Tag: conflict of interest

RFK Debunks Sen. Warren’s Hypocritical Attack on His Supposed Big Pharma ‘Conflict of Interest’

Reuters and Washington Post have a new deceptive report out claiming that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has financially benefited from a settlement with a top pharmaceutical company. But they left the crucial context out that showed he personally received not a dime.

Democrats are never ones for context. They love to have reasons to pretend they are destroying corruption when they are really going after personal political opponents. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), for instance, had her warpaint and Tomahawk out as she screeched, “Is RFK Jr.’s son getting a cut of a $50 MILLION settlement that his dad could have influenced? I’m investigating.” Naturally, she needs something to investigate to avoid investigating Anthony Fauci and the pharmaceutical companies that pushed COVID vaccines that we now know, courtesy of Fauci‘s journal, were quite ineffective and sometimes injurious.

Kennedy responded to Warren and the lefty media outlets at the same time. “The Washington Post editorial board accuses me of a conflict of interest that might bias me against Big Pharma, whose interests they apparently seek to protect,” he posted on X, highlighting the irony of media and politicians rushing to defend monopolistic businesses. “The alleged conflict comes from money I supposedly made from a settlement in a lawsuit against Merck for injuries caused by its Gardasil vaccine.”

He emphatically stated: “The problem is that I never received a penny from the Merck Gardasil settlement, and neither has my son nor anyone else in my family.” So Warren et al. are smearing Kennedy with — surprise, surprise — lies.

Kennedy explained further, “Before taking office, I relinquished any interest in potential Gardasil fees back to the Wisner Baum law firm, which publicly confirmed this during my confirmation process. Yet @SenWarren, @Reuters, and @washingtonpost editorial board — in their ardor to protect Big Pharma — continue to push a false narrative that makes Big Pharma the victim and me the mendacious villain.”

For yet more interesting context, according to a Fox News report from last year, Warren received a whopping $5 million from Big Pharma during her 2020 presidential bid. And the Washington Post freaked out when Kennedy proposed limiting pharmaceutical ads. Always follow the money.

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China-Focused Influence Program Courted Senior US Media Figures With Sponsor-Paid Trips

A journalist’s review of Committee of 100 (C100) records has renewed scrutiny of sponsor-paid trips that brought senior figures from major U.S. news organizations to China and recorded changes in their views and professional plans.

In response to questions from The Epoch Times, C100 confirmed that it covered travel costs, selected the participants, set their itineraries, and chose whom they met.

The organization rejected journalist and media host Natalie Winters’s description of the trips as “pay-for-play,” saying no coverage was exchanged for the travel and participants retained editorial independence.

Winters published her review on Substack on July 28, characterizing the multiyear journalist delegation program as a “propaganda pipeline.” Her report drew attention to documents posted on C100’s website.

A 2012 trip report on the website marked “Internal Use” placed the cost of a nine-day delegation for five journalists at approximately $60,000.

The report said the program sought to improve perceptions of China and encourage participants to share their experiences with professional peers.

The five journalists represented The New York Times, The Atlantic, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and WNYC. A page about the delegation on the C100 website says they traveled through Beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou from Nov. 25 through Dec. 3, 2012.

The trip report described lodging, meals, transportation, sightseeing, corporate and cultural visits, and about 20 arranged meetings with Chinese officials, academics, media representatives, students, and business executives.

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‘Not appropriate’: Blue-state attorney general paid $570 an hour to law firm that contributed to his campaign

Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown’s office agreed to pay $570 an hour to attorneys at an outside law firm that contributed to Brown’s campaign, records obtained by The Center Square show.

Four additional law firms that received contracts with the AG’s office donated to the campaign of Brown, a Democrat, records show. Together, the five firms and their affiliated political action committees contributed $30,250 to Brown’s campaign committee.

Brown’s office signed the contract with Ballard Spahr LLP of Philadelphia in November 2022. Two years earlier, the firm donated $2,500 to Friends of Anthony Brown, Brown’s campaign committee, according to state campaign finance records. Two months after the contract was signed, the law firm donated another $2,500. The contract also pays paralegals $295 an hour. If renewed, attorney rates increased to $595 an hour and paralegal rates to $315 an hour.

