Considering all that, the questions arise: Who was actually in charge of Deborah Birx and whom was she working with?

But first: Who cares?

Here’s why I think it’s important: If we can show that Birx and the others who imposed totalitarian anti-scientific testing, masking, social distancing, and lockdown policies, knew from the get-go that these policies would not work against an airborne respiratory virus, and nevertheless they imposed them FOR REASONS OTHER THAN PUBLIC HEALTH, then there is no longer acceptable justification for any of those measures. 

Furthermore, whatever mountains of post-facto bad science were concocted to rationalize these measures are also completely bunk. Instead of having to go through each ridiculous pseudo-study to demonstrate its scientific worthlessness, we can throw the whole steaming pile in the garbage heap of history, where it belongs, and move on with our lives.

In my admittedly somewhat naive optimism, I also hope that by exposing the non-scientific, anti-public-health origins of the Covid catastrophe, we may lower the chances of it happening again.

And now, back to Birx.

She did not work for or with Trump 

We know Birx was definitely not working with President Trump, although she was on a task force ostensibly representing the White House. Trump did not appoint her, nor did the leaders of the Task Force, as Scott Atlas recounts in his revelatory book on White House pandemic lunacy, A Plague Upon Our House. When Atlas asked Task Force members how Birx was appointed, he was surprised to find that “no one seemed to know.” (Atlas, p. 82)

Yet, somehow, Deborah Birx – a former military AIDS researcher and government AIDS ambassador with no training, experience or publications in epidemiology or public health policy –  found herself leading a White House Task Force on which she had the power to literally subvert the policy prescriptions of the President of the United States.

As she describes in The Silent Invasion, Birx was shocked when “at the halfway point of our 15 Days to Slow the Spread campaign, President Trump stated that he hoped to lift all restrictions by Easter Sunday.” (Birx, p. 142) She was even more dismayed when “mere days after the president had announced the thirty-day extension of the Slow the Spread campaign to the American public” he became enraged and told her “‘We will never shut down the country again. Never.’” (Birx, p. 152)

Clearly, Trump was not on board with the lockdowns, and every time he was forced to go along with them, he became enraged and lashed out at Birx – the person he believed was forcing him.

Birx laments that “from here on out, everything I worked toward would be harder—in some cases, impossible,” and goes on to say she would basically have to work behind the scenes against the President, having “to adapt to effectively protect the country from the virus that had already silently invaded it.” (Birx, pp. 153-4)

Which brings us back to the question: Where did Birx get the nerve and, more mysteriously, the authority to so blithely act in direct opposition to the President she was supposed to serve, on matters affecting the lives of the entire population of the United States?

Atlas regrets what he thinks was President Trump’s “massive error in judgment.” He argues that Trump acted “against his own gut feeling” and “delegated authority to medical bureaucrats, and then he failed to correct that mistake.” (Atlas, p. 308) 

Although I believe massive errors in judgment were not unusual for President Trump, I disagree with Atlas on this one. In the case of the Coronavirus Response Task Force, I actually think there was something much more insidious at play.

Trump had no power over Birx or pandemic response

Dr. Paul Alexander, an epidemiologist and research methodology expert who was recruited to advise the Trump administration on pandemic policy, tells a shocking story in an interview with Jeffrey Tucker, in which bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and lawyers from the Justice Department told him to resign, despite direct orders from President Trump and the White House: “We want you to understand that President Trump has no power,” they reportedly told Alexander. “He cannot tell us what to do.”

Alexander believes these bureaucrats represented the “deep state” which, he was told repeatedly, had decided first not to hire or pay him, and then to get rid of him. Alexander also writes in an upcoming exposé that the entrenched government bureaucracy, particularly at the NIH, CDC, and WHO, used the pandemic response to doom President Trump’s chances for reelection.

Was the entire anti-scientific totalitarian pandemic response, all over the world, a political maneuver to get rid of Trump? It’s possible. I would contend, however, that the politics were only a sideshow to the main event: the engineered virus lab leak and coverup. I believe the “deep state” Alexander repeatedly butted up against was not just the entrenched bureaucracy, but something even deeper and more powerful. 

Which brings us back to deep state frontwoman Deborah Birx.

After lamenting Trump’s delegation of authority to “medical bureaucrats,” Scott Atlas also hints at forces beyond Trump’s control. “The Task Force was called ‘the White House Coronavirus Task Force,’” Atlas notes, “but it was not in sync with President Trump. It was directed by Vice President Pence.” (Atlas, p. 306) Yet, whenever Atlas tried to raise questions about Birx’s policies, he was directed to speak with Pence, who then failed to ever address anything with Birx:

“Given that the VP was in charge of the Task Force, shouldn’t the bottom-line advice emanating from it comport with the policies of the administration? But he would never speak with Dr. Birx at all. In fact, (Marc) Short [Pence’s chief of staff], clearly representing the VP’s interests above all else, would do the opposite, telephoning others in the West Wing, imploring friends of mine to tell me to avoid alienating Dr. Birx.” (Atlas, p. 165-6)

Recall that Pence replaced Alex Azar as Task Force director on February 26, 2020 and Birx’s appointment as coordinator, at the instigation of Asst. National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger, came on February 27th. Subsequent to those two appointments, it was Birx who was effectively in charge of United States coronavirus policy.

What was driving that policy, once she took over? As Birx writes, it was the NSC (National Security Council) that appointed her, through Pottinger, and it was her job to “reinforce their warnings” – which, I continue to speculate, were related to the accidental release of an enhanced pandemic potential pathogen from a US-funded lab in Wuhan. 

Trump was probably made aware of this, as evidenced not just by his repeated mentions, but by what Time Magazine called his uncharacteristic refusal to explain why he believed it. The magazine quotes Trump saying “I can’t tell you that,” when asked about his belief in the lab leak. And he repeats, “I’m not allowed to tell you that.”

Why in the world was the President of the United States not allowed to override AIDS researcher/diplomat Birx on lockdown policies nor explain to the public why he believed there was a lab leak? 

The answer, I believe, is that Trump was uncharacteristically holding back because he was told (by Birx, Pottinger and the military/intelligence/biosecurity interests for whom they worked) that if he did not go along with their policies and proclamations, millions of Americans would die. Why? Because SARS-CoV-2 was not just another zoonotic virus. It was an engineered virus that needed to be contained at all costs. 

As Dr. Atlas repeatedly notes with great dismay: “the Task Force doctors were fixated on a single-minded view that all cases of COVID must be stopped or millions of Americans would die.” (Atlas, p. 155-6) [BOLDFACE ADDED] 

That was the key message, wielded with great force and success against Trump, his administration, the press, the states, and the public, to suppress any opposition to lockdown policies. Yet the message makes no sense if you believe SARS-CoV-2 is a virus that jumped from a bat to a person in a wet market, severely affecting mostly people who are old and debilitated. It only makes sense if you think, or know, that the virus was engineered to be especially contagious or deadly (even if its behavior in the population at any given moment might not justify that level of alarm). 

But, again, before indulging in more speculation, let’s get back to Birx. Who else did she (and her hidden handlers) bulldoze?

She dictated policy to the entire Trump administration

In his book, Atlas observes with puzzlement and consternation that, although Pence was the nominal director of the Task Force, Deborah Birx was the person in charge: “Birx’s policies were enacted throughout the country, in almost every single state, for the entire pandemic—this cannot be denied; it cannot be deflected.” (Atlas, p. 222)

Atlas is “dumbstruck at the lack of leadership in the White House,” in which, “the president was saying one thing while the White House Task Force representative was saying something entirely different, indeed contradictory” and, as he notes, “no one ever set her [Birx] straight on her role.” (Atlas, p. 222-223)

Not only that, but no matter how much Trump, or anyone in the administration, disagreed with Birx, “the White House was held hostage to the anticipated reaction of Dr. Birx” and she “was not to be touched, period.” (Atlas, p. 223)

One explanation for her untouchableness, Atlas suggests, is that Birx and her policies became so popular with the press and public that the administration did not want to “rock the boat” by replacing her before the election. This explanation, however, as Atlas himself realizes, crumbles in the face of what we know about Trump and the media’s hostility towards him:

“They [Trump’s advisors] had convinced him to do exactly the opposite of what he would naturally do in any other circumstance—to disregard his own common sense and allow grossly incorrect policy advice to prevail. … This president, widely known for his signature ‘You’re fired!’ declaration, was misled by his closest political intimates. All for fear of what was inevitable anyway—skewering from an already hostile media.” (Atlas, p. 300-301)

I would suggest, again, the reason for the seemingly inexplicable lack of gumption on Trump’s part to get rid of Birx was not politics, but behind-the-scenes machinations of the (to coin a moniker) lab leak cabal.

Who else was part of this cabal with its hidden agendas and oversized policy influence? Our attention naturally turns to the other members of the Task Force who were presumably co-engineering lockdown policies with Birx. Surprising revelations emerge.

There was no troika. No Birx-Fauci lockdown plan. It was all Birx.

It is universally assumed, by both those in favor and those opposed to the Task Force’s policy prescriptions, that Drs. Deborah Birx, Tony Fauci (head of  NIAID at the time) and Bob Redfield (then director of the CDC) worked together to formulate those policies.

The stories told by Birx herself and Task Force infiltrator Scott Atlas suggest otherwise.

Like everyone else, at the onset of his book, Atlas asserts: “The architects of the American lockdown strategy were Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx. With Dr. Robert Redfield… they were the most influential medical members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.” (Atlas, p. 22)

But as Atlas’s story unfolds, he presents a more nuanced understanding of the power dynamics on the Task Force:

“Fauci’s role surprised me the most. Most of the country, indeed the entire world, assumed that Fauci occupied a directorial role in the Trump administration’s Task Force. I had also thought that from viewing the news,” Atlas admits. However, he continues, “The public presumption of Dr. Fauci’s leadership role on the Task Force itself…could not have been more incorrect. Fauci held massive sway with the public, but he was not in charge of anything specific on the Task Force. He served mainly as a channel for updates on the trials of vaccines and drugs.” (p. 98) [BOLDFACE ADDED]

By the end of the book, Atlas fully revises his initial assessment, strongly emphasizing that, in fact, it was primarily and predominantly Birx who designed and disseminated the lockdown policies: 

“Dr. Fauci held court in the public eye on a daily basis, so frequently that many misconstrue his role as being in charge. However, it was really Dr. Birx who articulated Task Force policy. All the advice from the Task Force to the states came from Dr. Birx. All written recommendations about their on-the-ground policies were from Dr. Birx. Dr. Birx conducted almost all the visits to states on behalf of the Task Force.” (Atlas, p. 309-10) [BOLDFACE ADDED]

It may sound jarring and unlikely, given the public perception of Fauci, as Atlas notes. But in Birx’s book the same unexpected picture emerges.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much

As with her bizarrely self-contradictory statements about how she got hired, and her blatantly bogus scientific claims, Birx’s story about her mind-melded closeness with Fauci and Redfield falls apart upon closer examination.

