Tag: corruption

Biden Adviser Warned Fauci, CDC Director Cloth Masks Didn’t Work Well: Text

A doctor who advised President Joe Biden on COVID-19 warned Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top Biden administration officials in a newly disclosed text message that wearing cloth masks provided “very limited protection.”

Dr. Michael Osterholm, who was part of Biden’s COVID-19 transition advisory team, told Fauci and other officials, including the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the time, in August 2021, that the government needed to encourage the wearing of N-95 masks, rather than masking in general.

“Note the very limited protection from face cloth coverings,” Osterholm said in the text. He said that he supported masking, “but we must be promoting the use of N-95s, even if not fit tested.”

The CDC recommended masking in 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic started, prompting mask mandates in schools and other places. The agency promoted cloth masks, in addition to better quality face coverings, citing research it published in its quasi-journal.

Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, leading up to the 2021 text said publicly that cloth masks provided limited benefits and that he favored N-95s.

After Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis threatened to withhold funds from schools that forced masking on children, a reporter during a White House press briefing on Aug. 6, 2021, referenced Osterholm’s comments.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary at the time, noted that Osterholm was no longer a government adviser. She said the Biden administration was relying on medical experts in the federal government for masking. The issue with DeSantis, she added, was that the governor was “preventing schools and teachers and others from protecting themselves and the students in their classroom.”

Osterholm reacted by composing a message to Fauci, then-CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, and several others.

“I’m sending this via text messaging to avoid any FOIA issues,” he wrote on Aug. 8, 2021, referring to the Freedom of Information Act.

A former Fauci adviser just pleaded guilty to the federal crime of defrauding the government by destroying and conspiring to destroy federal records subject to the act, which lets people request government records.

Osterholm, in his message, pointed to a fact sheet from the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists that said with cloth masks, people had little protection against COVID-19.

He told the administration officials that “none of the studies that CDC uses to support its statement as to the significant protection of face cloth coverings stand up to scientific scrutiny” and urged them to “strongly promote” N-95s to the public.

“I am certain one day that one of the take-away findings of this pandemic was the constant [government] emphasis on masking while at the same time providing minimal guidance to the public what effective masking means,” he said.

The message was obtained by The Epoch Times from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who acquired it from the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC’s parent agency. The record was produced in response to Grassley’s requests for documents related to the origins of COVID-19, a spokeswoman said.

Osterholm, Walensky, and Fauci did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.

Walensky through 2022 advised schools to keep mask mandates in place. Many states and districts throughout that year rolled back masking requirements. The CDC says on its website now that wearing a mask “offers you an extra layer of protection from respiratory illness” and that “cloth masks generally offer lower levels of protection to wearers.”

Ian Miller, author of “Unmasked: The Global Failure of COVID Mask Mandates,” wrote on X that the newly disclosed message showed that top experts “knew that cloth masks didn’t work and were already failing to stop or even slow transmission and they kept demanding more mask mandates and forced school and toddler masking anyway.”

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SHOCK! Democrat Arizona AG Declines to Charge Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs in $400K Bribery Case

Arizona’s Democratic attorney general has declined to charge Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs over explosive allegations that a major state contractor poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into Democratic political coffers before receiving a lucrative 30 percent rate increase.

Far-left Attorney General Kris Mayes announced Friday that her office would bring no criminal charges against Hobbs over her administration’s dealings with Sunshine Residential Homes.

The numbers behind the investigation were eye-popping.

Sunshine donated $200,000 to the Arizona Democratic Party ahead of Hobbs’ disputed victory over Republican Kari Lake back in 2022.

It then contributed $100,000 to Hobbs’ inaugural fund and another $100,000 to the state Democratic Party in August 2023.

Company founder Simon Kottoor and his wife also donated a combined $10,000 to Hobbs’ gubernatorial campaigns.

At the time of the donations, Sunshine had been pressing the state for a substantial increase in the rate it was paid for each foster-care bed.