Brown’s office initially refused to release the hourly rates but reversed course Wednesday after The Center Square appealed to the Public Access Ombudsman, a voluntary, confidential mediator.

The Center Square requested the records for contracts with outside counsel since 2023, the year Brown, 61, took office. Brown’s office released two outside-counsel contracts and the names of 81 law firms, lawyers and legal nonprofits with which it entered into agreements.

The redaction was at odds with two recent rulings by the state’s Public Information Act Compliance Board, which held that another government agency should make similar payment information public.

Under the contract, Ballard Spahr may represent multiple state agencies, including the Maryland Department of Transportation and the Department of General Services. A Ballard Spahr spokesman did not respond to two requests for interview.

The office also declined to provide bidding documents or requests for proposals to show how the contracts were issued and the total amounts paid the firms.

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Missouri AG Moves to Oust Ray County Prosecutor Over Explosive Allegations of Affairs with Defense Attorney, Defendants — Including Illegal Alien Investigated for Felony Sex Crimes

Just when you think the lawlessness and corruption in our justice system can’t get any worse.

Missouri Attorney General Catherine L. Hanaway has filed a petition for a writ of quo warranto to remove Ray County Prosecutor Camille Johnston from office after explosive revelations of repeated intimate and romantic relationships with criminal defense counsel and defendants including an illegal alien being prosecuted for sexual assault in her own jurisdiction.

According to the petition, Johnston allegedly engaged in undisclosed romantic relationships with individuals whose criminal cases intersected with the Ray County Prosecutor’s Office, including a defense attorney who represented criminal defendants in cases prosecuted by her office.

The Attorney General alleges Johnston failed to recuse herself or seek the appointment of a special prosecutor despite what the filing describes as obvious conflicts of interest.

The petition further alleges Johnston maintained another romantic relationship with an individual charged with domestic violence and retaliated against a staff member who became aware of the relationship. The filing claims Johnston failed to disclose the alleged conflict to victims, court personnel, or her office until a judge ultimately disqualified her from the case.

Among the most serious allegations is the Attorney General’s claim that Johnston had a prior intimate relationship with a man identified in the petition as J.G., who was allegedly under investigation for felony sexual offenses.

The filing alleges Johnston knew of the investigation, failed to recuse herself, withheld information regarding his whereabouts, assisted him after he left Ray County, and later vacationed with him.

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Are Unions And Public Schools Violating Election Laws/Ethics?

The Easton Gazette received an email regarding the political activities of the Worcester County Public Schools. The email included this letter from a resident of the county.

The letter alleges that the school placed or allowed campaign material connected to a candidate for county commissioner to be placed into teachers’ school mailboxes within Worcester County Public Schools. The materials allegedly urge teachers to support certain candidates including this candidate and others and also have instructions for changing party affiliation.

As the letter states, this action could possibly pressure public school employees to feel that they must support a candidate who was once a system employee. Also, public schools, along with other public institutions, are supposed to remain politically neutral. Certainly, public materials and time should not be spent on political campaigns. One of the documents references a “building rep” which most likely refers to a “union” rep.

Again, these are allegations. However, they do bring up some important questions.

What is the law in Maryland regarding using school communications to promote candidates?

Maryland law prohibits teachers’ unions and any other group from using public school communication systems to promote or oppose political candidates, because doing so constitutes political activity using government resources, which is barred under both state ethics rules as well as federal tax rules for labor organizations such as teacher’s unions

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Congress quietly moves to integrate US and Israeli militaries

At a time when the American public is expressing unprecedented levels of distrust in the Israeli government, Congress just proposed tying the U.S. to the Israeli military more than ever before.

Buried in the House’s version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released on Tuesday, is section 224, entitled “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.” The provision would arguably do more to intertwine the U.S. military with the Israeli military than the more than $200 billion (inflation adjusted) in military assistance Israel has received from the U.S. since its founding in 1948.

