Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has taken a strong stance, announcing an investigation under the Missouri Human Rights Act to uphold the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.
“My office is demanding accountability after Kansas City doxxed Harrison Butker last night for daring to express his religious beliefs,” AG Bailey announced.
“I will enforce the Missouri Human Rights Act to ensure Missourians are not targeted for their free exercise of religion,” he added.
Cancer Surgeon Drops Ivermectin Bombshell — “I’m a Cancer surgeon, we don’t do parasites,”
Do you remember that drug that the MSM and government officials with ties to drug companies producing gene therapy shots derided as a “horse dewormer”?
From articles in The Vigilant Fox and The Epoch Times
“I was as astonished as anyone might be that ivermectin has potential as an anti-cancer agent,” says cancer surgeon Dr. Kathleen Ruddy.
She’s observed multiple cases where patients with severe, late-stage cancer started to make a turn for the better after taking ivermectin.
One patient with stage four prostate cancer tried all the traditional protocols like chemotherapy and radiation before being told that there was nothing left that his doctors could do. He started taking ivermectin as a last resort. In a few short months, he had made a stunning recovery.
Within six months, the metastatic lesions began to disappear, and in less than a year, “he was out dancing for four hours” three nights per week, according to Dr. Ruddy.
A similar scenario unfolded for another man named Eddie. He was also in bad shape.
Eddie was diagnosed with two unresectable esophageal tumors that surgeons wouldn’t go near. He was a smoker, couldn’t swallow, and had lost 40 pounds in a year and a half.
“Within a couple of weeks, he sounded stronger. He could swallow. He had gained six pounds. His voice was better,” reported Dr. Ruddy.
Several weeks later, Dr. Ruddy told Eddie, “You need to get a scan.”
Guess what happened?
“We got the scan. No tumors. Gone. Gone. The problem was that he had sold his fishing boat. That was the biggest problem. He was getting better. His tumor was gone. Now he’s got to buy another fishing boat … I was like, ‘Well, now, that’s interesting.’”
There was also a third case, explained Dr. Ruddy.
After observing several cases like this, Dr. Ruddy launched a multicenter observational study on how repurposed drugs like ivermectin impact cancer survival rates.
Why would an anti-parasitic medication like ivermectin work on cancer? Are these isolated cases, or are they indicative of a major breakthrough? She’s on a mission to find out.
Paul Mann and Dr. Kathleen Ruddy at a FLCCC Alliance conference. Mann contacted Dr. Ruddy when traditional cancer treatments had been exhausted for his case of metastatic prostate cancer. Ivermectin brought him back from the brink. (Photo by Mary Beth Pfeiffer)
CNN host Fareed Zakaria said on this week’s broadcast of “GPS Sunday” that the criminal charges brought against former President Donald Trump in New York City were politically motivated.
Views: 29
CNN analysist gets it right. NY City prosecutors are politically motivated against Trump. Not often when we see the extremists on the left call an Ace an Ace, but one dude at CNN got it right.
Many Americans see this as a way to keep Trump off the ballot and hamper him in his bid to become president again.
“This happens to be true. In my opinion, I doubt the New York indictment would have been brought against a defendant whose name was not Donald Trump. A majority of Americans are skeptical that Trump will be able to get a fair trial according to a CNN poll. ” CNN host Fareed Zakaria said.
Jack Smith, special counsel: Opposed releasing files on the handling of Trump's documents case.
AP
Views: 25
Documents Reveal Biden WH Worked With Archives on Trump Case.
By Julie Kelly, RealClearInvestigations May 2, 2024
Jack Smith, special counsel: Opposed releasing files on the handling of Trump’s documents case.
AP
Top Biden administration officials worked with the National Archives to develop Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against Donald Trump involving the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified material, according to recently unsealed court documents in the case pending in southern Florida.
More than 300 pages of newly unredacted exhibits, containing emails and other correspondence related to the early stages of the hunt for presidential papers, challenge public statements by Joe Biden about what he knew and when he knew it regarding the case against his political rival.
Jonathan Su, White House lawyer: In regular touch with National Archives.
LinkedIn
The new disclosures indicate the Department of Justice was in touch with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) during much of 2021, undermining the DOJ’s claims that it became involved in the matter only after the Archives sent it a criminal referral on February 9, 2022, based on the findings of records with “classified markings” in 15 boxes of materials Trump gave to the Archives a month prior.
The court exhibits, which were compiled by Trump’s defense lawyers and kept under seal until last week, also show that Deputy White House Counsel Jonathan Su regularly communicated with Archive officials.
Although Biden himself is not mentioned in the exhibits, the active participation of Su and other high-ranking White House officials raises questions about whether Biden was forthright when he told “60 Minutes” he wasn’t involved in the investigation.
“I have not asked for the specifics of those documents,” Biden told Scott Pelley in the Sept. 17 broadcast, “because I don’t want to get myself in the middle of whether or not the Justice Department should move or not move on certain actions they could take. I agreed I would not tell them what to do and not, in fact, engage in telling them how to prosecute or not.”
Trump’s lawyers first filed the heavily redacted material in a January motion, under a standing protective order issued by the court to initially conceal potentially sensitive information. His team then asked U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over the matter in southern Florida, to remove many of those redactions based on her review.
