Tag: conflict of interest

Trump Pardons Binance Founder Tied to His Crypto Venture

President Donald Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, co-founder of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, on Wednesday. Binance is a global trading platform that handles billions of dollars in crypto transactions each day. In 2023, Zhao, also known as CZ, pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program at Binance, a violation of the Bank Secrecy Act. He admitted that the company allowed U.S. customers to trade with sanctioned jurisdictions and ignored warning signs of criminal activity on the platform. Last year, he served a four-month prison sentence.

The pardon immediately drew criticism for Zhao’s known business links to World Liberty Financial, Inc. (WLFI). That is the president’s own crypto venture, co-founded with three of his sons, real estate developers Steve and Zach Witkoff, and several other investors.

Why Pardon Zhao?

At the White House, Trump was asked about the pardon:

Today you pardoned the founder of Binance. Can you explain why you chose to pardon him, and did it have anything to do with your family’s [crypto] business?

The president paused to confirm whom the journalist meant. He then launched into what sounded less like a legal explanation and more like a reflex — strongly evoking the “autopen” scandal of his predecessor:

I believe we’re talking about the same person, because I pardon a lot of people. I don’t know. He was recommended by a lot of people. A lot of people say — Are you talking about the crypto person? A lot of people say that he wasn’t guilty of anything.

He then continued,

He was somebody — I don’t know — I don’t believe I’ve ever met him. But I’ve been told by a lot — a lot of support — he had a lot of support, and they said that what he did was not even a crime, that he was prosecuted by the Biden administration. And so I gave him a pardon on request by a lot of good people.

Press-secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the move at a White House briefing. She said the president had exercised his constitutional authority and that the pardon followed “thorough” review. She added that the case was “overly prosecuted” by the Joe Biden administration.

Leavitt also issued a separate statement, reported by Politico. She argued that the Biden administration “pursued Mr. Zhao despite no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims.” She added that prosecutors had sought “a sentence so far outside the guidelines that even the judge called it unprecedented.” Leavitt said the case had “damaged America’s reputation as a global tech leader” and declared, “The Biden administration’s war on crypto is over.”

Keep reading

Biden Judge Michael Nachmanoff Refuses to RECUSE Himself from Comey Case Despite Glaring Conflicts of Interest

Comey’s Biden appointed judge has glaring conflicts of interest but he won’t recuse himself.  This case is over before it starts!

The judge assigned to Comey’s case is a Biden judge who is absolutely totally conflicted but he is making no mention of recusing himself.

Judge Nachmanoff has personal conflicts with Comey.  Michael Nachmanoff, the federal judge presiding over former FBI Director James Comey’s criminal trial, shares a legal history with Comey that raises questions about judicial impartiality.

Nachmanoff clerked for Judge Leonie Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia from 1995 to 1996, when Brinkema was overseeing the Zacarias Moussaoui terrorism trial linked to the 9/11 attacks.

James Comey, as Unit Chief of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, was deeply involved in investigating and prosecuting Moussaoui. Given the sensitive nature of the case, Nachmanoff likely accessed classified, high-level information and had professional proximity to Comey’s team. This connection suggests more than a casual relationship and highlights the need to consider potential conflicts of interest as Nachmanoff oversees Comey’s prosecution.

Nachmanoff advanced from his clerkship to private practice, federal public defense, magistrate judge, and finally a U.S. District Judge appointed by President Biden. There is no public record of direct employment by Comey, but their intertwined roles in national security cases are significant to judicial fairness.

Given that Comey is actively seeking to remove the prosecuting attorney from his case, it raises a reasonable question of whether a new judge should be assigned as well. The high level of coordination and close professional involvement between Judge Nachmanoff—who clerked during the Zacarias Moussaoui trial central to Comey’s FBI work—and the complexities of this current prosecution present a glaring conflict of interest. Considering Comey’s extensive interactions with the legal system and the deeply personal animus he has expressed toward the President of the United States, it is of the utmost importance that the presiding judge be fully capable of impartially understanding both the legal and personal dimensions motivating Comey’s actions, including why he faces charges of lying under oath on two felony counts.

