Ernst Haas Greece 1952
Peter Doshi, BMJ
https://twitter.com/i/status/1455976583009873928
CO2
https://twitter.com/i/status/1456172131067125760
The continued and escalating litigation can start only after the “mandate” is officially part of the Federal Register. It will be torn to shreds before Jan 4. Merry Christmas.
“Texas Attorney General @TXAG: Biden just announced his plan to wield OSHA to mandate vaccines on private businesses. And I’m announcing my plan to sue him once this illegal, unconstitutional regulation hits the Federal Register.”
• OSHA Vaccine Mandate Released, 84 Million Workers Face Jan. 4 Deadline (ET)
The Biden administration has released the new rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requiring 84 million private sector workers to get vaccinated for COVID-19. The administration has also announced its rule from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Assistance (CMS) requiring 17 million healthcare workers participating in federal health programs to be vaccinated. The White House is also pushing back the deadline for workers in those sectors, as well as federal contractors, to get fully vaccinated to Jan. 4, 2022, according to a senior administration official. “We wanted to do this because we’re really aligning it to make it easier—to make it as easy as possible for businesses to implement these requirements and for workers to comply,” said the official, when asked about pushing back the deadline.
The Biden administration had received multiple letters from industries requesting the deadline for vaccination be moved back until after the holiday season. The OSHA rule requires employers with 100 or more employees to put vaccine requirements in place for all staff, or face fines of up to $14,000 per violation. The agency is allowed to put into place an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) when it determines workers are at “grave risk.” Under the rule, workers who are not vaccinated are required to submit a weekly negative COVID test at no expense to their employer. Unvaccinated workers are also required to wear masks when on the job. Health care workers do not have the testing option. The ETS requires employers to determine and keep record of the vaccination status of each employee and report all COVID deaths and hospitalizations to OSHA.
The rule takes effect immediately upon publication, scheduled for Oct. 5, in the federal register. White House officials say the new ETS is well within OSHA’s authority under the law and consistent with OSHA’s requirements to protect workers from health and safety hazards, including infectious diseases. Officials claim there is well-established legal precedent for OSHA’s authority to evaluate existing scientific evidence and apply data to develop safety and health standards. The ETS says it preempts state and local laws that ban or limit an employer from requiring vaccination, face covering, or testing. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order Oct. 11 banning Texas businesses from requiring vaccines for employees, or customers.
And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis filed suit Oct. 28 against the Biden Administration’s order requiring employees of federal contractors to be vaccinated. Several Republican governors and attorneys general have vowed to fight the new OSHA rule in court.
JUST IN – “OSHA will consider expanding the vaccine mandate to smaller businesses with fewer than 100 employees during a 30-day comment period, according to the U.S. Labor Department.”
• OSHA Signals to Employers to Hide Vaccine Side Effects Reporting (BN)
While President Biden’s federal vaccine mandate was announced in September, the OSHA regulation actually compelling qualifying federal contractors and business with over 100 employees to force workers to be vaccinated for Covid-19 has not been formally issued. But OSHA is making it clear that it does not want to know about vaccine side effects, because it has suspended employer reporting requirements. “DOL and OSHA, as well as other federal agencies, are working diligently to encourage COVID-19 vaccinations,” the health agency says on its official website. “OSHA does not wish to have any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving COVID-19 vaccination, and also does not wish to disincentivize employers’ vaccination efforts. As a result, OSHA will not enforce 29 CFR 1904’s recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects from COVID-19 vaccination at least through May 2022. We will reevaluate the agency’s position at that time to determine the best course of action moving forward.”
However, employees who have claimed injury from vaccines can still file a report with their employer under OSHA’s whistleblower regulations. “Section 11(c) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (29 USC 660(c)) prohibits employers from retaliating against workers for exercising a variety of rights guaranteed under the law, such as filing a safety or health complaint with OSHA, raising a health and safety concern with their employers, participating in an OSHA inspection, or reporting a work-related injury or illness,” OSHA notes. “Additionally, OSHA’s Whistleblower Protection Program enforces the provisions of more than 20 industry-specific federal laws protecting employees from retaliation for raising or reporting concerns about hazards or violations of various airline, commercial motor carrier, consumer product, environmental, financial reform, food safety, health insurance reform, motor vehicle safety, nuclear, pipeline, public transportation agency, railroad, maritime, securities, tax, antitrust, and anti-money laundering laws. Also see the anti-retaliation provisions in the Emergency Temporary Standard for Healthcare.”
“If you believe you have suffered such retaliation, submit a whistleblower complaint to OSHA as soon as possible in order to ensure that you file the complaint within the legal time limits, some of which may be as short as 30 days from the date you learned of or experienced retaliation,” OSHA adds. “An employee can file a complaint with OSHA by visiting or calling his or her local OSHA office; sending a written complaint via fax, mail, or email to the closest OSHA office; or filing a complaint online. No particular form is required and complaints may be submitted in any language.” “OSHA’s recordkeeping regulation, 29 CFR 1904.35, also prohibits employers from retaliating against employees for reporting work-related injuries or illnesses,” it adds.