Aileen Cannon, presiding judge: Unseal the files, she ruled..
Southern District of Florida/Wikimedia
A protracted battle ensued as Smith fought to keep large portions of the motion and accompanying exhibits from the public. Smith told Cannon that disclosing the material would jeopardize the investigation and expose potential witnesses and government employees to “significant and immediate risks of threats, intimidation, and harassment.”
But Cannon, arguing the need for public transparency, authorized the unsealing of the files, which were posted in mostly unredacted form on April 22. A comparison of the redacted and unredacted material shows the Archives acted in concert with several Biden administration agencies to build the case — coordination that included the DOJ, the Biden White House, and the intelligence community.
The Trump case prompted revelations that both Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence had also retained classified documents – in Biden’s case for decades, stretching back to his time in the Senate. But while the Archives’ outreach to Biden and Pence consisted of requests, the agency took a more assertive stance with Trump.
Gary Stern, National Archives lawyer: Some two dozen boxes of files missing.
National Archives
Within weeks of Trump’s leaving office in 2021, employees with Biden’s Office of Records Management and the Archives began coordinated demands to Trump’s transition team, including former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
Gary Stern, the Archives general counsel, noting “several conversations” with records office employees to discuss “concerns” about material in Trump’s possession, emailed Trump’s team in May 2021 and asked them to account for “roughly two dozen boxes of original Presidential records [that] have not been transferred to NARA.”
Stern did not specify the files the Archives wanted beyond “original correspondence between President Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jung-un” and “the letter that President Obama left for President Trump on his first day in office.” An unsealed FBI report indicated the Archives also sought the so-called “Sharpiegate” map of Hurricane Dorian that the former president used during a 2018 televised briefing on the track of the storm.
Despite Trump’s cooperation, David Ferriero, the national archivist appointed by Barack Obama in 2009, warned the transition team a month later in June 2021 that he was running “out of patience.”
Before-and-after illustration 1: Unredactions on the National Archives’ early and aggressive focus.
Southern District of Florida
By August 2021, Ferriero and Stern were in contact with DOJ officials and at least one White House attorney to develop what initially appeared to be a records destruction case against Trump. According to White House visitor logs, Stern met with Su on August 12 at the White House.
David Ferriero, national archivist: In touch with Justice Department.
National Archives and Records Administration/Wikimedia
From that point on, the collaboration between the White House and Archives accelerated. On Aug. 30, 2021, Ferriero, making unfounded accusations that 24 boxes of materials were missing, warned Trump’s team, “At this point, I am assuming [the boxes] have been destroyed. In which case, I am obligated to report it to the Hill, the DOJ, and the White House.”
A Trump staffer whose name remains redacted responded, “To my knowledge, nothing has been destroyed.”
The archives, with apparent guidance from top White House lawyers, pressed forward. On Sept. 1, Stern sent an email to Ferriero and deputy archivist Debra Wall with the subject line, “Draft Letter to AG re Missing Trump Records.” In the Sept. 1, 2021 email, Stern disclosed that he already had “reached out to DOJ counsel about this issue,” and that “WH Counsel is now aware of the issue.”
An attachment to the email included a draft letter from Ferriero to Attorney General Merrick Garland to notify him that presidential records “may have been unlawfully removed from U.S. government custody or possibly destroyed.”
On Sept. 2, presumably with the draft letter in hand, Ferriero met with White House Counsel Dana Remus in her office, according to visitor logs. The draft letter was not sent as the Archives and White House continued to advance the case behind the scenes.
.Before-and-after illustration 2: Unredactions suggest early coordination with the White House and DOJ.
Southern District of Florida
On Sept. 9, 2021, both Ferriero and Stern met again with Remus and possibly White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain. (A Sept. 8, 2021, email from Stern referred to a meeting beforehand with “Ron and Dana,” possibly referencing Klain.) The same email indicated plans to also meet with Su.
Dana Remus, White House counsel: Met with national achivist Ferriero in her office.
White House/Wikipedia
An Oct. 2021 letter to Ferriero from Remus referred to a “notification on September 8” related to the January 6 Select Committee’s request for Trump’s records. In the letter, Remus denied Trump’s claims of privilege in preventing the committee from early access to his papers.
But the email chains do not reflect any mention of the January 6 Committee’s demands; to the contrary, emails between the White House and Archives repeatedly reference the “Trump boxes.”
In fact, a Sept. 15 email disclosed that Stern spoke to Su to “get him up to speed on the issue and the dispute whether there are 12 or 24 missing boxes.” A few weeks later, Stern told his colleagues that “WHCO [White House counsel] is ready to set up a call to discuss the Trump boxes.”
Before-and-after illustration 3: Unredactions on cooperation between the Archives and White House counsel.
Southern District of Florida
On Jan. 18, 2022, following roughly seven months of negotiations, Trump’s team delivered 15 boxes to the Archives. In a matter of hours, the Archives’ White House liaison director said he conducted what he described in an email to Ferriero, Wall, and three undisclosed recipients as a “high level overview” of the contents.
Lisa Monaco, deputy attorney general: “Instructed” National Archives lawyer Stern on how to proceed.
Department of Justice
While admitting that most of the material consisted of “newspapers, magazines, and printed news articles,” the official claimed the boxes contained “lots of classified records.”