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21-Year-Old Was Behind Fake Polling Firm Median Strategies

Twenty-one-year-old Rahil Prakash is the person who published a number of fake polls that entered the media ecosystem.

He says that he was inspired to create his phony polls after Michigan primary polls totally blew the Democrat race between Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, aka Abdul El-Sayed, and Haley Stevens. El-Sayed barely squeaked out a win when poll after poll showed him up by double digits.

“I wanted to see if fake polls could really penetrate the ecosystem that easily,” he told the far-left Guardian. “And as it turned out, it could.”

Prakash created a website called Median Strategies and released bogus polls for the Democrat primary in the Wisconsin governor’s race, the Los Angeles mayoral race, and two statewide Nevada races.

“Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, touted Median polling data after it appeared to put her ahead of her election challenger by more than 10 percentage points,” the Guardian adds. “The poll was also cited by the California Post. A widely followed polling aggregator on X also shared the group’s Nevada poll[.]”

“[S]everal credible polling organizations did not aggregate Median polling because they could not verify its methodology.”

“Did I expect it to perhaps expedite in the way it did? Most definitely not. I did not expect the California political press to pick it up on their own,” said Prakash. “I’ll apologize straight out to the campaigns of Karen Bass, Nithya Raman and Francesca Hong for this,” the Guardian reported.

The fake Median poll put Francesca Hong up by 20 points. She lost by 0.5 points.

What’s so funny about this is that Median’s bogus poll was not the worst. Marquette, a so-called “legitimate” pollster, had Hong ahead by 22. PPP had her up by 18.

At least Median admits its polling is bogus. Fox News, Quinnipiac, and a number of others are equally bogus, as far as I can tell, but continue to be treated seriously. The whole field of polling is a joke.

Median snuck into the ecosystem because nobody really cares if polls are accurate; we all know they are not, so who cares? Had I seen the Median polls, I would have thought nothing of firing them off on social media. Polling no longer matters. It’s just content now, and anyone who takes polling seriously is a dumbass.

Polling is all about shaping public opinion, not reflecting it; it’s all about manipulating public opinion, not measuring it.

This guy did us a favor. He further damaged the credibility of polling and of the media. That’s a wonderful thing as far as I’m concerned.

Fake polls. Media polls. Potato-potahhhtow.

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California City Council Candidate ARRESTED on Five Felony Counts — Prosecutors Say She Listed a Cocktail Lounge as Her Home

Another election-fraud scandal has erupted in deep-blue California.

Desiree Lynch, a Democrat-aligned candidate for the Stockton City Council, was arrested Wednesday following a public-corruption investigation and charged with five felonies involving alleged perjury, false voter registration, and fraudulent candidate paperwork.

Although Stockton’s municipal elections are officially nonpartisan, Lynch’s campaign has leaned unmistakably to the left.

Her campaign website warns that “fairness, decency, freedom, and justice” are supposedly “under attack at the federal level” — an apparent swipe at President Donald Trump and his administration. Stockton Vice Mayor Jason Lee also publicly endorsed her campaign.

According to the San Joaquin County District Attorney’s Office, Lynch allegedly registered to vote and filed to run for the District 5 council seat using addresses where she did not live.

And one of the alleged “home” addresses was a cocktail lounge.

Prosecutors say Lynch used two Stockton addresses to manufacture residency inside District 5:

  • Harry’s Cocktail Lounge at 407 E. Charter Way, also known as East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard; and
  • Doyle Garden Apartments at 625 E. Oak Street.

Investigators determined that Lynch was actually living in Lodi and North Stockton, including an area located in Stockton City Council District 1, not District 5, according to the DA’s office.

The criminal complaint contains three perjury counts under California Penal Code Section 118(a), one count of causing, procuring, or allowing false voter registration under Elections Code Section 18100(a), and one count of filing a false nomination or declaration of candidacy under Elections Code Section 18203.

The alleged offenses span from November 10, 2025, through August 17, 2026.