In her book, Birx repeatedly claims she trusts Redfield and Fauci “implicitly to help shape America’s response to the novel coronavirus.” (Birx, p. 31) She says she has “every confidence, based on past performance, that whatever path the virus took, the United States and the CDC would be on top of the situation.” (Birx, p. 32)

Then, almost immediately, she undermines the credibility of those she supposedly trusts, quoting Matt Pottinger as saying she “‘should take over Azar, Fauci, and Redfield’s jobs, because you’re such a better leader than they are.’” (Birx, p. 38-9) 

Perhaps she was just giving herself a little pat on the back, one might innocently suggest. But wait. There’s so much more.

Birx claims that in a meeting on January 31 “everything Drs. Fauci and Redfield said about their approach made sense based on the information available to me at that point,” even though “neither of them spoke” about the two issues she was most obsessed with: “asymptomatic silent spread [and] the role testing should play in the response.” (Birx, p. 39)

Then, although she says she “didn’t read too much into this omission,” (p. 39) just two weeks later, “as early as February 13” Birx again mentions “a lack of leadership and direction in the CDC and the White House Coronavirus Task Force.” (p. 54)

So does Debi trust Tony and Bob’s leadership or does she not? The only answer is more self-contradictory obfuscation.

Birx is horrified that nobody is taking the virus as seriously as they should: “then I saw Tony and Bob repeating that the risk to Americans was low,” she reports. “On February 8, Tony said that the chances of contracting the virus were ‘minuscule.’” And, “on February 29, he said, ‘Right now, at this moment, there is no need to change anything you’re doing on a day-to-day basis.’” (Birx, p. 57)

This does not seem like the kind of leader Birx can trust. She half-heartedly tries to excuse Redfield and Fauci, saying “I now believe that Bob and Tony’s words had spoken to the limited data they had access to from the CDC,” and then, in another whiplash moment, “maybe they had data in the United States that I did not.” 

Did Tony and Bob provide less dire warnings because they had insufficient data or because they had more data than Birx did? She never clarifies, but regardless, she assures us that she “trusted them” and “felt reassured every day with them on the task force.” (Birx, p. 57)

If I was worried that the virus was not being taken seriously enough, Birx’s reports on Bob and Tony would not be very reassuring, to say the least.

Apparently, Birx herself felt that way too. “I was somewhat disappointed that Bob and Tony weren’t seeing the situation as I was,” she says, when they disagreed with her alarmist assessments of asymptomatic spread. But, she adds, “at least their number supported my belief that this new disease was far more asymptomatic than the flu. I wouldn’t have to push them as far as I needed to push the CDC.” (Birx, p. 78)

Is someone who disagrees with your assessment to the point that you need to push them in your direction also someone you “implicitly trust” to lead the US through the pandemic?

Apparently, not so much.

Although she supposedly trusts Redfield and sleeps well at night knowing he’s on the Task Force, Birx has nothing but disdain and criticism for the CDC – the organization Redfield leads. 

“On aggressive testing I planned to have Tom Frieden [CDC director under Obama] help bring the CDC along,” she recounts. “Like me, the CDC wanted to do everything to stop the virus, but the agency needed to align with us on aggressive testing and silent spread.” (p. 122) Which makes one wonder: If she was so closely aligned with Redfield, the head of the CDC, why did Birx need to bring in a former director – in a direct challenge to the sitting one – to “bring the CDC along?” Who is “us” if not Birx, Fauci and Redfield?

Masks were another issue of apparent contention. Birx is frustrated because the CDC, led by her “we’ve-got-each-other’s-back” bestie, Bob Redfield (Birx, p. 31), will not issue strict enough masking guidelines. In fact, she repeatedly throws Bob’s organization under the bus, basically accusing them of causing American deaths: “For many weeks and months to come,” she writes, “I fretted over how many lives could have been saved if the CDC had trusted the public to understand that …masks would do no harm and could potentially do a great deal of good.” (Birx, p. 86)

Apparently, Fauci was not on board with the masking either, as Birx says that “getting the doctors, including Tom [Frieden] and Tony, to be in complete agreement with me about asymptomatic spread was slightly less of a priority. As with masks, I knew I could return to that issue as soon as I got their buy-in on our recommendations.” (Birx, p. 123)

Who is making “our recommendations” if not Birx, Fauci and Redfield? 

The myth of the troika

Whether or not she trusted them (and it’s hard to believe, based on her own accounts, that she did), it was apparently very important to Birx that she, Fauci and Redfield appear as a single entity with no disagreements whatsoever. 

When Scott Atlas, an outsider not privy to whatever power plays were happening on the Task Force, came in, his presence apparently rattled Birx (Atlas, p. 83-4), and for good reason. Atlas immediately noticed strange goings-on. In his book, he repeatedly uses words like “bizarre,” “odd” and “uncanny” to describe how Fauci, Redfield and Birx behaved. Most notably, they never ever questioned or disagreed with one another in Task Force meetings. Not ever. 

“They shared thought processes and views to an uncanny level,” Atlas writes, then reiterates that “there was virtually no disagreement among them.” What he saw “was an amazing consistency, as though there were an agreed-upon complicity” (Atlas, pp. 99-100). They “virtually always agreed, literally never challenging one another.” (p. 101) [BOLDFACE ADDED] 

An agreed-upon complicity? Uncanny agreement? Based on all of the disagreements reported by Birx and her repeated questioning and undermining of Bob and Tony’s authority, how can this be explained? 

I would contend that in order to obscure the extent to which Birx alone was in charge of Task Force policy, the other doctors were compelled to present a facade of complete agreement. Otherwise, as with any opposition to, or even discussion of, potential harms of lockdown policies, “millions of Amercans would die.”

This assessment is strengthened by Atlas’s ongoing bafflement and distress at how the Task Force – and particularly the doctors/scientists who were presumably formulating policy based on data and research – functioned: 

“I never saw them act like scientists, digging into the numbers to verify the very trends that formed the basis of their reactive policy pronouncements. They did not act like researchers, using critical thinking to dissect the published science or differentiate a correlation from a cause. They certainly did not show a physician’s clinical perspective. With their single-minded focus, they did not even act like public health experts.” (Atlas, p. 176)

Atlas was surprised, indeed stunned, that “No one on the Task Force presented any data” to justify lockdowns or to contradict the evidence on lockdown harms that Atlas presented. (Atlas, p. 206) More specifically, no data or research was ever presented (except by Atlas) to contradict or question anything Birx said. “Until I arrived,” Atlas observes, “no one had challenged anything she said during her six months as the Task Force Coordinator.” (Atlas, p. 234) [BOLDFACE ADDED]

Atlas cannot explain what he’s witnessing. “That was all part of the puzzle of the Task Force doctors,” he states. “There was a lack of scientific rigor in meetings I attended. I never saw them question the data. The striking uniformity of opinion by Birx, Redfield, Fauci, and (Brett) Giroir [former Admiral and Task Force “testing czar”] was not anything like what I had seen in my career in academic medicine.” (Atlas, p. 244)

How can we explain the puzzle of this uncanny apparent complicity by the Task Force troika? 

Methinks the intelligence agent also doth protest too much

An interesting hint comes from the string of anecdotes comprising Matthew Lawrence’s New Yorker article “The Plague Year.” Lawrence writes that Matt Pottinger (the NSC liaison to Birx) tried to convince Task Force members that masking could stop the virus “‘dead in its tracks’” but his views “stirred up surprisingly rigid responses from the public-health contingent.” Lawrence continues to report that “In Pottinger’s opinion, when Redfield, Fauci, Birx, and (Stephen) Hahn spoke, it could sound like groupthink,” implying that those were the members of the “public-health contingent” who did not agree with Pottinger’s masking ideas.

But wait. We just noted Birx’s frustration, indeed deep regret, that the CDC led by Redfield, as well as Fauci (and even Frieden) did not agree with her ideas on asymptomatic spread and masking. So why does Pottinger imply that she and the “public-health contingent” of the Task Force were group-thinking this issue, against him? 

I would suggest that the only way to make sense of these contradictions within Birx’s narrative and between her, Atlas and Pottinger’s stories, is if we understand “align with us” and “our recommendations” to refer not to the perceived Birx-Fauci-Redfield troika, but to the Birx-Pottinger-lab leak cabal that was actually running the show. 

In fact, Birx and Pottinger put so much effort into insisting on the solidarity of the troika, even when it contradicts their own statements, that the question inevitably arises: what do they have to gain from it? The benefit of insisting that Birx was allied with Fauci, Redfield and the “public-health contingent” on the Task Force, I would argue, is that this deflects attention from the Birx-Pottinger-cabal non-public-health alliance. 

Her authority and policies emanated from a hidden source

The explanation of Atlas’s perceived “puzzle of the Task Force doctors” that makes the most sense to me is that Deborah Birx, in contrast and often in opposition to the other doctors on the Task Force, represented the interests of what I’m calling the lab leak cabal: those not just in the US but in the international intelligence/biosecurity community who needed to cover up a potentially devastating lab leak and who wanted to impose draconian lockdown measures such as the world had never known. 

Who exactly they were and why they needed lockdowns are subjects of ongoing investigations. [Ed.: Lockdowns were needed to destroy economies, instill despair, heighten fear and reduce energy consumption.]

In the meantime, once we separate Birx from Trump, from the rest of the administration, and from the others on the Task Force, we can see clearly that her single-minded and scientifically nonsensical emphasis on silent spread and asymptomatic testing was geared toward a single goal: to scare everyone so much that lockdowns would appear to be a sensible policy. This is the same strategy that was, uncannily in my opinion, implemented almost to the letter in nearly every other country around the world. But that’s for the next article.

I’ll close this chapter of the Birx riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, with Scott Atlas’s report of his parting conversation with President Trump:

“‘You were right about everything, all along the way,’” Trump said to Atlas. “‘And you know what? You were also right about something else. Fauci wasn’t the biggest problem of all of them. It really wasn’t him. You were right about that.’ I found myself nodding as I held the phone in my hand,” Atlas says. “I knew exactly whom he was talking about.” (Atlas, p. 300)

And now, so do we. (read more)

In a statement to the Chronicle-Telegram, Oberlin College expressed disappointment.

“Oberlin is disappointed that the Ohio Supreme Court has chosen not to hear our appeal of the Gibson’s Bakery judgment against the college,” the college said. “The issues raised by this case have been challenging, not only for the parties involved, but for the entire Oberlin community.”

(read more)

Chloe Cole was 15 years old when she agreed to let a “gender-affirming” surgeon remove her healthy breasts—a life-altering decision she now deeply regrets.

Her “brutal” transition from female to male was anything but the romanticized “gender journey” that transgender activists and medical professionals had portrayed, she told The Epoch Times.

“It’s a little creepy to call it that,” she said.