That assessment triggered deeper involvement by the DOJ. An unsealed FBI interview with an Archives official indicated that on Jan. 22 Su directed Stern to contact the office of Lisa Monaco, the current deputy attorney general and a longtime former adviser to Obama, to lay the groundwork for a criminal referral. It would represent the first time the Archives had ever sent a referral to the DOJ asking for an investigation into the retention of classified records.
Two days later, Monaco’s office “instructed” Stern on how to proceed. For guidance as to how a criminal investigation would proceed, two Monaco associates told Stern to notify the inspectors general for both the Archives and the intelligence community as well as DOJ National Security Division Chief Jay Bratt, now the lead prosecutor for Jack Smith in the classified documents case, and the chief of the DOJ’s public integrity unit.
According to the unredacted defense motion, Stern followed the DOJ’s guidance and sent information about the 15 boxes to the Archives’ inspector general, who then notified the intelligence community’s inspector general about a “very high level potential spillage and records management issue.”
The email chain then made its way to Thomas Windom, a prosecutor now tasked to Smith’s team on the Jan. 6 case against Trump, on Feb. 1. A criminal referral was officially sent to the DOJ on Feb. 9.
Two months after the archives received Trump’s boxes, which he produced voluntarily, the FBI opened on March 30, 2022, what it named the “Plasmic Echo” investigation, according to an unsealed FBI document. The probe centered on the “mishandling of classified or national defense information.”
Before-and-after illustration 4: Unredactions on top-level DOJ involvement before receiving criminal referral.
Southern District of Florida
A grand jury and the FBI summoned Mar-a-Lago employees to testify. In May 2022, at the same time Biden officials were scouring Biden-related locations including the Penn-Biden Center in Washington for classified documents in advance of a potential GOP investigation into the same matter if Republicans won the House, the DOJ issued a subpoena for more classified records.
Not satisfied with the result – that Trump’s lawyers produced 38 more files to investigators in June 2022 – Garland authorized and the FBI executed a nine-hour raid of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022. After seizing more than 13,000 pieces of evidence, prosecutors claimed agents found another 102 records with classified markings.
In June 2023, Smith, appointed in November 2022 to take over the existing investigation, charged Trump with 32 counts of “willfully” retaining national defense information, representing a shift from the premise of the original investigation into more serious Espionage Act crimes. (Visitor logs show that Stern met with Biden’s special counsel Richard Sauber at the White House the day before Smith announced the indictment.)
Smith has also indicted Waltine Nauta, Trump’s personal aide, with obstruction, for moving boxes within Mar-a-Lago in an alleged attempt to conceal materials from investigators, and another Mar-a-Lago employee, Carlos DeOlivera, for allegedly attempting to erase security video at the property. All have pleaded not guilty.
Another Special Counsel, Robert Hur, was subsequently named to investigate Biden’s retention of classified material, dating as far back as 1977. Although Hur reported that Biden had willfully retained state secrets in unsecured locations and illegally shared them with a ghostwriter, he concluded that Biden should not be prosecuted for these violations.
Trump and his co-defendants have filed motions to dismiss based on selective and vindictive prosecution; Cannon has not yet ruled on those motions.
A May 2024 trial date in Florida has been postponed in light of Trump’s other legal entanglements, which the former president has described as a partisan witch hunt to interfere in the 2024 election.
The “Right Man” And The Fear Of Losing Face in Politics
RE: Biden, Pelosi, Jack Smith, Engoron, Letitia James, et al.
Biden joins an elite class.
These excerpts are from Colin Wilson‘s A Criminal History Of Mankind (1984).
Here Wilson discusses the interesting psychological concept of the “Right Man”, which might in other uses also be called the “Dominant Male” or the “Alpha Male”, though we are, of course, speaking here about the negative extremes in behaviour of this human type, not just ordinary dominance or leadership.
The “Right Men” can be domestic household tyrants terrorizing their families but they can be found in all fields of life: in business, politics, art, culture. Everyone must have encountered one: a dominating boss, school headmaster or teacher, army officer, father, son, boyfriend, bully.
Essential here is that the “Right Man” must always have his way and is afraid of losing face above all (“How dare you talk to me this way?”): anything that might be an indication of his infallibility or erroneous ways, something that he can never admit.
And if things don’t exactly go his way, he may scare people into submission by breaking into outbursts of rage or downright violence. He may demand absolute faithfulness from his woman but “play around” himself, since as a God-like “Right Man” this is his divine prerogative (he thinks). Colin Wilson also points out that there are “Right Women” too, so this is not exclusively male behaviour.
“The notion of ‘losing face’ suggests an interesting alternative line of thought. It is obviously connected, for example, with the cruelty of Himmler and Stalin when their absolute authority was questioned. They were both men with a touchy sense of self-esteem, so that their response to any suspected insult was vindictive rage. (Sound familiar? — TPR) Another characteristic of both men was a conviction they they were always right, and a total inability to admit that they might ever be wrong.”