“The purpose of this provision is to improve the completeness and accuracy of injury and illness data by allowing OSHA to issue citations to employers who retaliate against their employees for reporting an injury or illness and thereby discourage or deter accurate reporting of work-related injuries or illnesses.” While OSHA is seeking to bury vaccine side effects reporting in relation to the still-unissued federal mandate, the Biden administration has quietly authorized damages to be settled with coerced vaccine takers if they suffer serious side effects. The clause was buried deep in documents in a Division of Federal Employees’ Compensation bulletin issued earlier in October.
“On September 9, 2021, President Biden issued an executive order mandating COVID-19 vaccination for most Federal employees,” the document states. “The order directed each agency to implement a program to require COVID-19 vaccination for all of its employees, with exceptions only as required by law.” “The Federal Employees’ Compensation Act (FECA) covers injuries that occur in the performance of duty,” the bulletin goes on. “The FECA does not generally authorize provision of preventive measures such as vaccines and inoculations, and in general, preventive treatment is a responsibility of the employing agency under the provisions of 5 U.S.C. 7901. However, care can be authorized by OWCP for complications of preventive measures which are provided or sponsored by the agency, such as adverse reaction to prophylactic immunization.”
“It’s a great disservice to fire people—nurses, doctors, firemen, policemen—who put their life at risk when there was no vaccine at all..”
• Rand Paul Decries Firing of Frontline Workers Over Vaccine Mandates (ET)
Firefighters, nurses, and other so-called frontline workers are being fired or facing termination across the country for not complying with COVID-19 vaccine mandates. That’s wrong, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says. “It’s a great disservice to fire people—nurses, doctors, firemen, policemen—who put their life at risk when there was no vaccine at all,” he told NTD’s “The Beau Show.” Officials in New York City and other locales that have imposed vaccine requirements say they will help decrease community spread of the virus that causes COVID-19, though the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines against infection has dropped sharply in recent months. “In terms of COVID, we are one of the safest places in America, because we have one of the highest levels of vaccination,” Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, told reporters on Wednesday.
Paul disagrees, particularly because many mandates lack opt-outs for those who have had COVID-19 and recovered. That means they have some level of protection against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, many studies have shown. “Many of them got COVID while taking care of people. The doctors and nurses caught COVID from their patients. Most of them survived, fortunately. They now have immunity and all the science—102 studies—show that you have immunity if you’ve had the disease naturally,” he told NTD. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledges natural immunity, or protection bestowed by having COVID-19, but asserts even those with it should get a vaccine for an extra boost.
“We do know that after nearly all infectious diseases, you have some protection from getting that infection again, but we don’t really know how long that lasts or how robust it is,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the agency’s head, told reporters on Wednesday. Critics argue those points are largely the same for vaccines and note that many of the studies suggest the level of protection is similar to or even superior to vaccination. “What kind of discriminatory policies do we have in place that are excluding someone like me from the workplace when I’m 99.8 percent protected against reinfection, whereas someone who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, by the company’s own data that they submitted to the FDA, is 67 percent protective against COVID infection?” Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, who was suspended by the University of California, Irvine for not getting a vaccine, told The Epoch Times last month.
The BMJ report is rattling some windows.
• A Credibility Blow To Pfizer’s Covid-19 Vaccine (Demasi)
When the first doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine arrived on Australian shores, Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt proudly announced that we could all be confident the vaccines had undergone “rigorous, independent testing” to ensure they were “ safe, effective, and manufactured to a high standard.” As of 24 October 2021, approximately 21 million doses of Comirnaty (Pfizer) have been administered to Australians aged >16 years, with the understanding that drug regulators and public health officials have done their due diligence on the data. Pfizer has promised that “every clinical trial is planned, conducted and reviewed according to the highest scientific, ethical and clinical standards.” This week, however, a whistle-blower has lifted the lid on breaches in research integrity and safety involving one of Pfizer’s most pivotal mRNA vaccine trials.
An investigation by the BMJ has reported that a company called Ventavia, tasked with running a trial site for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine study, “falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events”. The whistle-blower has revealed that she was fired after complaining about the company’s poor research practices, evidenced by dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails. The trial in question was Pfizer’s phase 3 study, involving around 44,000 participants in three groups aged 12-15yrs, 16-55yrs and >55yrs. The complaints included the mislabelling of laboratory specimens, vaccines not being stored at proper temperatures and a lack of timely follow-up of patients with adverse events, all of which were verified by two former colleagues.
Where was the regulatory oversight? The FDA was notified of a complaint filed by the whistle-blower but failed to action any audit of the company. One of the former employees characterised the data that had been generated for Pfizer’s mRNA trial as “a crazy mess”. Paul Thacker, the investigative journalist who broke the story for the BMJ, is incredulous that these types of violations are allowed to occur. “There were credible allegations of problems at this research site, the FDA did nothing and Pfizer hired the company [Ventavia] again,” said Thacker. “Why is the FDA not inspecting clinical research sites when they are getting credible allegations about corruption? Where is the FDA office of criminal investigations? Where is the FBI healthcare fraud unit? They’re nowhere to be seen.”