Cole, who is now 18, feels more like she’s just awoken from “a nightmare,” and she’s disappointed with the medical and school system that fast-tracked her to gender transition surgery.

“I was convinced that it would make me happy, that it would make me whole as a person,” she said.

Although she feels “let down” by most of the adults in her life, she doesn’t blame her parents for following the advice of school staff and medical professionals, who “affirmed” her desire for social transitioning, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery.

Most of the medical professionals did nothing to question or dissuade her or her parents, she said.

“They effectively guilted my parents into allowing them to do this. They gave them the whole, ‘Either you’ll have a dead daughter or a live son,’ thing. They cited suicide rates,” she said. “There is just so much complacency on the part of educators—all the adults basically. I’m really upset over it. I feel a little bit angry. I wasn’t really allowed to just grow.”

Her parents, though skeptical, trusted the medical professionals and eventually consented to their daughter’s desire for medical interventions, including surgery, which was covered by their health insurance policy.

“It shouldn’t be put on adolescents to make these kinds of decisions at all,” she said.

Transgenderism

Transgenderism, while widely celebrated in popular culture and on social media, is a much more divisive issue than people may think, Cole said.

Today, Cole is one of a growing number of young “detransitioners” who reject current trends in transgender ideology and oppose the “gender-affirming” model of care being pushed by progressive lawmakers at state and federal levels.

She recently testified against California Senate Bill 107, proposed legislation authored by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), that would shelter parents who consent to the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender transition surgery on their children from prosecution in other states that view such actions as child abuse.

“I think that is really dangerous for families across the US. It can tear families apart,” said Cole, who is expected to testify against the bill again this week.

Cole has been harassed on social media and received a couple of death threats from trans activists since she announced her detransition and took a stand against “gender-affirming” policies.

“Now that I’m completely disillusioned from all of it, it’s really shocking that we’ve even gotten to this point,” she said.

The Struggle

Diagnosed with ADHD at a young age, Cole now believes she’s “on the spectrum.”

“There is really a high co-morbidity rate between gender dysphoria and autism,” she said.

Though “very feminine” as a young child, Cole was “a bit of a tomboy,” as she grew older.

“I just really hated dresses, skirts, and things of that sort,” she said.

Children’s TV shows had left her with the message “girls are less significant,” because they often depict characters who are more girly or feminine as “stupid, airheaded, and like just get in the way of things,” she said. “And that kind of imprinted on me.”

However, her real fear of femininity and early disdain for womanhood began years ago on social media and LGBT websites, she said.

“I had started puberty fairly young, about nine years old, and I started to struggle with growing into a woman,” she said.

She started her first social media account at 11 on Instagram, and with nearly unrestricted access to the internet, she was exposed to inappropriate content, including pornography and “sexting” in the online communities.

On Instagram, she was first approached by boys who identified as gay and bisexual through the platform’s messaging feature, but eventually began spending more time on recommended websites for 12-to 19-year-old “trans” teens.

“There was one particular page that stood out to me. It was a bunch of adolescents who identified as FTM [female to male]. It seemed like they were very closely knit, a very supportive community, and that just kind of spoke to me because I’ve always struggled with making friendships and feeling excluded. I’ve never really fit in with other kids my age.”

Cole seldom interacted with the transgender community in real life, but she noticed from online discussions with trans teens that many of them had deep emotional scars and mental health issues.

“Pretty much every transgender person I’ve ever met, especially around my age either has really bad family issues, or they’ve been sexually abused or assaulted at a very young age, and it’s really concerning that nobody really talks about that association,” she said.

At 11, Cole also didn’t understand she wasn’t supposed to look like the sexualized images of scantily clad women she saw online.

“I didn’t know that then,” she said. “I started to develop body image issues. I started thinking, ‘Why don’t I look like this? Am I not a woman?’ And a lot of the feminist content pushed by other girls was making womanhood out to be this terrible thing.”

The Transition

By the time she was 12, Cole told her parents she was transgender and they sought out professional medical help.

Cole went to a gender specialist, who referred her to an endocrinologist. When the endocrinologist refused to prescribe blockers or hormones, citing concerns about how they could affect Cole’s cognitive development, he became the first and last doctor to ever deny her gender-affirming care.

“It was very easy to just find another endocrinologist who would affirm me,” she said.

After two appointments, a second endocrinologist approved both puberty blockers and testosterone.

Cole was 13 when she began physically transitioning. The puberty blocker injections reduced the estrogen in her body, and about a month later she started injecting herself with testosterone, a process medical professionals call hormone therapy.

“They put me on blockers first,” she said. “I would get hot flashes. They were pretty bad. They would happen kind of sporadically, and it would get to the point where it would feel really itchy. I couldn’t even wear pants or sweaters in the winter. It’s like an artificial menopause.”

Once on testosterone, Cole’s voice “dropped pretty low” and her breasts got smaller and lost their shape over time, she said.

Cole stayed on puberty blockers for about 18 months and testosterone for about three years.

The hot flashes ceased when she stopped taking the puberty blockers, she said.

Binding Decision

At school, Cole was “an awkward kid,” but had made a few more friends online and in person. But, because she had only come out to her closest friends, she had to deal with anxiety over the possibility of being outted.

“I never even told teachers my preferred name or anything up until high school, but I was presenting in men’s clothes and shorter haircuts,” she said.

A few months after she was prescribed testosterone, Cole was groped by a boy in the middle of her eighth-grade history class, which was so chaotic, no one noticed—including her teacher, she said. The incident sealed her decision to wear binders to flatten and conceal her breasts.

“I had a relatively small chest, but it still did a bit of damage to me. My ribs are a little deformed because of them. The way they work—it’s not like the breasts just disappear—they push the breast into the ribcage,” she said.

Cole recalls her binder sticking to her skin in the hot Central Valley California weather and her chest feeling constricted. “It was just the most uncomfortable thing,” she said.

She used the men’s bathroom, but always feared she might be sexually assaulted.

However, she didn’t change in the boys’ locker room because she was afraid of being seen with her binder, and “that somebody would make a comment on it, and target me for it,” she said.

Most of the students, except those who had known her as a younger child, knew her as a male, but a boy in her Phys-Ed class eventually noticed her feminine features.

“There was one time during P.E. when we were swimming. I took my shirt off. I was wearing a binder, and somebody pointed out my body shape. That was another thing that made me want to get rid of my breasts,” Cole said. “He said something along the line of, ‘I don’t know what it is, but you’re looking kind of feminine,’ and that kind of hurt me.”

Before the first day of her freshman year in high school, Cole went to the principal’s office with her parents and asked for her name and records to be changed to “Leo.”

‘Top Surgery’

Before her operation, Cole attended a “top surgery” class with about 12-15 other children and their parents to learn about the different types of incisions.

In hindsight, she said, “it kind of felt like propaganda—the words they use like ‘gender-affirming care’ and things of that sort,” she said. “It does feel like I was sold a product.”

Cole recalls looking around the room and noticing about half of the other kids appeared they were a few years younger than her. “Looking back on it now is a little horrifying. It’s a little weird considering … they were already considering surgery,” she said.

But, at the time, seeing other kids and knowing she wasn’t alone, solidified Cole’s decision to go ahead with the most widely performed type of double mastectomy called a “double incision with nipple grafts” in June 2020. She was 15.

The surgery involved removing breast tissue and contouring the chest to make it look more masculine.

“They take off the nipple and reattach it in a more masculine position, and there are a few side effects associated with it,” Cole said.

Not only is there loss of sensation from cutting away the breast tissue, but repositioning the nipple requires severing the duct that supplies breastmilk to the nipple, she said.

The surgery left Cole with deep muscle soreness for which she was prescribed an opioid-based medication, but because the pain from the resulting digestion problems was worse than the pain in her chest, she stopped taking the pills.

“I was actually disabled for a while. I had a really limited range of motion, especially in my arms and upper body. There were a lot of things I couldn’t do. I couldn’t even leave the house for a few weeks,” she said. “I remember that being really upsetting.”

The most devastating part of the recovery process has been ongoing post-op issues with her nipples, she said.

“It’s been two years, and I’m still having some really bad skin issues,” she said. “The way the skin heals over the grafts … is just awful. It’s really quite disgusting.”

Cole said she had trouble contacting her surgeon afterwards, and although she was supposed to have a follow-up appointment with him, she ended up having a call with two nurses who were in the operating room instead.

She also worries the puberty blockers might have affected her brain development as her first endocrinologist had warned, but her greatest regret is how the surgery has permanently affected her as a woman.

“I was 15. You can’t exactly expect an adolescent to be making adult decisions,” she said. “So, because of a decision I made when I was kid, I can’t breastfeed my children in the future. It’s just a little concerning that this is being recommended to kids at the age I was, and now even younger. They’re starting to operate on preteens now.”

Detransition Dilemma

During the COVID-19 lockdowns and distance learning, Cole resorted to social media for virtual interaction and noticed girls her age were posting “super-idealized” pictures of themselves. Although she realized the images were edited and enhanced, they triggered the same body image issues she had experienced as a child.

“For a while it made me wonder, ‘Is this really a woman’s worth? If I don’t do this, does that make me not as good as these other women?’” she said.

But eventually, Cole bought some feminine clothing and makeup, which she only wore in the privacy of her room. “I guess subconsciously I started to realize like what I was losing started to miss presenting more femininely, like being pretty,” she said.

Over time, she grew increasingly more disillusioned with the idea of living as a man.

“I realized I wasn’t really up for a lot of the responsibilities that come with it,” she said. “There were times when I felt like I wasn’t good enough as a girl, but maybe I’m not good enough as a boy either, and maybe I just can’t be good enough to be either, so I don’t really know what I am.”

Over the next few months, the isolation of the lockdowns and school closures took their toll on Cole’s state of mind. She was depressed and fell into an emotional tailspin.

During the second semester of her junior year, Cole’s grades plummeted, and her parents decided to put her into an online-only school program.

“It was sort of like a homeschooling program, except I would have to go to the district office at least once per week for testing purposes,” she said. “My school performance actually got a lot worse, because now I was truly isolated.”

But Cole admits less social interaction gave her time for more introspection.

During the last quarter of her junior year, she took a psychology class for the first time and learned about child development. One of the lessons covered the Harlow experiments on infant rhesus monkeys with a theme of maternity, mother-child bonding, and breastfeeding.

“I started to realize this is what I’m taking away from myself. I’m not going to be able to bond with my children the same way that a mother does by taking on a male role and I’ve gotten rid of my breasts, so I can’t feed my children naturally or be involved with them in that way. And I think that was like the biggest catalyst in me realizing how wrong all of this was,” she said.

Embracing Womanhood

Cole announced her detransition in May 2021, about 11 months after the surgery, and has embraced womanhood.

“I am a woman,” she said.