The charges are:

  • Count 1: Perjury on or about November 10, 2025;
  • Count 2: Perjury on or about February 5, 2026;
  • Count 3: Perjury on or about March 2, 2026;
  • Count 4: Causing, procuring, or allowing false voter registration from approximately November 10, 2025, through August 17, 2026; and
  • Count 5: Filing a false nomination or declaration of candidacy during that same period.

The arrest followed a six-week investigation by the District Attorney’s Bureau of Investigations. The probe began after the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office referred the matter following the June primary election.

Lynch finished second in that primary, receiving 1,054 votes, or 30.59 percent, and advanced to the November runoff against incumbent Councilman Brando Villapudua, who received 1,173 votes, or 34.04 percent.

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Justice Gillian Roberts cuts violent sex offender’s sentence over looming deportation

An Ontario judge reduced the prison sentence of a permanent resident convicted of a violent sexual assault, ruling that his near-certain deportation would make his punishment more severe.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Gillian Roberts sentenced 31-year-old Sergio Reyes Loor to four years in prison for sexual assault causing bodily harm, despite finding that five years would otherwise have been a fit sentence.

“The conviction will have devastating immigration consequences, making any punishment I impose more severe than it otherwise would be,” Roberts wrote. “As a result, I decrease the sentence to four years.”

Reyes Loor, an Ecuadorian permanent resident who first came to Canada in 2015, was convicted after Roberts found he sexually assaulted a severely intoxicated woman at his Toronto apartment in April 2023.

The woman remembered only fragments of the assault. Roberts found beyond a reasonable doubt that Reyes Loor knew she was too intoxicated to consent.

The injuries were severe.

“She was bruised all over, and the skin of her genitals torn,” Roberts wrote. The judge found Reyes Loor had taken advantage of the woman’s condition to “violently sexually assault her,” adding that he bit her, did not use a condom and caused significant physical and psychological injuries.

The Crown sought five years in prison. According to Roberts, defence counsel also agreed five years would be appropriate based on the facts as she found them, although counsel disputed those findings and launched what Roberts described as a “shockingly sexist and misogynistic attack on the complainant.”

Reyes Loor maintains his innocence and has no previous criminal record.

His lawyer told the court that if the conviction stands, Reyes Loor will lose his permanent resident status and be deported.

Roberts acknowledged that the seriousness of the crime meant a sentence avoiding immigration consequences was out of the question. However, she concluded that deportation itself should still be treated as a collateral consequence when determining a proportionate sentence.

“The circumstances of this case are far too serious to impose a sentence that will not have immigration consequences,” Roberts wrote.

Nonetheless, she reduced the sentence by one year, saying the “near certain immigration consequences” would make Reyes Loor’s punishment harsher than it otherwise would have been.

Under federal immigration law, permanent residents convicted of serious criminality can be found inadmissible to Canada and removed from the country.

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Clerk Calls On DOJ To Help Get Non-Citizens Off His Voter Rolls After Sec of State Whistleblower Claims MI SOS Benson is Automatically Registering Them To Vote

This evening, Hastings Charter Township Clerk David Olson released a video of himself pleading with the feds to get involved in Michigan’s elections, specifically to help him identify and remove non-citizens from his voter rolls. Mr. Olson is asking for help from the feds after a whistleblower from Jocelyn Benson’s Secretary of State’s office came forward and told Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf that non-citizens are being placed on the voter rolls at the Secretary of State level. Hastings Charter Twp. Clerk David Olson claims there is absolutely no way for local clerks to detect non-citizens placed on their voter rolls by the Secretary of State’s office. Hastings Charter Township is in Barry County, Michigan.