Keep reading

Biden Judge Jia Cobb Blocks President Trump From Firing Embattled Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook – Her Sorority Sister!

A federal judge on Tuesday evening blocked President Trump from firing embattled Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.

US District Court Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee, issued a preliminary injunction blocking President Trump, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from firing Lisa Cook as her lawsuit proceeds through the legal system.

Lisa Cook filed a lawsuit against President Trump, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell after Trump fired her last month.

“Pursuant to my authority under Article II of the Constitution of the United States and the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, as amended, you are hereby removed from your position on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, effective immediately,” President Trump wrote in a letter to Lisa Cook.

“I have determined that there is sufficient cause to remove you from your position,” Trump added as he cited housing regulator Bill Pulte’s criminal referral on Lisa Cook for mortgage fraud – specifically occupancy fraud.

Cook admitted in a court document that she manufactured documents and hinted a ‘clerical error’ is behind the mortgage fraud accusations.

Lisa Cook apparently owns three properties, and she allegedly committed mortgage fraud on all three properties.

According to Pulte’s first criminal referral, Lisa Cook committed mortgage fraud by lying on her mortgage application and falsifying bank statements when she designated her out-of-state Atlanta condo as her “primary residence”—just two weeks after taking a loan on her Michigan home, which she also claimed as her “primary residence.”

Late last month Federal housing regulator Bill Pulte sent a second criminal referral on embattled Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook after she was allegedly caught lying about a third property.

Pulte said Cook misrepresented a condominium in Cambridge, Massachusetts when she claimed it was a “second home”. Eight months later, Cook signed an ethics form with the US Government and represented the Cambridge property as an “investment/rental property.”

Banks and lenders give more favorable loan terms and lower interest rates for second homes. Mortgage loans on investment properties have higher interest rates because they are considered high risk.

Judge Cobb said the mortgage fraud allegations did not meet the “for cause” standard.

Keep reading

President Trump Calls on Judge Jia Cobb to Recuse Herself From Lawsuit by Fired Federal Reserve Board Member Lisa Cook After Sorority They Are Both Members of Releases Statement in Support of Cook

President Donald Trump posted a statement Sunday night calling on U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb to recuse herself from presiding over the lawsuit by Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook challenging Trump’s firing of her from the Fed last Monday over allegations of mortgage fraud.

Cook filed suit on Thursday. Cobb held a hearing Friday in D.C., but made no immediate ruling reported CNN (excerpt):

Cobb has asked for more written arguments to be submitted to her by next Tuesday. It’s possible she rules after then, or takes additional time to sift through how to best proceed with the case. Her options include setting it on an expedited track for a prompt resolution of Cook’s underlying claims.

Though Cobb, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, held off for now on making an initial ruling in the case, she also made clear that she wasn’t prepared to fully buy into arguments pushed by either Cook or Trump.

The judge pushed back on a suggestion by Justice Department attorney Yaakov Roth that federal courts have no authority to second-guess a decision by a president to fire a member of the Federal Reserve “for cause.” But even with that judicial power, Cobb said, there still may be some level of deference by a court to the president’s decision-making.

Trump posted a copy of a statement issued Thursday by the Delta Sigma Theta sorority–that both Cobb and Cook belong to–that expresses support for Cook, “This is a total Conflict of Interest. The Judge must RECUSE IMMEDIATELY!!! President DJT.”

Keep reading

CONFLICT OF INTEREST EXPOSED: Corrupt Judge Jia Cobb Who Blocked Trump’s Mass Deportations and Now Oversees Federal Reserve Mortgage Fraudster Lisa Cook Revealed as SORORITY SISTER!

You can’t make this up.

On Friday morning, embattled Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, recently fired by President Trump over allegations of fraud and misconduct, appeared in federal court to challenge her dismissal.