Despite her transition, Cole said she has always been mainly attracted to masculine men and had only ever been “marginally attracted” to women. She is now “straight,” she said, and knows now that her gender confusion as a child was based on insecurity and her fear of being a woman.

Cole has enjoyed “cultivating” a new feminine look for herself, but says she still isn’t really into makeup and doesn’t have time for it most days.

“I’m almost always in a dress or a skirt because, honestly, it’s really comfy,” she said.

She’s learned to accept her body the way it is, she said, and doesn’t want to go through the process of reconstructive surgery or get breast implants.

“There are multiple options for reconstruction, but I honestly don’t think it’s worth it,” she said. “I will never get the function back no matter what I do, so there’s not really a point in doing it.”

Cole graduated from high school in May and she has applied for college.

Message of Hope

Though she has been harassed on social media and threatened by activists, Cole said she’s committed to sharing her story.

“I want to prevent more cases like mine from happening,” she said.

She wonders why educators have become complicit in the “gender-affirming” process.

“The problem is they’re not really pushing back on this whole trans thing. When I told the high school to change my name, and my email, and their records, there was really no pushback or anything,” she said.

Cole urged children who may be thinking about gender transition surgery “not to get caught up in the whole romanticization” of what it might be like to be the opposite gender and suggested they consider that there may be “other reasons” underlying gender dysphoria, including autism or other mental health issues.

“I very much suggest waiting, because the brain doesn’t stop developing for most people until about their mid 20s, if not a bit later, and teenagers are known for making rash decisions. It sucks hearing that, especially as a kid, but it’s the truth,” she said. “There is a reason why you can’t buy cigarettes or alcohol or vote or rent a car under a certain age.” (read more)

COVID-19 early treatment: real-time analysis of 2,032 studies
https://c19early.com/

Globalization and its geography, along with the end of ecumenical class concerns, certainly widened the ancient mass-elite divide. But there was a third catalyst that explained the mutual animosity in the pre-Trump years. The masses increasingly could not see any reason for elite status other than expertise in navigating the system for lucrative compensation. 

An Incompetent Elite

In short, money and education certification were no longer synonymous with any sense of competency or expertise. Just the opposite often became true. Those who thought up some of the most destructive, crackpot, and dangerous policies in American history were precisely those who were degreed and well-off and careful to ensure they were never subject to the destructive consequences of their own pernicious ideologies. 

The masses of homeless in our streets were a consequence of various therapeutic bromides antithetical to the ancient, sound notions of mental hospitals. The new theories ignored the responsibilities of nuclear families to take care of their own, and the assumption that hard-drug use was not a legitimate personal-choice, but rather a catastrophe for all of society. 

From universities also came critical race theory and critical legal theory, which were enshrined throughout our institutions. The bizarre idea that “good” racism was justified as a get-even-response to “bad” racism, resonated as ahistorical, illogical, and plain, old-fashioned race-based hatred. 

The masses never understood why their children should attend colleges where obsessions with superficial appearances were celebrated as “diversity,” graduation ceremonies matter-of-factly were segregated by race, dorms that were racially exclusive were lauded as “theme houses,” Jim-Crow-style set-aside zones were rebranded “safe spaces,” and racial quotas were merely “affirmative action.” 

Ancient notions such as that punishment deters crime were laughed at by the degreed who gave us the current big-city district attorneys. Their experiments with decriminalizing violent acts, defunding the police, and delegitimizing incarceration led to a Lord of the Flies-style anarchy in our major cities. Note well, those with advanced or professional degrees who dreamed all this up did not often live in defunded police zones, did not have homeless people on their lawns, and found ways for their children to navigate around racial quotes in elite college admissions. 

So, the credentialed lost their marginal reputations for competency. Were we really to believe 50 former intelligence heads and experts who claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation”? Even if they were not simply biased, did any of them have the competence to determine what the laptop was? 

Or were we to take seriously the expertise of “17 Nobel Prize winners” who swore Biden’s “Build Back Better” debacle would not be inflationary as the country went into 9 percent plus inflation? Did we really believe our retired four-stars that Trump was a Nazi, a Mussolini, and someone to be removed from office “the sooner the better”? 

Or were we to trust the 1,200 “health care professionals” who assured us that, medically speaking, while the rest of society was locked down it was injurious for the health of people of color to follow curfews and mask mandates instead of thronging en masse in street protests?

Or were we to believe Kevin Clinesmith’s FISA writ, or Andrew McCabe’s four-time assertion that he did not leak to the media, or that James Comey under oath really did not know the answers to 245 inquiries? Did Robert Mueller really not know what either the Steele dossier or Fusion GPS was? 

Middle Class Competence

On the operational level, the elite proved even more suspect. Militarily, the middle classes in the armed forces proved as lethal as ever, despite being demonized as racists and white supremacists. But their generals, diplomats and politicians proved so often incompetent in translating their tactical victories in the Middle East and elsewhere into strategic success or even mere advantage. 

Nationally, the failure of the elite that transcends politics is even more manifest. The country is $30 trillion in debt. No one has the courage to simply stop printing money. The border is nonexistent, downtown America is a No Man’s Land, and our air travel is a circus—and not an “expert” can be found willing or able to fix things. Is Pete Buttigieg the answer to thousands of canceled flights or backed-up ports? Is Alejandro Mayorkas to be believed when he assures the border is “closed” and “secure” as millions flood across? 

The universities are turning out mediocre graduates without the skills or knowledge of a generation ago, but certainly with both greater debt and arrogance. 

Our bureaucratic fixers can only regulate, stop, retard, slow-down, or destroy freeways, dams, reservoirs, aqueducts, ports, and refineries—and yet never seem to give up their own driving, enjoyment of stored water, or buying of imported goods. 

Is it easier to topple than to sculpt a statue? 

A generation from now, in the emperor has no clothes fashion, someone may innocently conclude that most “research” in the social sciences and humanities of our age is as unreliable as it is unreadable, or that the frequent copy-cat Hollywood remakes of old films were far worse than the originals. 

Does anyone think a Jim Acosta is on par with a John Chancellor? That Mark Milley is equal to a Matthew Ridgway? Is Anthony Fauci like a Jonas Salk or an Albert Sabin? 

Yet this lack of competence and taste among the elite is not shared to the same degree in a decline of middle-class standards. 

Homes are built better than they were in the 1970s. Cars are better assembled than in the 1960s. The electrician, the plumber, and the roofer are as good or better than ever. The soldier stuck in the messy labyrinth of Baghdad or on patrol in the wilds of Afghanistan was every bit as brave and perhaps far more lethal than his Korean War or World War II counterpart. 

How does this translate to the American people? They navigate around the detritus of the elite, avoiding big-city downtown USA. 

They are skipping movies at theaters. They are passing on watching professional sports. They don’t watch the network news. They think the CDC, NIAID, and NIH are incompetent—and fear their incompetence can prove deadly.  

Millions increasingly doubt their children should enroll in either a four-year college or the military, and they assume the FBI, CIA, and Justice Department are as likely to monitor Americans as they are unlikely to find and arrest those engaged in terrorism or espionage. 

When the elite peddles its current civil-war or secession porn—projecting onto the middle classes their own fantasies of a red/blue violent confrontation, or their own desires to see a California or New York detached from Mississippi and Wyoming—they have no idea that America’s recent failures are their own failures. 

The reason why the United States begs Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia to pump more oil is not because of lazy frackers in Texas or incompetent rig hands in North Dakota, but because of utterly incompetent diplomats, green zealots, and ideological “scientists.” 

Had the views of majors and colonels in Afghanistan rather than their superiors in the Pentagon and White House prevailed, there would have been no mass flight or humiliation in Kabul. 

Crime is out of control not because we have either sadistic or incompetent police forces but sinister DAs, and mostly failed, limited academics who fabricated their policies. 

Current universities produce more bad books, bad teaching, bad ideas, and badly educated students, not because the janitors are on strike, the maintenance people can’t fix the toilets, or the landscapers cannot keep the shrubbery alive, but because their academics and administrators have hidden their own incompetence and lack of academic rigor and teaching expertise behind the veil of woke censoriousness. 

The Naked Emperors’ Furious Search for Fig Leaves

The war between blue and red and mass versus elite is really grounded in the reality that those who feel they were the deserved winners of globalization and who are the sole enlightened on matters of social, economic, political, and military policy have no record of recent success, but a long litany of utter failure. 

They have become furious that the rest of the country sees through these naked emperors. Note Merrick Garland’s sanctimonious defense of the supposed professionalism of the Justice Department and FBI hierarchies—while even as he pontificated, they were in the very process of leaking and planting sensational “nuclear secrets” narratives to an obsequious media to justify the indefensible political fishing expedition at a former president’s home and current electoral rival to Merrick Garland’s boss. 

The masses increasingly view the elites’ money, their ZIP codes, their degrees and certificates, and their titles not just with indifference, but with the disdain they now have earned on their own merits. 

And that pushback has made millions of our worst and stupidest quite mad. (read more)

Divining the principal purpose of the DOJ/FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago on 8 August 2022 hasn’t really been that hard.  The timing and its juxtaposition with the Justice Department’s motion to substitute itself for FBI employees, as defendant in Trump’s RICO lawsuit over Russiagate, have produced a “speaking timeline.”

But it’s good to know that one of the two most important events in that timeline yields a treasure trove of motive for DOJ to seize materials from Mar-a-Lago.  That event is former president Trump’s filing of an amended complaint in the RICO lawsuit, which he did on 21 June 2022.

I’ve been threatening to inspect the amendments to the lawsuit, and have now completed that extensive task (So You Don’t Have To).  The short version up front:  the amendments include a raft of details that weren’t in the original complaint, although many of them have been known for years (having come from sources like the DOJ IG report on the FISA process, and summaries of findings about Russiagate/Spygate from Senate and House committees).

Other details come from Special Counsel John Durham’s court filings over the last 12 months.  Those details mostly have to do with the Alfa Bank allegations.  A few are additions to earlier-submitted facts on Igor Danchenko’s (and his “sub-sources’”) role with the Steele dossier and the FBI.

Both sets of new details, amounting to hundreds of new individual facts offered in evidence (which I will henceforth refer to as “Facts”), are significant.  But it’s very probable that the Facts that got the scalded-cat reaction from DOJ are the mostly long-known items about the baseline Russiagate hoax:  revolving around the Steele dossier, leading to the falsified FISA applications, and implicating Hillary Clinton and the DNC.

That’s because they also implicate – or bring into the lawsuit the actions of, in significant detail – the FBI, DOJ, CIA, John Brennan, the Executive Office of the President, Barack Obama’s senior staff, and Barack Obama.

It only takes a handful of keyword searches to satisfy yourself that the FBI and DOJ were the only entities mentioned frequently, and as implicated actors, in the original complaint.  Brennan’s name isn’t in the original at all, and the mentions of CIA and EOP were very minimal (fewer than a handful for each, and with no implications of complicity, prominence, or potential for significant knowledge of the other government activities).

