacterial and viral infections are rebounding post-Covid.
Officials in Ohio say that an investigation is ‘ongoing,’ but the illness does not look like a new disease, but rather several common infections hitting all at once.
Does anyone else find this suspicious? — TPR
According to the news outlet, so far, patients have tested positive for mycoplasma pneumonia, a bacterial lung infection that is mostly resistant to antibiotics, strep, and normally benign infection, adenovirus.
The ages of the patients range from 8 to 3, and there are several theories as to why children are more susceptible to the illness. Some suggest it is caused by lockdowns that have weakened the immune system or mask-wearing and school closures leaving children vulnerable during seasonal illnesses.
It is reported that bacterial respiratory infections usually flare up every few years, normally as people recover from waves of flu or other viral illnesses.
The Warren County Health District officials said that they believe the pneumonia cases are a large uptick of cases normally seen at one time rather than a new respiratory disease.
Officials also want to remind the public to take necessary precautions to protect their health, as many of us will be gathering with friends and family during the holiday season.
Doctors say the most common symptoms are fever, cough, and fatigue. Hand washing, covering your mouth when you cough, and staying up-to-date on vaccines will help decrease your chance of illness.
According to the news report, the county was first alerted to the increase in illnesses after schools were recording more children off sick than normal.
Ohio is not the only area outside of China to report an outbreak. The Netherlands and Denmark are also reported to have mysterious spikes in ‘walking pneumonia’ cases, most common in younger children.
The above image pictures the lungs during ‘white lung syndrome’ or acute respiratory distress syndrome, which is diagnosed via the white spots or opaque areas appearing in the lungs. The above patient was a 57-year-old man in 2014
It is unclear if any deaths have resulted from the illness and officials have not responded to requests for more information.
In Massachusetts, doctors say the main issue is RSV, a respiratory virus that kills more than 10,000 Americans each year, mostly young children and the elderly.
Dr Adalja believes the pneumonia outbreaks cropping up around the world could be due to the ‘cyclical’ nature of mycoplasma.
Mycoplasma goes through epidemic cycles every few years and that may be what’s occurring globally at the moment.’
He said China may be getting hit by a double-whammy of viral and bacterial infections. China is entering its first winter without pandemic restrictions and is reporting surges in Covid, flu, and RSV as well as mycoplasma.
The US, Canada and Europe — where Covid restrictions were lifted earlier — were hit by massive upswings in those viruses last year.
‘So what’s happening in China makes sense’, Dr Adalja said, adding: ‘Last year we were dominated by so much Covid, flu and RSV when we opened up.’
He said he thinks this year’s winter outbreak will be ‘less severe’ that last year’s, when thousands of children were hospitalized with RSV and flu.
If this is true, why didn’t we hear more about it last year? — TPR
But Dr Adalja admitted that lockdowns have contributed to the emerging global phenomenon.
“When children are born they haven’t experienced any infectious diseases so more of them you have in population so lower threshold for outbreak to start.
“That group of children born provide new people for illnesses. The pandemic allowed the number of these susceptible people to build up over the years.”
Mycoplasma pneumonia normally causes a mild flu-like illness, sometimes called ‘walking pneumonia’. Cases are most common in younger children.
Some antibiotics, such as penicillin, have no effect.
Strep also normally causes a mild illness and tends to leave patients with sore throats. It’s more common among those aged five to 15 years old.
And adenovirus, which has also been detected in patients in Ohio, causes symptoms similar to the common cold.
Dr Scott Roberts, an infectious diseases expert at Yale School of Medicine, Connecticut, said the uptick in cases was likely still being driven by weakened immunity in children.
“This is probably a recurrence of known pathogens that are hitting us a bit harder because of low immunity to them.”
He suggested children’s immune systems could still be suffering from the effects of Covid restrictions which blocked their exposure to ‘good germs’ for building immunity. He also pointed out that immunity wanes over time.
It comes after the Netherlands and Denmark also said they were recording mysterious spikes in pneumonia cases, many of which are being attributed in part to mycoplasma.
China has been recording a surge in childhood cases of pneumonia since May which only came to light LAST MONTH.
Naw, there’s nothing suspicious about this new outbreak, is there? — TPR
Hamas terrorists stand by vehicles as they hand over hostages who were abducted during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel to members of the International Committee of the Red Cross, as part of a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel amid a temporary truce, in an unknown location in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, on Nov. 26, 2023. (Hamas Military Wing/Handout via Reuters)
By Roger L. Simon for EPOCH TIMES 11/27/2023
Yes, it’s sad that Israel must finish off Hamas, no matter what.