The case was heard by none other than Judge Jia Cobb, a radical Biden-appointed judge already notorious for shamelessly blocking Trump’s lawful mass deportation orders.

It can be recalled that US District Judge Jia Cobb called President Trump’s expedited removal of illegal aliens from the interior of the US a “skimpy process.”

“The procedures the government currently uses in expedited removal, however, create a significant risk that it will not identify these disqualifying criteria before quickly ordering someone removed. And the lack of available review means that once the removal happens, it is largely too late to correct the error,” Judge Cobb wrote in a 48-page opinion on Friday.

The Gateway Pundit reported on Friday morning that Judge Cobb wasted no time holding an emergency hearing that dragged on for over two hours. Attorneys for Lisa Cook and the DOJ clashed as they desperately tried to salvage her cushy position on the Federal Reserve Board.

Cook’s high-powered lawyer, Abbe Lowell, the same guy who’s been defending Hunter Biden in his scandals, went full attack mode on President Trump, whining that the Commander-in-Chief makes his orders and policies via “tweets.”

During the hearing, Judge Cobb openly cast doubt on Trump’s executive order firing Cook, but she stopped short of issuing a ruling. Court will resume next Tuesday.

Lisa Cook, fired by Trump this week for alleged mortgage and financial misconduct, is suing to keep her cushy Federal Reserve seat. The lawsuit should have been randomly assigned.

But in a shocking twist, the case landed before Judge Cobb, who just so happens to be Cook’s sorority sister in Delta Sigma Theta.

Keep reading

The American Academy of Pediatrics: Mining Children for Profit

American healthcare is currently providing us with an excellent lesson in what capitalism looks like in the absence of a moral framework. The biggest losers are America’s children.

The Union Profiting from Childhood Sickness

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the major professional association of North American pediatricians, has overseen the rising rates of chronic illness and medicating of American children over recent decades. With 67,000 members in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, AAP distinguished itself during Covid-19 for its strident insistence that children’s faces should be covered and they should be injected with modified RNA vaccines, despite knowing from early 2020 that severe Covid-19 was very rare in healthy children. 

Funded by sources including Moderna, Merck, Sanofi, GSK, Eli Lilly, and other pharmaceutical companies, the AAP’s members are the cornerstone of the rapidly increasing pediatric pharma market in North America – by far greater than any other region. As a professional organization dedicated to ensuring income for its members, the AAP is like any similar professional association or union and acts in this manner.

The loss of trust in the medical profession since 2020 is fortunately removing the misconception that AAP-like medical societies were primarily altruistic, dedicated to the welfare of others rather than their members. The recent publication of AAP priorities, developed by its membership, should reinforce this loss of trust and so, despite its unusual callousness of approach, serve ultimately to strengthen public health by exposing more clearly the motivations of those profiting from rising illness.

Setting Priorities to Ensure Long-Term Profit

The AAP’s first stated priority is to remove parents from any authority when it comes to decisions on whether to inject their children with various substances produced commercially by its sponsors. While this should be ridiculous, it has some chance of succeeding as the ultimate beneficiaries, apart from pediatricians, are the same pharmaceutical manufacturers who heavily sponsor the election campaigns of most members of the US Congress.

Of relevance, promoting or abetting chronic disease in children ensures almost certain chronic disease through adulthood. The AAP is therefore helping to set up lifelong pharmaceutical consumers. Pharma companies are purely for-profit entities, and this is exactly what their CEOs and executives are charged by their shareholders with promoting. The AAP is simply acting as a very willing enabler.

The AAP considers that bodily autonomy is subservient to State-imposed requirements and that the post-World War II human rights of non-coercion and informed consent are subservient to the opinion of someone receiving money to perform an injection. Its approach coincides with the pre-War technocracy movement or medical fascism (in which a declared ‘expert’ decides on imposing healthcare measures rather than the patient themselves choosing it).