The amended complaint changed that.  It described Brennan’s role in briefing Obama on Hillary’s plan to defame Trump with an oppo campaign, for example, and did so in some detail (Facts 162-163, p. 39; Fact 370, p. 85)).  There’s a whole new section on CIA participants in the fraudulent brief from Michael Sussmann on the “Alfa Bank” narrative (299-309, pp. 69-72), expanding considerably on the more limited summary in the original.

There’s more detail on Neustar, Joffe, and Neustar’s role in providing DNS resolution services for the communications of the EOP (Facts 127-133, pp. 32-33; 142, p. 35).  Other added references to Neustar’s role with the EOP are in revised Facts throughout the text; by keyword count, the amended complaint contains 17 such references compared to 9 in the original.

There’s also a much-expanded section of Facts on the FBI’s pursuit of Michael Flynn (Facts 345-367, pp. 80-85), which includes numerous details not present in the original complaint.

Trump made no mention in the original complaint of his decision in late 2020 to declassify government agency files on the conduct of Russiagate and Spygate (a major segment of which was encompassed by Crossfire Hurricane).

But that decision gets its own Fact number in the amended complaint (371, on p. 85), and is set in the context of other Facts – well known and not in dispute – that surrounded it.  Sort of like a honk in the driveway, if you will.

The Horowitz investigation got short shrift in the original complaint.  The amended complaint has a long section on the FISA fraud at DOJ and FBI and the findings of the IG report (see especially Facts 378-448 on pp. 87-100).

And there’s something else Trump didn’t even mention in the original complaint.  That’s Obama’s name.  It’s not there.

In the amended complaint there are 17 references to Obama, 14 of them relating to Obama’s knowledge of events in the Russiagate hoax.  (It’s not prohibitive to do your own search to find them.)

The sum total of the new facts lays out details that clarify how involved the agencies of the federal government were in handling and processing information about the Russiagate hoax.  Trump’s intent, according to his lawyers, has not been to focus on the activities of the government agencies.  That’s probably in part why the original complaint made far fewer references to their documented activities, and focused instead on the actions of individual officials; i.e., the ones named in the complaint.

The amended complaint continued to focus on the actions of individuals, but the added detail would leave someone who’d never read up on this topic before with his jaw hanging open, aghast at the picture that emerges of what the government was doing.

Basically, Trump went from holding fire in the original complaint, which was filed on 24 March 2022, to firing into the big guns with the amended complaint on 21 June 2022.

For completeness, we may note that three defendants were added to the amended complaint:  Rod Rosenstein, Neustar Security Services (in addition to Neustar, Inc., which was in the original), and Adam Schiff.

Important added perspective

A few other notes on additions of significance in the amended complaint:

The brief reference from the original to the plan to manufacture fake “communications” between servers for Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization is expanded.  In the amended complaint, Facts 134-140 (pp. 33-34) provide new detail on the enterprise of “[t]he Clinton Campaign, the DNC, Fusion GPS, and Joffe” to “dredge up confidential, proprietary, non-public information, data and/or records relating to Donald J. Trump, the Trump Campaign, and the Trump Organization.”

If necessary the data “would be falsified and/or presented in a fraudulent manner to create an “inference” of wrongdoing.”  The amended complaint gives the code name by which this operation was known among the planners: “Crimson Rhino.”  In other words, they were so well aware of what they were doing that they had a cutesy code name for it.

There is in general a lot more detail in the amended complaint about the coordinated shopping of the hoax materials (the dossier, the Alfa Bank narrative) to the major media.  In the original, there are very few references to individual media outlets.  There is no reference at all, for example, to the big networks.

Item 166 of the amended complaint, however, highlights this from a Jake Sullivan interview with the House Intelligence Committee:  “Sullivan began meeting with the ‘reporting and producer teams of each of the major networks’ including ‘CNN, ABC, FOX, CBS [and] NBC.’”  As indicated in the House Committee report, this wasn’t a generic reference by Sullivan to conferring with these outlets.  It was about advising the media of themes about Trump that were being pushed by the Clinton campaign.

This Fact on Sullivan appears in a group of newly-added Facts about media contacts by the Russiagate planners in the summer of 2016, running from 164-168 (pp. 39-40).  For more added material on the media onslaught, which illuminates how much of the anti-Trump material was simply being handed from the Hillary-DNC-Fusion group to the major media, see the Facts in and around 191-192 (p. 45), and 254-268 (pp. 60-63).

Others are scattered throughout the Facts section.  The media outlets don’t come off well.

Facts 175-179 (pp. 41-43) include newly-added information about meetings from 29 July 2016 to early August 2016 involving Michael Sussmann, Marc Elias, Rodney Joffe, Fritsch and Seago of Fusion GPS, and Christopher Steele.  Sussmann’s billing of these meetings to the Clinton campaign is documented.  Steele is quoted about his 29 July meeting with Sussmann to the effect that the “instruction to produce [Memorandum 112 (of the dossier – J.E.)] was absolutely definitely linked to the server issue [Alfa Bank hoax – J.E.].” (Item 176(c) p. 42)

The Facts juxtaposed in this passage point, in other words, to a comprehensive enterprise including both the dossier and the Alfa Bank effort, all being billed by traveling salesman Sussmann to the Clinton campaign.

It’s not that we didn’t know this.  The point is that Trump’s RICO complaint was amended to include it.  It’s pretty hard to wriggle out of the implications.  That goes directly to the goal of the complaint, which is to recover Trump’s costs of litigation ($24 million) from the defendants.

But in the process of fighting the issue in court, where defendants are likely to try to deflect responsibility to government agencies that can clam up at will, the breadth of implications about those agencies, from the Facts he sets forth, would give Trump the opening to use the declassified material on Russiagate/Spygate to slice responsibility with accuracy and precision.

Here’s motive

Speaking of which.  Item 196 (p. 46) is a bit of a stand-alone, but a very important one.  It covers the following:  “On September 7, 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to Comey and Strzok regarding ‘U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server.’”

This connects dots from Obama, whom Brennan had briefed on this matter a few weeks before, to the USIC, of which Brennan was one of the most senior members, providing information on it to Comey and Strzok.  Students of Russiagate will of course recall Peter Strzok’s text to Lisa page on 2 September 2016 in which he said “potus wants to know everything we are doing.” That text came on the heels of a month of John Brennan briefing the Gang of Eight on Capitol Hill most urgently on the “Trump-Russia” allegations.  The text was sent five days before the USIC prompt to Comey and Strzok.

It was also sent after a five-weeks-and-counting cavalry charge by Fusion GPS and the Clinton campaign to force-feed the media with those same allegations.  In September of 2016, there were probably more people in Washington who did know this was all a big enterprise involving Hillary, of which high-level Obama officials were well aware (and about which they were doing dubious, Twilight-zone things), than who didn’t.

The Trump RICO complaint doesn’t connect all those dots. That’s not the job of its Facts section.

But it’s a good bet the Russiagate/Spygate material declassified by Trump does connect them.

That’s a very good reason for DOJ – now under the undisputed sway of the same party and same actors who controlled the agencies of government in 2016 – to not want the declassified files to see the light of day.

There are too many topical groups of added material in the amended complaint to highlight them all.  Briefly, here are two more.

Little pokes in the eye

One is a much-expanded section on the activities of The Democracy Integrity Project, funded by the Penn Quarter Group (six important words), and its founder Daniel Jones (312-326, pp. 73-77).  These entities were involved in the Alfa Bank saga and the retention of Fusion GPS during Trump’s term in office.

The Penn Quarter Group isn’t mentioned in the original complaint.  The cognoscenti recognize that the added reference to it is basically a “poke George Soros in the eye, why don’t you” move.

The other passage is Facts 289-292 (pp. 67-68), which outline the December 2016 interlude with David Kramer, John McCain, Steele and Simpson, and the dossier.  This chapter in Russiagate wasn’t mentioned in the original complaint.

I doubt it was put in the amended complaint for mere completeness.  Something changed – at a minimum, a decision was made – between 24 March and 21 June 2022, and with the amended complaint, Trump came out swinging.  You decide how epic that feels to you; for me, it’s not so much a feeling of epicness as of a decision to go for the whole wad on this charge.

Timeline

We looked at the timeline before (links at top).  There are probably other things to add to it, and those will be added with time and/or by alert correspondents.

The basic premise here is that it’s Trump’s vision for the declassified material to come out, and it’s the permanent state’s vision for it to not come out.

The key dates seem to include, at a minimum, 3 June 2022, when the FBI was eyes-on with the material Trump was holding at Mar-a-Lago.  As noted in an earlier article, Kash Patel is certain that that material includes the declassified files.  The FBI presumably verified that on 3 June.

On 8 June, Trump’s lawyers got a letter from federal investigators asking for a storage room containing documents to be “further secured.”  A padlock was placed on the storage room.

On 19 June 2022, Trump sent a letter to the National Archives naming Kash Patel and John Solomon as “representatives for access to Presidential records of my administration.”  (See the Politico report, which was made on 24 June, well before the 8 August raid.  Politico got a statement from Solomon, conveying, in part, that Solomon “said this work is for a narrow, targeted research project, and not on Trump’s behalf — that he is ‘going in as a journalist’ to get documents of ‘great public interest.’”)

It was clear the records were the ones declassified by Trump at the end of his term.

It appears very likely that at that point (19 June), Trump was aware of an impending move by which the Biden administration would try to remove his copies of presidential records from Mar-a-Lago.

It would have taken considerable time to prepare the amended RICO complaint – filed two days later – whose most recent Fact references date to Durham case activity in May 2022.  We can deduce that at the time of his appointment of Patel and Solomon, Trump’s amended complaint was substantially completed, and he knew he’d be sparking action of some kind from the Biden agencies when he filed it.

The triggering event for the amended complaint could well have been the grand jury subpoena issued to Trump on 12 May 2022, requesting “material the government believed to be in Trump’s possession even after he turned over the prior material” (i.e., material turned over in January 2022). 

As noted, again, in a previous post, Judge Bruce Reinhart recused himself from his magistrate position on the RICO case the day after the amended complaint was filed.  His exit on 22 June was followed by three more magistrate judges departing the pattern between 22 June and 1 July 2022.

One obvious construction to put on that parade of recusals is that the amended complaint put a lot of evidence and discovery in play that’s likely to affect a whole lot of people in government.  Only three defendants were added (two of them government officials, Rosenstein and Schiff, neither of whom is affected by the DOJ substitution motion), but numerous new references to government agency activities were appended in the Facts.

It was then on 14 July 2022 that the DOJ filed its motion to substitute itself as defendant in the RICO case for Comey, McCabe, Strzok, (Lisa) Page, and Clinesmith.  There’s been a robust back and forth on that matter in Judge Donald Middlebrooks’s court in the Southern District of Florida.  That has been mostly invisible to the public.  But it’s the real “thing” that’s going on, in my view.