Clerk Olson explained what the whistleblower told the Barry County Sheriff: “When a non-citizen changes their address, programming automatically registers that citizen to vote. When the employee advised the supervisor, the supervisor said ‘That’s okay, because it will be caught downline by the clerks.” Olson challenged the supervisor’s statement, saying, “That is not correct! Once it’s in the qualified voter file, there’s no way for me to verify citizenship!” He continued, “Therefore, they [non-citizens] are automatically issued a ballot or an absentee ballot. So, since it is my responsibility to safeguard the voter rolls in my township, I’m asking if the federal government is interested to help verify my citizen’s [voter] roll?” Clerk Olson appears to welcome the opportunity to have his voter rolls cleared of non-citizens who have no right to vote in our elections. “I would be welcome to have them here,” he said, as he assured the integrity of his voter rolls would not be compromised. Olson explained, “I will safeguard my voter roll in the office but they are certainly welcome to come and compare against mine and this way will uphold law. I will definitely follow mine and it will be fair and honest.” The soft-spoken clerk ended with a simple, “Thank you.

When it comes to investigating and exposing voter fraud in Michigan, Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf is arguably the most committed law enforcement official in the state.

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DHS Investigates Anti-Israel Nonprofit Over Suspect Fund Transfers

The Department of Homeland Security is reportedly digging into a nonprofit tied to Zohran Mamdani after questions surfaced about donor money and its possible path to a sanctioned Palestinian group. The case centers on a U.K.-based organization with a massive funding pool and a loud anti-Israel mission, which has put its finances and political network under a bright federal spotlight.

The group at the center of the report is known as PFF, a foundation described as having roughly a $100 million war chest. According to the reporting, federal authorities are looking at whether donor funds may have been steered toward Al-Haq, a Palestinian organization sanctioned by the United States.

That alone is enough to raise eyebrows, but the story gets messier fast. Sources quoted in the report described the outfit as a “new fund” created by Arabs across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia to push back against Israel, giving the group a clear ideological edge.

Another name keeps popping up in the background: Bassema Yousef. She is described as the key figure in the fundraising effort, a New York-born Democrat donor who now lives in London and has long been connected to Mamdani’s orbit.

Her public posts reportedly leave little room for doubt about where she stands. The report says her social media has included repeated anti-Israel attacks, including claims that Israel is committing “war crimes with U.S. tax dollars,” language that shows just how heated this fight has become.

The financing side is what makes the whole thing even more intense. Sources told the Post that Yousef helped build PFF with backing from two wealthy donors, Austin-based investing executive Basil Qunibi and Palestinian-Australian motorsports figure Yasser Shahin.

Shahin’s role is not just rumor, at least according to the report. Corporate filings in the U.K. reportedly confirm his support for PFF, and the IRS has also acknowledged that the organization has a nonprofit arm based in Delaware.

PFF has also tried to present itself as something bigger and cleaner than the controversy around it. Its own description calls it a “strategic foundation” that partners with organizations able to deliver results that fit its objectives.

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JD Vance Tears Into Minnesota Governor Tim Walz for Trying to Protect a Child Predator

Vice President JD Vance visited the Ohio steel plant where his own grandfather worked this week and used part of the visit to outline the accomplishments of the Trump administration, especially with regards to immigration and jobs.

At one point, Vance retold the story of a child predator who Minnesota Governor Tim Walz tried to rescue from deportation by giving him a pardon. Vance said that the Trump administration deported the man anyway, eliciting applause from the audience.

That story is a good reminder of just how crazy Democrats have become.

Partial transcript via Nick Sortor:

JD Vance just TORCHED Tim Walz for pardoning a CONVICTED RAPlST from Laos in attempt to shield him from deportation

Unfortunately for Walz, his little plan didn’t work, and DHS forcibly sent the raplst back to Laos 

“Walz asked the country what good it accomplished. ‘Did that make us any safer?’ That is a DIRECT QUOTE from the Democrat GOVERNOR of Minnesota.”

“To which I’d say, as the father of four young children: 10 year olds and everybody else can breathe a little bit easier in Minnesota.

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AOC and Bernie Sanders Are Still Taking ActBlue Money After an 88-Year-Old Said She Donated $150,000 From a Trailer With No Computer

ActBlue’s own CEO sat before Congress in June and invoked the Fifth Amendment 22 times.

The platform – the financial backbone of every major Democrat campaign in America – just got caught with a new donor who says her name was used for more than 16,000 contributions she didn’t make.