Section 224 lays the groundwork for bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and seemingly every manner of U.S.-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation. The U.S. and Israel already work together heavily on missile defense, but this provision would greatly expand coordination to seemingly every area of defense tech, including AI, quantum, autonomous systems, directed energy, cyber, biotech, and many more. It also proposes “network integration” and “data fusion.” In other words, the U.S. military’s data could soon be the Israeli military’s data.

If fully enacted, this proposal would provide a higher level of military-industrial integration than the U.S. has with any other country in the world. To be sure, the U.S. has worked closely with its NATO partners on co-production and shared supply chains, most notably via the Defence Production Action Plan. And, as the number one arms dealer in the world, the U.S. provides weapons to militaries across the globe. But that is mostly a one-way street, with the U.S. providing weapons to foreign buyers who only occasionally make parts for those weapons themselves, as in the case of the F-35’s global supply chain.

Section 224 would be a different beast entirely. It would fuse the U.S. and Israeli defense sectors in multiple areas vital to the battlefields of the future, like autonomous systems and cyber. It would also bring extraordinary Israeli influence to the U.S. beyond what it already has through the Israel lobby and its robust network of social media influencers. It would give the Israeli government the opportunity to greatly expand one of the most powerful levers of influence in U.S. politics: jobs in the U.S. By expanding or starting new co-production facilities like it already has in Mississippi and Arkansas, the Israeli government could boast of providing jobs on U.S. soil, thereby securing allies among members of Congress who represent the districts where those jobs lie.

The result could well be a U.S. political system even more susceptible to the whims of an Israeli government that seemingly has no qualms about drawing the U.S. into military conflicts in the Middle East.

This unprecedented level of U.S.-Israeli military integration stands in stark contrast to the traditional aid model of defense cooperation, in which Israel already stood out as the top recipient of U.S. military assistance. As laid out in a recent Quincy Institute brief, authored by Steven Simon, this shift from an aid model to a military integration model has troubling implications, namely:

The shift will strip away the political and diplomatic oversight mechanisms that make the relationship publicly accountable, moving it from a visible annual aid vote into the opaque machinery of defense acquisition, where oversight is limited and political accountability is minimal. The result would be a defense relationship that is simultaneously deeper and less transparent.

This all comes at a time when the Israeli military has repeatedly used U.S. weapons in strikes that have violated international humanitarian laws in Gaza, and as Israel has repeatedly violated ceasefires (as has the U.S. itself) in the Trump administration’s unnecessary war with Iran.

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The White House Intervened to Get a $620 Million Deal for a Company Tied to Donald Trump Jr.

When the Pentagon announced a $620 million loan last year to a small North Carolina startup linked to Donald Trump Jr., defense officials and the company tried to tamp down suspicions of cronyism. 

The president’s eldest son said through a spokesperson that he wasn’t involved. The Pentagon said Trump Jr. played no role in the record-setting deal. And the startup’s founder told reporters that his company, Vulcan Elements, received no political favoritism.

But interviews and Defense Department records reviewed by ProPublica show that the request to loan hundreds of millions of dollars to the firm linked to Trump Jr. was made by Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to President Donald Trump and a friend of Trump Jr.’s.

Of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was considering funding at the time, Vulcan’s was the only deal initiated by a top aide to the president, said an official at the Pentagon who was not authorized to speak publicly.

After defense officials got the White House request, they asked Pentagon staff to move at an unusually rapid pace, said another person who was involved in the deal at the Pentagon but not authorized to speak about it. The staff worked late nights and with little sleep to get the loan through in a matter of weeks, the source said.

“The call came from the White House: We have to get this done,” the person said. 

The deal is one of many actions by the Trump administration that have helped companies in which the Trump family holds stakes. Government contracts and other benefits have gone to various Trump-linked companies, prompting allegations of self-dealing by Democratic lawmakers and good government experts. But ProPublica’s reporting on the Vulcan loan represents the first time the awarding of a contract from a federal agency has been directly linked to White House intervention.