However, before discussing bodily autonomy and coerced medicine further, it is worth commenting on the priority list of the AAP overall, as it is fascinating, coming from a group that insists publicly on prioritizing the health of children.

Firstly, what is not there. Among the ten priorities of the AAP of which the elimination of parental rights or religious or cultural exemptions over vaccination of children is the highest, there is not a single mention of what are perhaps the three most prominent issues facing children today, and widely discussed publicly; increasing obesity and the epidemic of autism that the CDC heralds as of extraordinary proportions. While the AAP notes this problem elsewhere, it concentrates on identification and management rather than cause identification. Nowhere among its ten priorities is there any expression of interest in identifying and addressing the causes of rising chronic illness. The closest is a mention of lower costs for childhood insulin injections. The AAP’s priority list ignores diet and reducing levels of physical activity while actively promoting medicalization, seemingly oblivious to the quite catastrophic reduction in health status of the very populations they claim to be serving.

Unsurprisingly for a purely marketing organization, but inconsistent with a science-based healthcare body, the priorities include nothing regarding very obvious concerns of the impact of over 70 vaccinations, with their associated adjuvants and preservatives, now given to children by ten years of age. This number has grown from just a few 40 years ago in association with the deterioration in child health outcomes. The only interest expressed in vaccines is to remove choice from those concerned about such things, and force compliance. For a society of thinking, truth-seeking people this would be extraordinary.

Keep reading

THERE IT IS: Cannabis Farm Raided by ICE Donated LOTS of Money to CA Dems Including Gavin Newsom

The President of Glass House Farms, the cannabis farm that federal immigration authorities raided in California on Thursday despite protests, has donated thousands to Democrats in California.

Co-founder, president, and board director Graham Farrar, who self-identifies on social media as residing in Santa Barbara, California, has made numerous political donations to the Santa Barbara County Democratic Central Committee’s federal political action committee and Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Calif., according to Federal Election Commission records.

According to California public campaign finance records, he also donated $10,000 to California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2018, and his most recent public political donation was to California Democratic Assemblymember Gregg Hart in July 2023.

Incredible stuff.

While Gavin Newsom pretends to be righteously indignant about these raids, he’s really just mad one of his campaign donors got busted.

Keep reading

The Profit Motive Itself Makes the Best Case Against the FDA

One of President Trump’s campaign pledges was to allow Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to “go wild” as head of Health and Human Services. Some welcomed the idea, scarred by memories such as covid lockdowns and government mask mandates that lasted well beyond the arrival of the vaccines. Others, well aware of Kennedy’s conspiracism and anti-vaccine views, dreaded the news. Agencies under Kennedy, like the FDA, are charged with maintaining standards of medical safety and effectiveness. Does “go wild” mean freeing Americans to make our own health decisions — or ramming bad advice down our throats?

As if to address the concerns of both groups, Kennedy’s FDA announced in May that it approves covid boosters only for those over 65 or in other high-risk groups. The vaccine remains available to everyone, but insurers are no longer forced to cover the full cost (about $150). If you want to get the covid jab with your flu shot, you’ll need to decide if a few extra days of health are worth the price. Leftists wailing about “access” notwithstanding, Kennedy hasn’t “taken away” this vaccine.

The measure seems reasonable until one hears the rationale: Officials described the old guidance as “one-size-fits-all” and based on the assumption that Americans “are not sophisticated enough to understand age- and risk-based recommendations.” First, millions were forgoing the shots. Second, the main impact is on insurance companies, whose job it is to know whether covering shots or treatments is profitable for any given group.

This comes across as an attempt to flatter voters who should be wondering: Why is someone, who sues vaccine makers and has no medical or scientific background or experience, in charge of what vaccines are available and what health insurers can or can not cover?

We know the short answer: Donald Trump wanted to reward Kennedy’s support for his presidential campaign more than he cared about the health of his voters — and nearly every Republican Senator (including four M.D.s !) went along with it.