“Himmlers and Stalins are, fortunately, rare; but the type is surprisingly common. The credit for recognising this goes to A.E. Van Vogt who is also the author of a number of brilliant psychological studies. Van Vogt’s concept of the ‘Right Man’ or ‘violent man’ is so important to the understanding of criminality that it deserves to be considered at length…”
[…]
“In 1954, Van Vogt began work on a war novel called The Violent Man, which was set in a Chinese prison camp. The commandant of the camp is one of those savagely authoritarian figures who would instantly, and without hesitation, order the execution of anyone who challenges his authority. Van Vogt was creating the type from observation of men like Hitler and Stalin. And, as he thought about the murderous behaviour of the commandant, he found himself wondering: ‘What could motivate a man like that?’ Why is it that some men believe that anyone who contradicts them is either dishonest or downright wicked? Do they really believe, in their heart of hearts, that they are gods who are incapable of being fallible? If so are, are they in some sense insane, like a man who thinks he is Julius Caesar?”
“Looking around for examples, it struck Van Vogt that male authoritarian behaviour is far too commonplace to be regarded as insanity. […] [For example,] marriage seems to bring out the ‘authoritarian’ personality in many males, according to Van Vogt’s observation.”
[…]
“… ‘the violent man’ or the ‘Right Man’ […] is a man driven by a manic need for self-esteem — to feel he is a ‘somebody’. He is obsessed by the question of ‘losing face’, so will never, under any circumstances, admit that he might be in the wrong.”
[…]
“Equally interesting is the wild, insane jealousy. Most of us are subject to jealousy, since the notion that someone we care about prefers someone else is an assault on our amour propre. But the Right Man, whose self-esteem is like a constantly festering sore spot, fliers into a frenzy at the thought, and becomes capable of murder.”
“Van Vogt points out that the Right Man is an ‘idealist’ — that is, he lives in his own mental world and does his best to ignore aspects of reality that conflict with it. Like the Communists’ rewriting of history, reality can always be ‘adjusted’ later to fit his glorified picture of himself. In his mental world, women are delightful, adoring, faithful creatures who wait patiently for the right man — in both senses of the word — before they surrender their virginity. He is living in a world of adolescent fantasy. No doubt there was something gentle and submissive about the nurse that made her seem the ideal person to bolster his self-esteem, the permanent wife and mother who is waiting in a clean apron when he get back from a weekend with mistress…”
“Perhaps Van Vogt’s most intriguing insight into the Right Man was his discovery that he can be destroyed if ‘the worm turns’ — that is, if his wife or some dependant leaves him. Under such circumstances, he may beg and plead, promising to behave better in the future. If that fails, there may be alcoholism, drug addiction, even suicide. She has kicked out the foundations of his sandcastle. For when a Right Man finds a woman who seems submissive and admiring, it deepens his self-confidence, fills him with a sense of his own worth. (We can see the mechanism in operation with Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.) No matter how badly he treats her, he has to keep on believing that, in the last analysis, she recognises him as the most remarkable man she will ever meet. She is the guarantee of his ‘primacy’, his uniqueness; now it doesn’t matter what the rest of the world thinks. He may desert her and his children; that only proves how ‘strong’ he is, how indifferent to the usual sentimentality. But if she deserts him, he has been pushed back to square one: the helpless child in a hostile universe. ‘Most violent men are failures’, says Van Vogt; so to desert them is to hand them over to their own worst suspicions about themselves. It is this recognition that leads Van Vogt to write: ‘Realise that most Right Men deserve some sympathy, for they are struggling with an unbelievable inner horror; however, if they give way to the impulse to hit or choke, they are losing the battle, are on the the way to the ultimate disaster… of their subjective universe of self-justification.”
“And what happens when the Right Man is not a failure, when his ‘uniqueness’ is acknowledged by the world? Oddly enough, it makes little or no difference. His problem is lack of emotional control and a deep-seated sense of inferiority; so success cannot reach the parts of the mind that are the root of the problem.”
[…]
“The Right Man hates losing face; if he suspects that his threats are not being taken seriously, he is capable of carrying them out, purely for the sake of appearances.”
“Van Vogt makes the basic observation that the central characteristic of the Right Man is the ‘decision to be out of control, in some particular area’. We all have to learn self-control to deal with the real world and other people. But with some particular person — a mother, a wife, a child — we may decide that this effort is not necessary and allow ourselves to explode. But — and here we come to the very heart of the matter — this decision creates, so to speak, a permanent weakpoint in the boiler, the point at which it always bursts.”
[…]
“He feels he [is] justified in exploding, like an angry god. […] he feels he is inflicting just punishment.”
“What is so interesting here is the way the Right Man’s violent emotion reinforces his sense of being justified, and his sense of justification increases his rage. He is locked into a kind of vicious spiral, and he cannot escape until he has spent his fury. […] The Right Man feels that his rage is a storm that has to be allowed to blow itself out, no matter what damage it causes. But this also means that he is the slave of an impulse he cannot control; his property, even the lives of those that he loves, are at the mercy of his emotions. This is part of the ‘unbelievable inner horror’ that Van Vogt talks about.”
[…]
“This is ‘magical thinking’ — allowing a desire or emotion to convince you of something your reason tells you to be untrue. […] Magical thinking provides a key to the Right Man.”
“What causes ‘right mannishness’? Van Vogt suggest that it is because the world has always been dominated by males.”