Innocent Gazans will die, particularly children.
But they have no choice.
Many of the adults, however, may not be so innocent. They’re people who elected to remain in Gaza under Hamas rule, despite the regime’s brutality equaling the worst in human history, while others sensibly fled.
The horrifying story of Hamas’s methods in overcoming the Palestinian Authority in Gaza in 2007, only two years after the territory was given freely to the Palestinians by Israel for their own rule, is a harrowing narrative worth reading. That they threw each other off 15-story roofs is but one harbinger of the Oct. 7 atrocities including rapes and the parading of victims, the murdering and abducting of babies, and so forth.
That most Arab nations don’t want these people for whom violence is a way of life within their borders is not surprising.
That LGBT folks have joined the pro-Hamas demonstrations without realizing what would happen to them under the terrorist’s rule is the darkest of comedy.
That some supposed conservatives see moral equivalency between Hamas and Israel would be laughable were it not so dangerous. Certainly, it’s a display of massive ignorance.
With the prisoner–hostage swap in progress, the efforts of the left and the United Nations, among others, to push Israel into a permanent cease-fire will undoubtedly redouble.
The U.N. is particularly hypocritical, or worse, in this regard. Little is more repellent than their longtime complicity, through their United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), with Hamas and other extremist organizations. They have literally ignored the use of human shields, the misuse of construction materials for terror tunnels, and similar abhorrent desecrations of human rights for well over a decade for the most malign and selfish of reasons—among them, if there were no more Palestinian refugees there would be no need for a UNRWA.
The U.N.’s other off-shoot, the World Health Organization (WHO) that we know from their obeisance to China during COVID-19, has been curiously silent about the use of hospitals for weapons storage, missile launching, those same tunnels, and even command and control headquarters by Hamas. (The director of Shifa Hospital, the largest medical complex in Gaza, is under interrogation by Israel at this moment about this.)
These are the people who will be clamoring for a cease-fire, the very thing Hamas wants so they can regroup and attack again.
The terrorist organization makes no secret they wish to do this. It’s in the genocidal chant we hear everywhere from Los Angeles to London: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
When I say genocidal, I mean really genocidal. In Paris in the late eighties, just after Hamas was formed, I saw one of their early demonstrations at which they chanted “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas!” in English and French.
Clear enough?
The good news in all this is that Hamas is finally on the run. We can see this, as the Times of Israel has pointed out, from the nature and timing of the prisoner–hostage exchange. Normally, Hamas asks for a far greater imbalance with a huge number of real terrorists released, as in the case of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was kidnapped by Hamas for five years.
Not this time. Hamas, in an unusual hurry for a pause, was willing to exchange for women and young prisoners, and fewer of them.
This is a sign that Hamas, which surprised the Israelis on Oct. 7, has been surprised themselves by the force of the Israeli response. They expected the usual three- or four-day counterattack when the Israelis, under global admonition to be “proportionate,” would relent and all would go back to the status quo ante.
Not this time again. Hamas leadership made a serious miscalculation, and Israel shows no sign of backing off. They have apparently had enough of carping from Western nations. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant made clear on the eve of the temporary truce that the Israel Defense Force will resume fighting “with intensity” for at least two months.
The way things have been going, that would seem sufficient to achieve the fate for Hamas that has already been achieved for its “semblable” ISIS.
It’s hard to know, after that, where things will go for the once-vaunted two-state solution. For some time, the Palestinians haven’t seemed really to want one. In 2007, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered the Palestinian Authority 97 percent of what they said they wanted, and their leader Mahmoud Abbas walked away.
But you never know. Real power, properly applied, has the ability to change minds.
What we really should do is ask how it came to pass that Hamas got to accrue such an incredible and seemingly endless arsenal of weaponry, not to mention the funds for their leadership to enjoy the lifestyle of billionaires in luxury hotel suites in Turkey and Qatar while flying about in private jets?
The answer, alas, to some degree points to us.
Yes, most of those funds came via Iran, aka the “world’s greatest sponsor of terrorism,” with an assist from the aforementioned Qatar.
But where did and does Iran get its money to wreak havoc across the Middle East and potentially beyond?
To be blunt, I recommend asking Barack Obama and Joe Biden. They’re the ones who relaxed sanctions on Iran to the tune of billions and billions.
As for Israel, there’s no such thing as being “proportionate” when it comes to conquering evil.