Regarding the DOJ motion being filed first, followed nearly a month later by the raid on Mar-a-Lago, it’s a good hypothesis that DOJ knew from at least 3 June 2022, if not before, that it would want to seize the records Trump was holding.  But it would have created quite the prejudicial appearance for the substitution motion in court, if DOJ had executed that raid before it filed the motion.

Waiting to execute the raid also gave Trump the opportunity to show his reaction to the substitution motion first.  On 4 August, in his motion opposing the DOJ move, Trump signaled that he intended to fight it.

The OODA loop perspective

Nothing I’ve said here or anywhere else is intended to insist that the raid on Mar-a-Lago is not about background information on 1/6, or prejudicing the 2022 election, or keeping Trump out of the 2024 race.  I imagine there are people with all those interests considering them in the tactical decisions about what to do this summer.

But we’ve really been reacting too slowly, by looking at form over substance on all these matters.  Some of our most expert pundits, whose lifetime of experience in their career fields is impressive and unquestioned, are for that very reason failing to see that all things are no longer equal in their professions, whether politics or law or media.

The 1/6 committee, just for starters, isn’t even “about” 1/6 – certainly not in the sense of the committee actually trying to get to the bottom of anything.  It’s about preventing Trump from doing anything in politics again.  To the extent the whole apparatus of government can pull together, it’s also about impugning Trump’s voter base and handicapping it with legally actionable suspicions.  It’s political warfare, which is why it’s not being waged as a fair fight.

In electoral politics, a great deal of what used to be a predictable, formulaic exercise in polling and appealing to the voters has now become one approach corridor or another of a political warfare campaign.  (See Liz Cheney’s reelection campaign, for example, in which 95% of her donations came from outside the state, and she openly requested Wyoming Democrats to vote for her in the primary this week.  Political statisticians have estimated that as many as half of her 49,000-odd votes came from Democrats in the two counties that went for Biden in 2020.  That’s not principle, issue politics, or “democracy”; it’s take-no-prisoners election warfare.)

National intelligence has also become a corridor for political warfare, which is easy for everyone to see and think because hardly anyone comes from national intelligence, and even those who do aren’t actually blinded by their inside knowledge of it.  (For some, it’s convenient to affect to be.)  If anything, their perspective on how the sausage is made is enlightened, rather than obscured by outdated expectations.

Law and judicial process is another area where the old conventions and expectations are less and less a useful guide to what’s really going on.  It was blatantly obvious, for example, that in 2020, Judge Emmet Sullivan was running some kind of bizarre delaying action, for months and months and months, on the Michael Flynn case.  (See here, here, and the Wikipedia summary here for the end of the saga with Flynn’s pardon in November 2020.)  Without dismissing or disrespecting the attempts of experts to identify some good-faith reason for this, the most useful and accurate take on it was the pragmatic acceptance by non-experts that there was some reason Sullivan was doing something shady and out of bounds from the standpoint of judicial norms and precedent.

Similarly, with the Mar-a-Lago raid and predictions about its follow-up (e.g., why Judge Reinhart is splitting babies on the release of the affidavit for the warrant), there’s little to be discerned from trying to fit his decision into “good law.”  What matters a whole lot more is the effect of his decision.  (The decision was to ask DOJ to decide which portions of the affidavit it wants to redact in a limited release).

The effect, of course, is to enable DOJ to control what the public perceives about the basis for the warrant.  There is no “judicial” or “legal” interest, per se, in producing such an outcome.  The kind of interest being served comes from a combination of political influence and personal stakes in outcomes.

As long as we don’t recognize that we need to accept thinking in these tracks – even if we resist assuming they’re the controlling factors – we’ll keep operating outside the OODA loop.  That means being outthought and outmaneuvered, time and again.

It needn’t be the case that the entire system is corrupt, and I don’t assume it is.  We continue to see good faith in courtrooms and intelligence reports and electoral politics and law enforcement.  But we see it alongside bad faith more and more often.  What to do about that is a separate question, but we can’t answer it by assuming away the growing impact of bad faith in government institutions – and in other institutions as well – on our entire nation. (read more)

In a post on Gettr, Sperry said:

BREAKING: The FBI affiant who swore to the Mar-a-Lago search warrant appears to have made a critical factual error by stating in the unsealed affidavit: “I do not believe that any spaces within the PREMISES have been authorized for the storage of classified information.” This finding, which is the linchpin of the criminal case vs. Trump, overlooks the fact that:

1) White House records confirm that a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) authorizing the briefing and storage of classified material up to the TS/SCI level had in fact been installed at Mar-a-Lago; and,

2) records show that the Secret Service had recently awarded a nearly $600,000 contract to upgrade physical security within the premises at Mar-a-Lago for Trump’s post-presidency transition

Sperry later posted:

DEVELOPING: The unsealed FBI affidavit contains several oddities:

1. Nowhere does it flat-out say “classified information” was found in Trump’s 15 boxes. On page 2, it refers only to docs “with classification markings,” which raises the specter they were no longer classified

2. It states the docs “appear” to contain National Defense Information. But agents “triaged” the boxes; they would know if they contain NDI or not

3. The affiant claimed “there is probable cause to believe evidence of obstruction will be found at the premises,” yet there’s no “obstruction” header or section spelling out why he believes this

4. He said he doesn’t believe “any spaces” w/in Mar-a-Lago are “currently” authorized for storage of classified info. So they were, but not “currently”?

This analysis appears to be accurate according to a former federal magistrate (name withheld by request) who reviewed both the redacted affidavit and Sperry’s claims.

It’s odd that the FBI would include such an easily debunked claim about appropriately secure storage areas on the premises on their affidavit. It should not have been necessary for their case if we are to believe they are trying to indict Trump for taking classified documents. By including it, they run the risk of tainting the predicate for the search warrant which could make evidence they collected during the raid inadmissible.

Everything about the raid and the case being built by the Department of Justice reeks of sloppiness and desperation. Are we seeing a Deep State plot blowing up or are we missing a deeper, darker agenda? (read more)

On Friday, the Justice Department released its highly anticipated affidavit laying out the justifications for the Aug. 8 Mar-a-Lago raid.

While the document sheds additional light on why federal authorities believed the search and seizure at former President Donald Trump's home was necessary, large swaths of the document were heavily redacted, and many questions about the raid that sent shockwaves across the nation continue to linger.

Here are six key points that we don't know about the raid.

There have been numerous reports that material seized from Mar-a-Lago during the document collections in January, June, and August contained [declassified] material with [former] classified markings.

The affidavit revealed that 184 unique documents confiscated during the January exchange with the National Archives and Records Administration, which prompted the DOJ inquiry, bore [obsolete] classified markings. Of that trove, 67 documents were marked "confidential," 92 were marked "secret," and 25 were designated "top secret."

But there are a lot of unknowns about what the [de]classified material discussed. Because the material was supposedly [previously] classified, the public has not been able to see firsthand what the documents said and, therefore, is not able to gauge firsthand how sensitive they were.

Full context of why the documents were stashed at Mar-a-Lago

Former President Donald Trump has decried the FBI raid as a "witch hunt," among other insults, but another question that looms large is why the material that allegedly bore [previous] classified markings was brought to his Palm Beach, Florida, resort in the first place. The former president reportedly retained a trove of presidential records that were supposed to be delivered to the National Archives.

Even his former White House counsel Pat Cipollone agreed that many of the documents were supposed to be given to the archives in keeping with the Presidential Records Act of 1978. Yet, for some reason, the documents were presumably moved from Washington to Florida at some point and mixed with "highly classified records were unfoldered records," per the affidavit.

Additional context on why the documents were holed up in Mar-a-Lago could shed light on whether the move was malicious.

Why weren't the [de]classified documents given to the DOJ earlier?

By all accounts, Trump's team was given ample opportunity to transfer the documents prior to the August raid. After the January exchange with the National Archives prompted a DOJ inquiry, authorities reportedly traveled to Mar-a-Lago in June to collect additional documents. One of Trump's lawyers even signed a statement in June attesting that the documents with [previous] classified markings were returned.

After the January exchange, Tom Fitton, the president of conservative legal group Judicial Watch, reportedly communicated with Trump and encouraged him not to turn over any additional documentation to the government, multiple sources told CNN. Fitton cited a past court case in which Judicial Watch unsuccessfully sued to obtain documents from former President Bill Clinton. He believed precedents from that case meant Trump didn't have to play ball with document requests.

It is unclear whether the failure to transfer documents before the August raid was related to Trump not wanting them turned over, advisers to Trump deliberately dragging their feet, or a misunderstanding.

Will Trump get charged?

Perhaps the most important question about the Mar-a-Lago document debacle is whether the former president will get charged. It is an open secret that Trump is eyeing the 2024 presidential arena, having told New York magazine that his mind is already made up and that the only outstanding issue is when he will announce his decision.

The affidavit noted, "There is also probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found." Although it is not explicitly stated, many have speculated that the DOJ is investigating whether Trump obstructed justice. A previously unsealed search warrant application cover sheet for the raid revealed that the DOJ was also evaluating possible violations of the Espionage Act.

Who was the inside source?

Shortly after the August raid, Newsweek reported that a confidential source identified [de]classified materials holed up in the Palm Beach resort, citing two sources. Since then, there has been rampant speculation that anyone from a Secret Service agent to Jared Kushner to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) may have been the informant.

Recently, the Guardian highlighted references in the affidavit to private areas in the resort, such as a foyer to Trump’s residence, that indicated the FBI had a significant awareness of the layout of Mar-a-Lago before conducting the August search.

The DOJ has not confirmed that there was an informant, and questions about the source that served as the impetus for the raid loom large.

Did any of the documents relate to nuclear weapons?

A few days after the raid, the Washington Post released a [fake] bombshell report that classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought.” Trump has cast doubt on this report, noting that the heavily redacted affidavit did not mention nuclear weapons. At one point, however, the affidavit noted that material previously collected from Mar-a-Lago contained items that appear to relate to "National Defense Information."

“The FBI's investigation has established that documents bearing classification markings, which appear to contain National Defense Information, were among the materials contained in the FIFTEEN BOXES and were stored at the PREMISES in an unauthorized location,” the affidavit read.

It remains unclear if authorities ever found documents pertaining to nuclear weapons.

Trump has bashed the DOJ for redacting large portions of the affidavit. He has filed motions in court seeking to stop the DOJ from combing through evidence seized from Mar-a-Lago. He has also denied wrongdoing and claimed that he declassified material taken.

"Affidavit heavily redacted!!! Nothing mentioned on 'Nuclear,' a total public relations subterfuge by the FBI & DOJ, or our close working relationship regarding document turnover — WE GAVE THEM MUCH," Trump wrote in a post to his Truth Social platform Friday. (read more)

Friday’s unsealing of the affidavit tied to the FBI’s raid on former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate has raised more questions than answers.