[…]
“But then, this explanation implies that there is no such thing as a Right Woman—in fact, Van Vogt says as much. This is untrue.” […] The central characteristic of the Right Woman is the same as that of the Right Man: that she is convinced that having her own way is a law of nature and that anyone who opposes this deserves the harshest possible treatment. It is the god (or goddess) syndrome.”
[…]
“… the one thing that becomes obvious in all cases of Right Men is that their attacks are not somehow inevitable’; some of their worst misdemeanours are carefully planned and calculated, and determinedly carried out. The Right Man does these things because he thinks they will help him to achieve his own way, which is what interests him.”
“And this in turn makes it plain that the Right Man problem is a problem of highly dominant people. Dominance is a subject of enormous interest to biologists and zoologists because the percentage of dominant animals — or human beings — seems to be amazingly constant. […] biological studies have confirmed [… that …] for some odd reason, precisely five per cent — one in twenty — of any animal group are dominant — have leadership qualities.”
[…]
“The ‘average’ member of the dominant five per cent sees no reason why he should not be rich and famous too. He experiences anger and frustration at his lack of ‘primacy’, and is willing to consider unorthodox methods of elbowing his way to the fore. This clearly explains a great deal about the rising levels of crime and violence in our society.”
[…]
“We can also see how large numbers of these dominant individuals develop into ‘Right Men’. In every school with five hundred pupils there are about twnety-five dominant ones struggling for primacy. Some of these have natural advantages: they are good athletes, good scholars, good debaters. (And there are, of course plenty of non-dominant pupils who are gifted enough to carry away some of the prizes.) Inevitably, a percentage of the dominant pupils have no particular talent or gift; some may be downright stupid. How is such a person to satisfy his urge to primacy? He will, inevitably, choose to express his dominance in any ways that are possible. If he has good looks or charm, he may be satisfied with the admiration of female pupils. If he has some specific talent which is not regarded as important by his schoolmasters — a good ear for music, a natural gift of observation, a vivid imagination — he may become a lonely ‘outsider’, living in his own private world. (Such individuals may develop into Schuberts, Darwins, Balzacs.) But it is just as likely that he will try to take short-cuts to prominence and become a bully, a cheat or a delinquent.”
“The main problem of these ungifted ‘outsiders’ is that they are bound to feel that the world has treated them unfairly. And the normal human reaction to a sense of unfairness is an upsurge of self-pity. Self-pity and the sense of injustice make them vulnerable and unstable. And we have only to observe such people to see that they are usually their own worst enemies. Their moods alternate between aggressiveness and sulkiness, both of which alienate those who might otherwise be glad to help them. If they possess some degree of charm or intelligence, they may succeed in making themselves acceptable to other people; but sooner or later the resentment and self-pity break through, and lead to mistrust and rejection.”
“The very essence of their problem is the question of self-discipline. Dominant human beings are more impatient than others, because they have more vital energy. Impatience leads them to look for short-cuts. […] Civilisation, as Freud pointed out, demands self-discipline on the part of its members. No one can be licenced to threaten people with carving knives.”
[…]
“When the Right Man explodes into violence, all the energy is wasted. Worse still, it destroys the banks of the canal. So in permitting himself free expression of his negative emotions he is indulging in a process of slow but sure self-erosion — the emotional counterpart of physical incontinence. Without proper ‘drainage’, his inner being turns into a kind of swamp or sewage farm. This is why most of the violent men of history, from Alexander the Great to Stalin, have ended up as psychotics. Without the power to control their negative emotions, they become incapable of any state of sustained well-being.”
Most voters agree that Democrats are using the legal system to take out their political opponents — namely, former President Donald Trump — April’s Harvard-Harris survey found.
57 percent, believe Democrats are “engaged in using the legal system in biased ways to take out a political opponent,” compared to 43 percent who believe the various prosecutions of Trump are “fair and unrelated to politics.”
Biden asks MSM to not report his asinine, lying, fake news, and mental lapses. Oh those weren’t his words, but that’s what he meant. Below are his words.
So he’s asking the media to not cover the truth or show his mental miscues and the weaponization of the justice department.
More of Biden’s lies.
“He said he wants to be a dictator on day one,” Biden told the crowd of journalists, lawmakers, celebrities and others, characterizing remarks Trump repeatedly made about the southern border and drilling efforts. “He promised a bloodbath when he loses again. We have to take this seriously. Eight years ago we could’ve written it off as just Trump talk but no longer.”
Here is Biden's message for the press corps: "I'm sincerely not asking you to take sides, but asking you to rise up to the seriousness of the moment." pic.twitter.com/9zyShUFbPk
Former President Donald Trump entering the courtroom in New York. (Pool/Getty Images)
Views: 19
6 Big items from Trump’s Trial. Newsmax has a nice list of 6 items that all should know about. To me it’s obvious that the Judge thinks he’s still back in Bogota. List is below.
1. Stormy Daniels May Have Auditioned for Apprentice
2. Pecker Said ‘Catch-and-Kill’ Stories Happened All the Time
3. Judge Juan Merchan’s Gag Order Lives On
4. We Still Don’t Know the Crime
5. Trump Is Accused of a Non-Crime
6. They’re Skirting the Constitution to Get Trump
“In order to get to where we are today, the state had to take a minor misdemeanor election filing, with statements that may have been untrue in corporate forms, which was long ago expired under the statute of limitations, and then try to turn it into a state felony by invoking a federal statute which they don’t even name, which they have no jurisdiction over,” Dershowitz told “Newsline.”