But this dumpster fire would be impossible if the government weren’t running the biomedical sector of the economy, rather than just protecting our freedom like they are supposed to.

Contrary to the notion that we need a government to ensure safe and effective drugs, there is ample evidence that the profit motive is necessary and sufficient for this purpose .

Keep reading

RFK Jr. Clashes with Democrat in House Hearing over Vaccines: ‘You’ve Accepted $2 Million from Pharma’

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. clashed with Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) during a fiery House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing Tuesday, claiming the Democrat was abandoning vaccine-injured Americans after accepting millions in donations from the pharmaceutical industry.

Kennedy was testifying on the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2026 budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services when Pallone launched into a blistering attack. “Secretary Kennedy, quite frankly, I think you’re trying to defend the indefensible. There’s no way that this budget or the actions you have taken thus far as secretary are going to make this country healthier,” he said. Pallone went on to accuse the Secretary of pushing anti-science views, promoting conspiracy theories, and endangering lives with his vaccine policies. “I just really think that people are going to die as a result of your actions and congressional Republicans’ actions,” he warned.

Pallone also raised concerns about the lack of communication between HHS and Congress. He pressed further, demanding to know why Kennedy had not opened public comments on vaccine-related decisions. “You say you want transparency, but there’s been no public process for any of this. Why?” he asked.

Kennedy replied, “We have a public process for regulating vaccines. It’s called the ACIP committee, and it’s a public meeting that we —”

Pallone cut in, “You fired the committee.”

Kennedy responded, “I fired people who had conflicts with the pharmaceutical industry. That committee has been a template for medical malpractice for years.”

As his time for questioning drew to a close, Pallone concluded, “The bottom line is here we have no transparency, we have no response. You feel no responsibility to Congress whatsoever, and you just continue this ideology that’s anti-science, anti-vaccine. That’s all I see. I see nothing else. And I don’t think I’m ever going to get a response.”

Keep reading

Former Vaccine Committee Did Not Follow the Rules

In the spring of 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services underwent a sharp shift in leadership and oversight. With Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. assuming the role of Secretary, one of the most scrutinized decisions was his removal of 17 members from the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). The move followed years of concern about industry entanglement and sparked immediate backlash. Those dismissed issued a public letter defending their integrity and insisting that they had followed all disclosure requirements. But a detailed look at ACIP’s meeting history reveals that reporting a conflict of interest is not the same as acting on it—and that many of these members repeatedly failed to recuse themselves from discussions and votes where conflicts were plain.

ACIP is a federally chartered committee that sets the nation’s vaccine recommendations. Its decisions determine what vaccines are required for school entry, which are covered under federal programs like Vaccines for Children (VFC), and how billions in taxpayer dollars are spent. With that responsibility comes the requirement—both legal and ethical—to act free from industry influence. That doesn’t just mean disclosing conflicts. It means avoiding decisions in which personal or institutional interests could interfere with impartiality.

Over the last two decades, numerous ACIP members declared financial ties to vaccine manufacturers, but continued to participate in discussions and cast votes on matters directly tied to those companies. In many cases, those votes concerned vaccine products made by companies funding the members’ own clinical trials or compensating them as advisors. Under the CDC ethics policy, aligned with federal advisory standards, members are expected to recuse themselves from both discussion and voting when a conflict is present. Many did not.

For example, Dr. Cody Meissner, who served from 2008 to 2012, disclosed that his institution—Tufts Medical Center—received research funding from MedImmune, Pfizer, Wyeth, and AstraZeneca. Yet he voted on influenza and pneumococcal vaccine recommendations during that same period, with no recusal recorded in the meeting minutes.

Dr. Tamera Coyne-Beasley, who served from 2010 to 2014, repeatedly disclosed Merck-funded clinical trials conducted at the University of North Carolina. She voted on Merck-related vaccine policies, including HPV and adolescent immunization schedules, without recusal.

Keep reading