West Palm Beach US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhardt had ordered the Justice Department earlier in the week to prepare a redacted version of the document in which authorities laid out their reasons for the controversial Aug. 8 search-and-seizure operation at Mar-a-Lago.

Friday’s unsealing came amid what Reinhardt called “intense public and historical interest” into the raid. The feds have described their probe as centering on the alleged mishandling of [de]classified information, theft of government records and obstruction of justice.

But huge portions of the 38-page affidavit were blacked out, including vast swaths — and multiple entire pages — under the heading “PROBABLE CAUSE,” with even the name of the FBI agent who signed it redacted.

Here’s some of what remains unknown:

Who is assisting the feds?

Reports have said an informant tipped off authorities about official documents that remained in Trump’s possession even though they were supposed to have been turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration when he left office last year.

Earlier this month, former Trump administration acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told CNN that the informant would have to “be someone who was handling things on day to day, who knew where documents were.

“My guess is there’s probably six or eight people who had that kind of information,” he said.

In a separate document unsealed Friday, the Justice Department said it redacted certain information from the affidavit to “protect the safety and privacy of a significant number of civilian witnesses, in addition to law enforcement personnel, as well as to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation.”

Why were the documents at Mar-a-Lago?

The blacked-out-affidavit doesn’t provide any new details about the 11 sets of [de]classified records seized during the raid, but it alleges that 14 of the 15 boxes of records recovered from Trump’s West Palm Beach mansion earlier this year contained [de]classified documents.

On the crucial issue of why the records were there, however, nothing was disclosed.

The affidavit notes that former Trump aide Kash Patel has said news reports about the [de]classified documents were “misleading” because Trump had declassified them.

“The White House counsel failed to generate the paperwork to change the classification markings, but that doesn’t mean the information wasn’t declassified,” Patel told Breitbart News in a May article cited in the affidavit.

“I was there with President Trump when he said ‘We are declassifying this information.’ ”

More than two full pages that follow the reference to Patel’s remarks are redacted, leaving it unclear why the feds brought them up.

Who is under investigation?

The blacked-out affidavit doesn’t reveal the targets or subjects of the Justice Department probe, but anyone who allegedly moved or hid [de]classified records could face prosecution, according to USA Today.

Any aides who were allegedly involved in transporting the documents to Mar-a-Lago are unlikely to be charged unless Trump is, legal experts told the paper.

“Without unexpected facts arising that we don’t know about, it’s hard for me to see the Justice Department deciding to charge an aide who was acting at the direction of the former president unless they already made a decision to charge the former president and decided to charge the aide along with the former president,” said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor who is now a white-collar defense lawyer at Bryan Cave.

But Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor who is president of West Coast Trial Lawyers in Los Angeles, said current or former staffers could be charged to get them to flip on Trump.

“By charging lower-level folks, that puts pressure on them to cooperate with the real target of the investigation,” Rahmani said.

Will Trump ultimately be charged?

No former president has ever been charged with a crime, with recent commanders-in-chief choosing instead to block potential prosecutions of their predecessors.

In 1974, one month after former President Richard Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal, then-President Gerald Ford — who took office declaring that “our long national nightmare is over” — granted Nixon a “full, free and absolute” pardon for any crimes he may have committed while in office.

In 2009, then-President-elect Barack Obama also ruled out investigations of outgoing President George W. Bush and his administration over domestic eavesdropping and the harsh interrogations of terror suspects, saying he believed “that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”

There’s been speculation that President Biden might pardon Trump, possibly as part of a deal to keep him from running again in 2024.

But even if it were offered, Trump could reject a pardon. (read more)

Actual PDT flushed the Secret Police Rats out into the open with his RICO suit against the Obama/Clinton Syndicate. Brilliant.

All this “National Security” nuclear horseshit is just to keep the "investigation" within the National Security Division, under the same old Obama Trash who ran the last hundred Trump Frame-Ups. There is zero accountability at DOJ and less-than-zero at the NSD.

On the bright side, if they were humming the theme from "Frozen" while fondling Melania's underpants, they qualify for the FBI's free Transitioning Program!

They stopped touching their own wives’ panties years ago IYKWIMAITYD.

Here’s what they said in their own words.

Here is a quick summary of some of the things they said:

1. They are afraid to come out publicly due to intimidation tactics such as loss of job and/or license to practice medicine.

2. Unvaccinated healthcare workers are extremely upset with the medical community. They feel they have been treated unfairly.

3. It is the vaccinated workers who are getting sick with COVID, but it is the unvaccinated who are punished with constant testing, restrictions, and threats of losing their jobs.

4. The COVID shots are a disaster. Even for the elderly which is supposed to be the most compelling use case, death rates in elderly homes went up by a factor of 5 after the shots rolled out. Each time the shots are given, the deaths spike. Nobody is talking publicly about this. It’s not allowed.

5. Doctors are seeing rates of injury and death increase dramatically in all ages of people. The injuries are only happening to the vaccinated. There is no doubt that this is happening but many doctors have so much cognitive dissonance that they don’t see it.

6. One nurse with 23 years of experience says she’s never heard of anyone under 20 dying from cardiac issues until the vaccines rolled out. Now she knows of around 30 deaths.

7. “I have been a nurse for 36 years. I have NEVER witnessed people in their 20s and 30s having strokes, atrial fibrillation, or cardiomyopathies until the Covid vaccines. I work in cardiology. When I mention that someone should look at the vaccines as a possible reason, I am immediately silenced and told, “It is NOT from the vaccine.””

8. Doctors aren’t recording vaccination status in the medical records so that all the deaths are attributed to the unvaccinated.

9. Doctors are deliberately ignoring the possibility that the vaccines could be the cause of all the elevated events. The events are simply all unexplained.

10. Many doctors have either quit or will quit.

11. Some doctors and nurses at top institutions such as Mass General Hospital have falsified vaccine cards. They publicly toe the line and encourage their patients to take the shot knowing full well it is deadly. They value their job more than the lives of their patients. The important thing is they are risking 10 years in jail for doing this. These highly respected medical workers are telling the world that these COVID shots are so dangerous that they are willing to risk 10 years in prison to avoid taking the shot. That’s the message America needs to hear. And if Biden were an honest President, he would call for full amnesty and protection from retaliation for all these cases if people admitted publicly they did this. He’d be amazed at the number of responses he’d get. But he won’t do that because it would be too embarrassing for his administration.

12. Things don’t seem to be getting any better.

13. The medical examiners all over the world are not doing the proper tests during an autopsy to detect a vaccine-related death. Without doing the necessary tests, it is very hard to make an association. There isn’t a single “guidance” document from any medical authority anywhere in the world to do these tests on people who die within 3 months of their last COVID vaccination. This is why no associations are found: they aren’t looking and it is deliberate. The mainstream press doesn’t call them out on this either.

14. Doctors are being forced to take other vaccines so the hospital can meet their quota. This was admitted to them.

The document paints a very troubling picture of healthcare in America

It is very difficult to read that document and come away thinking that everything is working fine.

If you read the document and think everything is just fine, it means one or more of the following is true:

1. You work in the White House

2. You work at the CDC, FDA, or NIH

3. You are a member of Congress or are a staff member for a member of Congress (Ron Johnson and his staff are excluded)

4. You work in the mainstream media

5. You are a top executive at a mainstream social media company

6. You work in the mainstream medical community (doctor or academic)

7. You are a miserable excuse for a human being

8. You are an exemplary blue-pilled individual; you are just the type of citizen that your government wants to have

If you are troubled by what you read, here is what you can do

If you read through the document and are as troubled by what is going on and you want to hold these people accountable, there are two simple thing you can do to make a difference:

1. Share this article on all your social media platforms

2. Make a donation to help re-elect Senator Ron Johnson (click here for the donation link). He’s the most important person in Congress that will hold these people accountable. This is why he’s the #1 target of Democrats.

Want to speak to any of these people?

If you are a member of the press and want to speak to any of these people, you can use the Contact me form to make your request. In the Notes part of the form, specify the database line number of the person(s) you want to contact.

Please share this post widely. Do it now.

The mainstream press will not share this information. This isn’t misinformation; these are all true stories, many of which are impossible to explain if the vaccines are truly safe and effective. Taken together, they are a stunning indictment of a medical system that has been corrupted through government incentives.

It is important for people throughout the world to hear from the healthcare workers whose voices have been silenced by the medical community. Please do it now. (read more)

A medical Army officer who discovered a sudden increase in disease coinciding with reports of side effects alongside COVID-19 vaccines—which the Army has dismissed as a data glitch—said he faces involuntary separation after being convicted but not punished for disobeying COVID-19 protocol.

In January 2022, First Lt. Mark Bashaw, a preventive medicine officer at the Army, started noticing some “alarming signals” within the defense epidemiological database.

The Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED), which tracks disease and injuries of 1.3 million active component service members, showed during the pandemic a significant increase in reports of cancers, myocarditis, and pericarditis; as well as some other diseases like male infertility, tumors, a lung disease caused by blood clots, and HIV, Bashaw said.

All these illnesses are listed in FDA documentation as potential adverse reactions associated with COVID-19 vaccines, Bashaw told EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program in an interview on Aug. 1.

Seeing increases in cases of these illnesses as high as 50 percent or 100 percent in some situations, Bashaw stepped forward as a whistleblower to raise concerns about his findings.

Bashaw’s whistleblower declaration, submitted to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) who is facilitating the sharing of information from early investigations of COVID-19 products with Congress, said he saw the increasing incidence of these disorders observed in DMED as “very troubling.”

Specifically, the number of cancer cases among active service members in 2021 nearly tripled in comparison with the average number of cancer instances per year from 2016 to 2020, Bashaw said in his declaration.

Bashaw’s responsibilities as a preventive medicine officer, with a specialty in entomology, include “participating in fact-finding inquiries and investigations to determine potential public health risk to DoD [Department of Defense] personnel from diseases caused by insects and other non-battle related injuries.”

Glitch in DMED

A week after this information was brought out in January in a “COVID-19: Second Opinion” roundtable organized by Johnson, the data in DMED changed, Bashaw said, and all of these troubling spikes in diseases and injuries “seemed to have disappeared and been realigned with previous years.”

Curiously, the glitch didn’t affect the data from 2021, which remained the same. Instead, the corrected data saw the data for prior years increased, which made the 2021 data look normal and in line with the running average, Bashaw explained.

In response to the whistleblower claims, spokesperson for the health agency of the Department of Defense Peter Graves told PolitiFact that the data in DMED “was incorrect for the years 2016-2020,” so the system was taken offline to correct the root cause of the data corruption, which didn’t impact data from 2021.

After the roundtable, Johnson sent three letters to the Department of Defense (DoD) requesting an explanation of the sudden increase in medical diagnosis and the changes in the DMED data.