Lee Fang, RealClearInvestigations & LeeFang.com January 16, 2024
Finances at the vaccine manufacturer Moderna began to fall almost as quickly as they had risen, as most Americans resisted getting yet another COVID booster shot. The pharmaceutical company, whose pioneering mRNA vaccine had turned it from small startup to biotech giant worth more than $100 billion in just a few years, reported a third-quarter loss last year of $3.6 billion.
Arpa Garay, Moderna: “It really is a vaccine that’s relevant across all age groups,” she insisted.
LinkedIn
In a September call aimed at shoring up investors, Moderna’s then–chief commercial officer, Arpa Garay, attributed some of the hesitancy pummeling Moderna’s numbers to uninformed vaccine skeptics. “Despite some misinformation,” Garay said, COVID-19 still drove significant hospitalizations. “It really is a vaccine that’s relevant across all age groups,” she insisted.
To get past the “misinformation” and convince the public to take continual booster shots, Garay briefly noted that Moderna was “delving down” on ways to partner “across the ecosystem to make sure consumers are educated on the need for the vaccine.”
What Garay hinted at during the call, but didn’t disclose, was that Moderna already had a sprawling media operation in place aimed at identifying and responding to critics of vaccine policy and the drug industry. A series of internal company reports and communications reviewed by RealClearInvestigations show that Moderna has worked with former law enforcement and public health officials and a drug industry-funded non-governmental organization called The Public Good Projects (PGP) to confront the “root cause of vaccine hesitancy” by rapidly identifying and “shutting down misinformation.”
Part of this effort includes providing talking points to some 45,000 healthcare professionals “on how to respond when vaccine misinformation goes mainstream.” PGP and Moderna have created a new partnership, called the “Infodemic Training Program,” to prepare healthcare workers to respond to alleged vaccine-related misinformation.
The company has also used artificial intelligence to monitor millions of global online conversations to shape the contours of vaccine-related discussion. The internal files — shorthanded here as the Moderna Reports — show high-profile vaccine critics were closely monitored, particularly skeptics in independent media, including Michael Shellenberger, Russell Brand, and Alex Berenson. PGP, which was funded by a $1,275,000 donation from the Biotechnology and Innovation Organization, a lobby group representing Pfizer and Moderna, has identified alleged vaccine misinformation and helped facilitate the removal of content from Twitter, among other social media platforms, throughout 2021 and 2022.
Kaitlyn Kkrizanic of PGP: Beware of “reports that Sweden is no longer recommending the vaccine for children.”
rocketreach.com
Emails from that period show that PGP routinely sent Excel lists of accounts to amplify on Twitter and others to de-platform, including populist voices such as ZeroHedge.
The messages also suggested emerging narratives to remove from the platform. “People opposed to vaccines are capitalizing on the NYT [New York Times] article about the CDC withholding vaccine information. The articles do not contain misinformation themselves but are using the news to further prove the CDC is untrustworthy,” wrote Savannah Knell, PGP’s senior director of partnerships, in an email to a Twitter lobbyist in September 2022. In another email the following month, Kaitlyn Krizanic, PGP’s senior program manager, told Twitter to be on the lookout for “reports that Sweden is no longer recommending the vaccine for children.” In some cases, conservative accounts expressing outrage at restrictive pandemic policies, such as vaccination passports, were deemed by PGP as “misinformation” that warranted removal.
The Moderna Reports consistently show the company raising red flags about those reporting documented side effects of the vaccine the biotech company was selling. Such concerns, which may be typical of corporate public relations efforts that want their product shown in the best light, take on a darker cast when it involves medicine injected into people’s bodies.
Like the Twitter Files, the Moderna Reports highlight the push by powerful entities – especially government, Big Tech, and Big Pharma – to identify and brand dissenting opinions about establishment narratives as risky forms of speech. The growing network these efforts rely on shows the growth of what has been called the censorship industrial complex. Moderna’s faltering financials also suggest, at least for now, the limits of that project.
Public Good Projects and Moderna did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
In an internal email sent last July, Moderna notified its team of its latest efforts to shape the vaccine debate. “We have partnered with PGP (The Public Good Projects) and Moderna’s Global Intelligence, Corporate Security, Medical Affairs, Corporate Communications, Clinical Safety and Pharmacovigilance teams to provide media monitoring for misinformation at scale,” Marcy Rudowitz, the company’s customer program lead, wrote. “If and when a response is needed, our team will notify the appropriate stakeholders with recommendations,” she added.
The extent to which the company may intervene to shape content decisions is not clear. PGP continues to boast close relations with establishment institutions, including major medical associations.
The rise of censorship is inextricably connected to the pandemic, which emerged in the U.S. in early 2020. As federal, state, and local governments imposed unprecedented regulations on Americans in the name of public health, efforts arose to discredit counter-narratives that could be spread easily on social media. Early in the pandemic, criticism of policies such as lockdowns and vaccine mandates came almost entirely from independent media, which faced shadowbans and outright censorship on various platforms.