And AOC, Bernie Sanders, and Ilhan Omar are still cashing the checks from ActBlue.

An 88-Year-Old Woman Living in a Trailer Has 16,000 Donations in Her Name

Elizabeth Waffle is 88 years old.

She lives in a trailer down a dirt road in Milan, Michigan, after her house burned down two years ago.

She has no computer.

She has spotty internet service.

Federal Election Commission records say she has made more than 16,000 political contributions totaling nearly $150,000 through ActBlue since 2020.

That’s eight donations a day, every day, for five years straight – averaging $9.18 a pop.

“One hundred and fifty thousand? Hell no, I don’t have that kind of money,” Waffle told reporter Charlie LeDuff of the Michigan Enjoyer in a now-viral video.

She acknowledged making small donations through ActBlue – she disputed the $150,000.

“I don’t see $150,000,” she said. “That’s very abnormal and I think it’s wrong. I think there’s something in there that’s off.”

ActBlue responded by saying it had “zero tolerance for fraud.”

Then it kept processing donations for AOC, Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar, and the Democratic National Committee.

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Top Fauci adviser’s plea deal provides possible roadmap for further conspiracy prosecutions

The plea deal agreed to by former top Dr. Anthony Fauci adviser David Morens, filed in federal court this week, provides a roadmap for further conspiracy charges in the scheme to conceal communications about coronavirus research grants from Freedom of Information Act requests, a review of the court documents shows.

Morens, who served as a senior adviser to Fauci at the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 16 years, pleaded guilty earlier this week to the conspiracy, admitting to working with two co-conspirators to conceal agency records from public view. 

The records dealt with a National Institutes of Health grant to “Company #1,” an entity that sponsored coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory in China. Just months after the COVID-19 pandemic spread to the United States, the NIH canceled the bat coronavirus grant to the company as it reviewed allegations that the laboratory may have been the source of the virus in a lab leak after President Donald Trump publicly acknowledged his awareness of the grant in late April 2020. 

Though not identified by name by prosecutors, Company #1 is EcoHealth Alliance, the former New York-based nonprofit headed by Peter Daszak that Fauci’s agency used as a pass-through to fund controversial gain-of-function research at the Chinese facility. At the time, as questions swirled about the origins of the virus then spreading across the globe, federal health officials were assessing their agencies’ exposure to that research in China. EcoHealth and Daszak, which awarded sub-grants to the facility in Wuhan, were at the center of that scrutiny. 

While the focus has been on Morens after his guilty plea earlier this week, the plea agreement provides significant detail about the overall conspiracy and identifies Daszak – by implication and not by name – as “Co-Conspirator 1” in the scheme to avoid FOIA requests, raising the possibility that the British zoologist could face his own legal jeopardy for his alleged involvement. 

The agreement, which was signed by Morens, lays out in detail how he, Daszak and another conspirator worked to conceal records related to EcoHealth’s coronavirus research grant and used Morens’ status as a senior adviser to advance the interests of EcoHealth within the NIH. 

“On or about April 25, 2020, after learning about the cancellation of the bat coronavirus grant from Co-Conspirator 1, MORENS forwarded his communications with Co-Conspirator 1 and Co-Conspirator 2 from his NIH email account to his Gmail account,” according to the Stipulation of Facts appended to Morens’ plea deal. 

You can read the plea agreement and the addendum laying out the facts of the case below: 

gov.uscourts.mdd_.603873.36.0.pdf

gov.uscourts.mdd_.603873.36.1.pdf

“​​MORENS then emailed Co-Conspirator 1 and Co-Conspirator 2, stating, ‘This is sent from my gmail account. Please send all replies here To gmail […] There are things I cant say except [Senior NIAID Official 1] is aware and I have learned that there are ongoing efforts within NIH to steer through this with minimal damage to you, [Co-Conspirator 1], and colleagues, and to nih and niaid,’” the document also states, outlining Morens’ effort to initiate the conspiracy to conceal federal records.

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