“The concern is that these increases may be related to the COVID-19 vaccines that our servicemen and women have been mandated to take,” Johnson said in one of his letters.

The senator also sent a letter to the technology company that manages DMED asking for clarification of all data integrity issues uncovered in the database.

Although Johnson received some responses from the tech company, there has not been still a “solid, rational explanation” as to why a glitch occurred in the database and what it was, Bashaw said.

After the glitch, Bashaw pulled out data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) for injuries related to viral vaccines to compare to his findings on DMED. He compared the average of the last 24 years to data for 2021 and found an eleven-fold increase in the number of suspected adverse incidents reported in 2021.

“I compared it to the average of the last 24 years, it’s a 1,100 percent increase in 2021. And the only difference we had in 2021 was the rollout of these experimental emergency use authorized COVID-19 vaccines,” Bashaw said.

VAERS is managed by agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and serves as “a national early warning system to detect possible safety problems in U.S.-licensed vaccines,” according to HHS’s website.

Though reporting to VAERS is voluntary for individuals, “healthcare professionals are required to report certain adverse events, and vaccine manufacturers are required to report all adverse events that come to their attention,” the website says. However, non-professionals are also able to make entries.

Emergency Use Authorized Products

Bashaw tried to raise his concerns regarding COVID-19 vaccines to his leadership at the army through the proper channels, recommending that it change its risk communication strategy for the vaccine from ”safe and effective “ to “there might be some problems.”

However, his concerns were not addressed, Bashaw said. “And then, later, I was targeted due to my own [COVID-19] vaccination status.”

Bashaw said he was “forced into an experimental emergency use authorized testing protocol, which was only for the unvaccinated.”

He questioned the policy, saying that forcing unvaccinated individuals into such a testing regimen seems “coercive” and “kind of punitive.”

Bashaw invoked the provisions of the United States Code, which gives liability protection for epidemic products authorized for emergency use to manufacturers and distributors of the product, the government, and medical personnel who administer the product.

However, the perspective of the individual who chooses to use these products or to whom the product is administered is not considered by this law despite their taking on all the burden of risk. “For this reason, [they should have] the ability to accept or refuse these products,” Bashaw said.

“It’s my job as a medical officer in general, to warn individuals, or at least try to communicate [to them] what they might be getting themselves into with these products.”

Bashaw pointed out that the individual’s right to accept or refuse administration of these products and to informed consent has also been written down in the United States Code, specifically 21 U.S. Code § 360bbb–3.

Individuals to whom the product is authorized for emergency use should be informed “of the significant known and potential benefits and risks of such use, and of the extent to which such benefits and risks are unknown,” the said law stipulates.

This applies not only to the experimental vaccines but also to COVID-19 testing procedures and the wearing of masks, Bashaw said.

Targeted for Disobeying COVID-19 Rules

Bashaw has been court-martialed for disobeying the mandated COVID-19 protocol. He challenged the accusation saying that the order to follow the protocol disregarded the individual’s right to informed consent guaranteed by U.S. law.

The court convicted Bashaw, but the judge did not hand down any punishment and recommended to the commanding general to drop the conviction, Bashaw said, but the general upheld the conviction.

After the conviction, the Army initiated Bashaw’s involuntary separation from service after 17 years of honorable service. His expected promotion to captain was also withheld, the officer said.

The justification for his discharge was that the army lost trust in his “capabilities as an officer over the past seven months,” Bashaw explained.

Bashaw filed a rebuttal, hoping to reverse its course.

In addition, Bashaw filed a whistleblower complaint at DoD, but the decision was made that there was no retaliation against him, and the case was closed out. He said that he then filed another complaint which exercises his right guaranteed by the code of military justice to challenge such decisions. (read more)

Drew Hernandez of drewhlive.com joins The Alex Jones Show to call for Trump to denounce the deadly Covid injections before their failure is used against him on the campaign trail.

The pair warn Trump the establishment is set to place the blame for the dangerous jabs on him for “rushing” the emergency use authorization of the vaccines that were actually created, promoted and even mandated by the global establishment.

Jones saw this trap set for Trump long ago, telling the Infowars audience in December of 2020 that the elite would throw him under the bus once the vaccine injuries were too widespread to ignore. (read more)

Also, the “stolen” goods aspect is suspect, despite the plea.  As previous wide-spread discussion outlined, the Ashley Biden material was left behind in a rental home and discovered by the next occupant.  It looks like the admission of “theft” is a Main Justice pressure angle to support a “stolen” narrative.

The Florida residents, Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander, plead guilty to “conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property.”  The creepy and disturbing content of the diary is now obscured.

(New York) – […] The president’s daughter, Ashley Biden, had stored the items in question (including a “highly personal” diary, “tax records, a digital storage card containing private family photographs, and a cellphone, among other things”) in a Florida home where Harris later took up temporary residence, Fox News summmarizes, per court documents. Harris then reportedly stole the items, and asked Kurlander to help her sell them.

Kurlander’s plea deal also includes cooperating with the Justice Department’s investigation into how Project Veritas obtained the diary, notes The New York Times. The conservative group maintained in a statement that their “news gathering was ethical and legal.”

“I know what I did was wrong and awful, and I apologize,” Kurlander said in court. “I sincerely apologize for any actions and know what I did was illegal,” Harris added. (read more)

Fulfilling a campaign promise, Biden is erasing $10,000 in federal student loan debt for those with incomes below $125,000 a year, or households that earn less than $250,000. He’s canceling an additional $10,000 for those who received federal Pell Grants to attend college.

It’s seen as an unprecedented attempt to stem the tide of America’s rapidly rising student debt, but it doesn’t address the broader issue — the high cost of college.

Republicans quickly denounced the plan as an insult to Americans who have repaid their debt and to those who didn’t attend college. Critics across the political spectrum also questioned whether Biden has authority for the move, and legal challenges are virtually certain.

Biden also extended a pause on federal student loan payments for what he called the “final time.” The pause is now set to run through the end of the year, with repayments to restart in January.

“Both of these targeted actions are for families who need it the most: working and middle class people hit especially hard during the pandemic,” Biden said at the White House Wednesday afternoon.

The cancellation applies to federal student loans used to attend undergraduate and graduate school, along with Parent Plus loans. Current college students qualify if their loans were issued before July 1. For dependent students, their parents’ household income must be below $250,000.

Most people will need to apply for the relief. The Education Department has income data for a small share of borrowers, but the vast majority will need to prove their incomes through an application process. Officials said applications will be available before the end of the year.

Biden’s plan makes 43 million borrowers eligible for some debt forgiveness, with 20 million who could get their debt erased entirely, according to the administration. About 60% of borrowers are recipients of federal Pell Grants, which are reserved for undergraduates with the most significant financial need, meaning more than half can get $20,000 in relief.

Sabrina Cartan, a 29-year-old media strategist in New York City, is expecting her federal debt to get wiped out entirely. When she checked the balance Wednesday, it was $9,940.

Cartan used the loans to attend Tufts University, and with Biden’s plan she will be able to help her parents repay the additional thousands they borrowed for her education. As a first-generation college student, she called it a “leveling moment.”

“I know there are people who feel that this isn’t enough, and that is true for a lot of people,” said Cartan, who already has repaid about $10,000 of her loans. “I can say for me personally and for a lot of people, that is a lot of money.”

For Braxton Simpson, Biden’s plan is a great first step, but it’s not enough. The 23-year-old MBA student at North Carolina Central University has more than $40,000 in student loans. As an undergraduate student she took jobs to minimize her debt, but at $10,000 a semester, the costs piled up.

As a Black woman, she felt higher education was a requirement to obtain a more stable financial future, even if that meant taking on large amounts of debt, she said.

“In order for us to get out of a lot of the situations that have been systemically a part of our lives, we have to go to school,” Simpson said. “And so we end up in debt.”

The plan doesn’t apply to future college students, but Biden is proposing a separate rule that would reduce monthly payments on federal student debt.

The proposal would create a new payment plan requiring borrowers to pay no more than 5% of their earnings, down from 10% in similar existing plans. It would forgive any remaining balance after 10 years, down from 20 years now.

It would also raise the floor for repayments, meaning no one earning less than 225% of the federal poverty level would need to make monthly payments.

As a regulation, it would not require congressional approval. But it can take more than a year to finalize.

Biden’s plan comes after more than a year of deliberation, with the president facing strong lobbying from liberals who wanted sweeping debt forgiveness, and from moderates and conservatives who questioned its basic fairness.

Once a popular campaign promise during the presidential primary, the issue created an almost unwinnable situation. Some fellow Democrats criticized the plan Wednesday, saying it’s too costly and does little to solve the debt crisis.

“In my view, the administration should have further targeted the relief, and proposed a way to pay for this plan,” said Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo. “While immediate relief to families is important, one-time debt cancellation does not solve the underlying problem.”

Still, many Democrats rallied around it, including support from those who wanted Biden to go beyond $10,000.

“I will keep pushing for more because I think it’s the right thing to do,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who had urged Biden to forgive up to $50,000 a person. “But we need to take a deep breath here and recognize what it means for the president of the United States to touch so many hard-working middle class families so directly.”

Proponents see cancellation as a matter of racial justice. Black students are more likely to take out federal student loans and at higher amounts than their white peers.

The NAACP, which pressed Biden to cancel at least $50,000 per person, said the plan is “one step closer” to lifting the burden of student debt.

Derrick Johnson, the group’s president, urged Biden to cancel the debt quickly and without bureaucratic hurdles for borrowers.

Biden’s decision to impose an income cap goes against objections from some who say adding the detailed application process to verify incomes could deter some borrowers who need help the most.

The Biden administration defended the cap as a gate against wealthier borrowers. Politically, it’s designed to counter arguments from critics who call debt cancellation a handout for the wealthy. Republicans hit hard with that argument on Wednesday despite the cap.

“President Biden’s inflation is crushing working families, and his answer is to give away even more government money to elites with higher salaries,” Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell said. “Democrats are literally using working Americans’ money to try to buy themselves some enthusiasm from their political base.”

One of the chief political sticking points has been the cost: Biden’s new plan, including debt cancellation, a new repayment plan and the payment freeze, will cost between $400 billion to $600 billion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonprofit that advocates for lower deficits.

Asked about the cost Wednesday, Susan Rice, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, said, “I can’t give you that off the top of my head.”

There are also lingering questions about the administration’s authority to cancel student loan debt. The Justice Department released a legal opinion concluding that the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act gives the Education secretary the “authority to reduce or eliminate the obligation to repay the principal balance of federal student loan debt.”

The legal opinion also concluded that the forgiveness could be applied on a “class-wide” basis in response to the coronavirus pandemic, a national emergency..

Lawsuits are likely nonetheless. The Job Creators Network, which promotes conservative economic policies, said it was considering legal options, with president and CEO Alfredo Ortiz calling the president’s effort “fundamentally unfair” to those who never took out loans for college [and those who have repaid their loans]. (read more)