Stéphane Bancel, Moderna CEO: “As you can see, we’re losing economies of scale,” he said, explaining price hikes.
Moderna 2022 ESG Report
When they introduced their vaccines in 2021, manufacturers such as Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson also had a powerful financial interest in bolstering such censorship.
Moderna, perhaps more than other drug firms, is overwhelmingly reliant on the continued success of its vaccine. The company announced a price hike of up to $130 a dose this month, far higher than the $15-26 for American federal contracts, according to the Wall Street Journal. “We’re expecting a 90% reduction in demand,” Modena CEO Stéphane Bancel said, when he was asked to defend the decision. “As you can see, we’re losing economies of scale.”
Far from acting as a neutral arbiter, the Moderna Reports show that the company blurred the lines between public relations and public health. In many cases, Moderna’s intelligence and communications team targeted accurate information that had “the potential to fuel vaccine hesitancy” as menacing forms of misinformation in its reports. Given the size and scope and the censorship industrial complex, it can be difficult to draw a clear straight line between Moderna’s surveillance and actions taken against specific articles, posts, and writers. Instead, as Garay suggested, the company is one stream in an evolving ecosystem aimed at undermining dissent.
Alex Berenson
Berenson: “It’s nice to know Moderna is watching me. I’m watching them too.”
FNC
Independent journalist Alex Berenson is a repeated subject of the company’s surveillance efforts. A former reporter for the New York Times, Berenson quickly emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of vaccine-related policies. He was among the earliest to cast doubt on the Biden administration’s false claim that the vaccinated people could not transmit the COVID-19 virus to others. After government pressure on Twitter, Berenson was banned from the platform in 2021, only to return after successfully litigating against the company.
He appears to still be in the crosshairs. In September 2023, Moderna flagged a tweet from Berenson that highlighted the CDC’s data showing that among 1 million mRNA-vaccinated teenagers, there were from zero to a single COVID death and up to 200,000 side effects.
The company cited Berenson’s tweet under a report headline “Attacks on pediatric COVID-19 vaccines escalate” and claimed he had “cherry-picked data.” However, the company did not directly rebut any of Berenson’s claims in its report. Rather, Moderna noted the “high-risk” danger of Berenson’s viral tweet related to the potential for low child COVID-19 vaccination rates. “Fears about side effects and long-term dangers are major reasons parents report not vaccinating their children,” the report stated. It further concluded that “resistance to COVID-19 vaccines for children can be a gateway to broader anti-vaccine beliefs.”
Other Moderna reports flag Berenson’s tweets for “misinformation about mRNA safety” and claim that he is a “conspiracy theorist” for suggesting that health authorities have not properly taken into account the documented risks of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) for young men receiving the vaccine. Such questions have been posed by an increasing number of health professionals, but the misinformation reports dismiss any Berenson criticism as inherently false.
“It’s nice to know Moderna is watching me,” said Berenson, when asked about his response to the revelations. “I’m watching them too. mRNA shots carry unacceptably high heart risks for teenagers and young adults. Nearly the entire rest of the world accepts this reality and now discourages or bans people under 50 from taking mRNA Covid boosters. It is unconscionable that Moderna and Pfizer continue to market them to non-elderly adults.”
“They can call me whatever they like,” he noted, “but they can’t stop my reporting.”
Russell Brand
Brand: Moderna warned of his videos “in anti-vaccine spaces where he is viewed as a truth-teller.”
Invision
Russell Brand, the British commentator and comedian, is also a repeated name in the Moderna misinformation files. The left-leaning populist routinely pillories the pharmaceutical industry for exploiting the pandemic to generate unprecedented profits.
Moderna has closely monitored Brand’s criticism of the drug industry.
In various “low-risk” reports produced in August 2023, Moderna flagged videos produced by Brand twice. In one, Moderna noted that Brand had broadcast a monologue about Jonathan Van-Tam, a former senior health official who helped formulate COVID-19 policies in Britain. Van-Tam had just taken a position with Moderna, a move that raised eyebrows with many in the press. In the video, Brand noted that the company had just “made a fortune during the pandemic selling vaccines to the government,” and that the “government worker that bought all those vaccines” was now moving through the revolving door.
In another report, Moderna alleged that Brand “claimed that COVID-19 vaccine mandates were based on a lie in a recent podcast episode.” The video was broadly accurate. The monologue highlights CDC documents that had come to light showing that officials were aware that the virus would “break through” and still infect vaccinated patients. In an ironic twist, Brand finished the segment with a discussion of efforts to censor debate around the vaccine.
Moderna noted they were not yet taking action on this broadcast, but “we are monitoring with our partner, the Public Good Projects.”
The following month, several media outlets reported that several women who insisted on anonymity were claiming that Brand had abused them nearly twenty years ago. The ensuing media firestorm, which led to YouTube demonetizing his account, became fodder for other Moderna misinformation reports. The company warned that the cancellation of Brand was sparking a backlash among social media users, who believed that he may be targeted by government and corporate censors for his outspoken opposition to pandemic narratives.
In a Moderna high-risk report, the company noted that speculation was swirling that “allegations are part of a conspiracy to silence the comedian, who has been a vocal opponent of COVID-19 vaccines.” The report linked an X video of Brand sharply criticizing Moderna and Pfizer for generating “$1,000 of profit every second” in 2021. The specific claim of profiteering was a mainstream claim, a statistic that was produced by Oxfam.