The loan was a massive financial commitment from the Pentagon in its effort to fund companies that could help the U.S. reduce dependence on China’s critical mineral supply chains. The deal was a dramatic win for Vulcan, a North Carolina rare-earth magnet company launched just two years earlier. Estimates of its valuation grew tenfold after the deal was announced. It was also a win for Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm, which took a stake of undisclosed size in Vulcan about three months before the Pentagon announced the deal. 

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Consultants Push HPV Vaccines for Infants, as Merck Tests Gardasil in Kids as Young as 4

Consultants paid by Merck and the Gates Foundation are publicly advocating to administer HPV vaccines to children as young as 12-24 months — an age group in which the vaccine has never been tested and for which no safety data exist.

Mark Kane and Eduardo Franco laid out the campaign to extend HPV vaccination to toddlers in an opinion piece published in Clinical Infectious Diseases — an official journal of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).

Merck, a “Silver” level industry partner, donates tens of thousands of dollars annually to the IDSA foundation.

The push to vaccinate younger children comes as Merck — maker of Gardasil, the only HPV vaccine marketed in the U.S. — partners with major universities to run clinical trials of its HPV vaccine in children ages 4-8 in the U.S. and Gambia.

Merck’s Gardasil vaccine is designed to protect against human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted disease. In the U.S., the drug is approved for children starting at age 9 — well before children are sexually active.

Conflicts of interest ‘so thick’ they obscure the science

In the conflict-of-interest statement at the end of the IDSA op-ed, Franco disclosed that he is a vaccine consultant who also holds a patent on a cervical cancer test.

Kane reported no conflicts of interest. However, that claim omits these significant financial and professional credentials:

“The conflicts are so thick it’s impossible to tell if this is a serious immunization policy suggestion, or a fact-pattern of Merck publishing Merck recommendations to use more Merck products,” said Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense (CHD).

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McMorrow Pushed Water Affordability While Racking Up $3,000 Unpaid Utility Tab at Million-Dollar Home

A candidate for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat apparently doesn’t like paying her utility bills. 

Fox News reported that Mallory McMorrow went nearly a year without paying water or sewer bills on their million-dollar home in Royal Oak until Friday, when contacted by Fox News.

The bill grew to over $3,000 since June 2025 when accounting for late fees and unpaid bills, Fox reported. 

In 2025, McMorrow sponsored Senate Bill 250, which aimed to create a water affordability program. The bill aimed to create the low-income water affordability program within the state health department to ensure an eligible customer didn’t pay over three percent of the household income on a water bill. 

That bill aimed to “identify alternative funding” for the program, which means raising taxes to fund “free” water for others. 

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Bombshell: Left-Wing Tech Billionaires Are Paying the Full Salaries of Dozens of ‘Journalists’ at Top Media Companies

If you want to talk about media corruption, how about the discovery that a left-wing political organization has embedded 80 “journalists” in the corporate media by paying their full salaries?

Breitbart News has previously reported on LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman’s dark money election meddling, as well as Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz’s deep penetration of President Joe Biden’s administration with AI activists.

Behind this corruption is a far-left, globalist organization called Effective Altruism (EA), which the New York Post describes as a “billionaire-backed movement [that] aims to solve the world’s problems” which wants to send the message that “unchecked AI will destroy us all,” and that we must “prioritize causes like climate change, global health, poverty, [and] pandemics.”

EA wants to end factory farming. Okay, and replace it with what — insects? We have to feed 8.3 billion people every single day.

No one should blame EA. These fascist tech bros are merely doing whatever it takes to further their fascist cause. If you believe in something, you take every advantage to promote it.

What is obscene here…

What is indefensible here…

What is inexcusable here is this:

To spread their message the group has the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism — funded in part by EA foundations — which pays full salaries of journalists placed inside such newsrooms as Time, Bloomberg, MIT Technology Review and The Guardian, NBC News, and The Verge.

Then there’s Ezra Klein at the New York Times:

New York Times superstar columnist Ezra Klein has maintained deep, longstanding ties to EA and its billionaires, and even uses his widely read NYT column to solicit donations to them.

How can you call yourself a progressive if you solicit donations to an organization run by… billionaires?

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