Nowhere in its reports on Brand did Moderna highlight any incorrect information. But the reports noted that they monitored Brand because he “has a large platform with over 6.6 million YouTube subscribers and over 21 million followers across multiple social media platforms.” Moreover, his “videos are widely circulated in anti-vaccine spaces where he is viewed as a truth-teller and threat to authority,” and that Brand maintained support from Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk.
Michael Shellenberger
Shellenberger: Dismissed by Moderna in internal reports as a known “misinformation author.”
AP
The Moderna misinformation reporting system reveals that the pharmaceutical firm maintained an interest in pandemic-related issues that go beyond vaccine policy, overlapping with general issues surrounding the unexplained questions that still swirl around the source of the pandemic.
The company, for instance, flagged discussions around news last year of a congressional whistleblower who came forward with allegations that the CIA suppressed an assessment from analysts that COVID-19 originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The story has garnered widespread coverage in NBC, Science, and ABC News, among other outlets.
But Moderna’s misinformation alerts flagged Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and journalist Michael Shellenberger for distributing information about the CIA allegation. Shellenberger – with whom this reporter has worked on the Twitter Files – had exclusively reported earlier last year that U.S. government sources believed that the “patient zeros” of COVID-19 were a group of Chinese scientists at the Wuhan lab – a major revelation later confirmed by the Wall Street Journal.
Despite his work on the issue, Moderna dismisses Shellenberger in its reports as among its known “misinformation authors.”
“Moderna has spent years spreading disinformation about their vaccines and so it makes sense that they would smear the scientists and journalists who expose them as conspiracy theorists and sources of misinformation,” Shellenberger told RCI.
“The question is why is Moderna spreading disinformation on the high probability that Covid escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab?” he added. “A company that makes its money selling a coronavirus vaccine shouldn’t care where Covid came from.”
Others
Moderna closely monitored other independent voices. The company flagged left-wing comedian Jimmy Dore for simply tweeting at a New York Times call for triple-vaccination with the two-word response, “Hard pass,” as an example of misinformation. The company also warned about the appearance of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the Joe Rogan podcast as well as Lex Fridman, a popular independent podcaster.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Moderna warned of his appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast.
AP
Other reports flag skeptics of vaccine efficiency and potential side effects. In September, Moderna’s system cited Megyn Kelly, the podcaster and former Fox News host, for a viral clip in which she said she regrets the COVID-19 booster after she developed an autoimmune condition that she believes was caused by the shot.
Moderna warned that such comments could “discourage people who are on the fence about getting vaccinated.” In its alert about Kelly, the company noted that her comments added to growing concern around autoimmune disorders and COVID-19 vaccinations. The Moderna misinformation email proceeded to offer data that appeared to reaffirm, rather than debunk, Kelly’s assertions. The alert concluded with a message about an NIH report that highlights a link between SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and inflammatory and autoimmune skin diseases. Moderna did not dispute the findings of the NIH study, but noted that it “is in rotation in anti-vaccine spaces online.”
Megyn Kelly: Moderna warned that her apparently valid comments could “discourage people who are on the fence about getting vaccinated.”
Invision
The merging of public health and corporate influence peddling has concerned many academics. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy at Stanford University who says the government violated his free-speech rights by trying to silence his questioning of federal policies regarding COVID, told RCI: “We have a problem that social media companies and the government have allied with pharma to treat information flows around the COVID vaccine as a propaganda problem, rather than a medical issue that is best resolved by patients talking with their doctor about what’s best for them.”
Jay Bhattacharya: Moderna flagged a tweet of his simply linking to an unwelcome FDA finding on child vaccination.
FNC
Bhattacharya was one of the most prominent academics who was shadowbanned under the previous owners of Twitter because of his criticism of the lockdowns and masking policy. He is now one of the plaintiffs litigating against the U.S. government’s role in shaping content decisions on social media platforms in the Missouri v. Biden case, which is now before the Supreme Court.
Bhattacharya’s outspoken advocacy has attracted attention from Moderna as well. In October 2023, shortly after I spoke to him for an interview, Moderna flagged one of the Stanford professor’s tweets that shared a link to a new Food and Drug Administration preprint study that documented “elevated risk of seizures in toddlers and myocarditis in teenagers associated with covid mRNA vaccination.” Moderna did not directly dispute the study findings other than to note that its authors wrote that it “should be interpreted cautiously.”
In the attached report, Moderna added that it had highlighted the tweet and others like it because “concerns about safety and side effects are among the main reasons parents are hesitant about or oppose COVID-19 vaccines for their children.”
In other words, anything that might discourage children from vaccinations, despite any risks or lack of benefits, is dangerous information. That suggests a motive far from bringing truth to the vaccine debate, and far more about dominating it for financial gain.
Near the end of the Moderna call last September, as the biotech firm worked to highlight its stepped-up outreach to consumers, James Mock, the chief financial officer, spoke briefly to assure investors of the company’s ability to continue to make money.
“COVID is a very valuable product line of business and will continue to be,” said Mock, “and we’ll make it more profitable.”
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