“Instead, we just get told it’s science, science, science. If you say it enough times, it must be true,” he joked. In what should have been international news, this latest whistle-blower case has barely registered in the mainstream media. “We have a lot of science-cheerleading reporters,” Thacker said, “Pfizer has such a huge PR machine, they have basically captured the media, they’ve hypnotised the media”. Pfizer has a history of deceptive practices, including illegal marketing, covering up drug harms and more recently, the company was accused of “bullying” governments in COVID-19 vaccine negotiations. Pfizer announced that it expects to earn US$36 billion in revenue from its vaccine this year, the same week the Centres for Disease Control Prevention signed off on emergency use authorisation of the vaccine for 5- to 11-year-olds.
“Jackson said she alerted the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to the problems she witnessed and was fired within hours of doing so.”
• Report of Problems With Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Trial Being Investigated (ET)
The alleged problems with a major clinical trial examining Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine trial are being probed, a contract company involved in the research has confirmed. Ventavia Research Group operated several of the trial sites in the fall of 2020. Brook Jackson worked for the company during this time. She told the British Medical Journal (BMJ) that the trial was riddled with issues, including the falsification of data. Jackson said she alerted the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to the problems she witnessed and was fired within hours of doing so. Ventavia confirmed to The Epoch Times that it employed Jackson for two weeks last year. Lauren Foreman, director of business development and communications, said in an email that Ventavia is investigating the allegations from Jackson.
“Ventavia takes research compliance, data integrity, and participant safety very seriously and stands behind its important work supporting the development of lifesaving vaccines and is conducting its investigation accordingly,” she said. The FDA appeared to confirm it was aware of the matter. “Although the agency cannot comment further at this time in this ongoing matter, FDA has full confidence in the data that were used to support the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine authorization and the Comirnaty approval,” a spokeswoman told The Epoch Times in an email. Ventavia worked on the trial that led to emergency use authorization (EUA) for Pfizer’s jab. The FDA later approved the shot, though many or all of the doses being administered in the United States continue to be the EUA-version.
Jackson, who worked with clinical trials for over 15 years, told the BMJ she repeatedly raised concerns with her superiors about what she was witnessing, including patient safety concerns. She began to feel her reports were being ignored and began taking photographs using her phone. One photograph apparently showed that needles were discarded in a plastic bag instead of a box, while another was said to have showed packaging materials that revealed trial participants’ identification numbers, signaling they may have been unblinded. Jackson listed 12 concerns she had in a Sept. 25 message to the FDA, including participants not being monitored after receiving an injection and vaccines not being stored at proper temperatures. She also alleged that Ventavia staff members were targeted by higher-ups for reporting problems. Jackson said the FDA sent her an email acknowledging receipt of the list and she received a call from an FDA inspector, but has heard nothing from the agency since then.
“So to “evade” the risk of Covid-19’s serious outcomes you deliberately damage the immune response for at least some period of time against all manner of other things, some of which are at least as dangerous as Covid-19 is.”
• Are You ****ed? Maybe. But.. How Bad? (Denninger)
“Here, we report, besides generation of neutralizing antibodies, consistent alterations in hemoglobin A1c, serum sodium and potassium levels, coagulation profiles, and renal functions in healthy volunteers after vaccination with an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Similar changes had also been reported in COVID-19 patients, suggesting that vaccination mimicked an infection.” That is very bad. In fact its catastrophically bad. Vaccination is supposed to trick your immune system into thinking your body is being attacked without producing the bad outcomes that the actual disease can produce. You get the protection, but not the potential bad outcomes from infection itself. That is the entire point of vaccination; to evade the possible bad outcomes from infection.
Since a traditional vaccine (which this is; inactivated whole virus) cannot replicate it should never produce the bad impacts from disease itself. That is, the only “dose” your body gets from an inactivated vaccine is what is in the syringe; no more, no less. Unfortunately what this study shows is that a material number of these bad effects from infection come from vaccination as well. That’s unexpected and hideous, especially some of the markers that showed up — including most-specifically A1c. It is of particular note that A1c did not return to baseline over 90 days post jab. In fact, it remained elevated with some formerly-healthy people now being in the “pre-diabetic” category. This cannot be understated in terms of what it means: Diabetes is arguably the most-serious morbid condition you can contract. To take a person with a healthy A1c level and turn them into a pre-diabetic by telling them to take the jab is criminally insane.
If you are healthy and thus not at any special risk from Covid-19 you’d be out of your damned mind to accept that risk with certainty by taking the shot and if you are coerced into it the proper response is to be placed right between the coercing party’s eyes. Diabetes is that serious folks. Additional durable deterioration was found in both potassium (electrolyte balance) and creatinine, which is a kidney damage marker. I remind you that unlike your liver which can regenerate you only have two kidneys and if they fail you’re ****ed. What’s particularly ugly is that if you get hammered with a so-called “breakthrough” infection later on these deteriorations, which appear to be durable, may well screw you down the road. Both are serious co-morbid factors that radically increase the risk of getting screwed if you get Covid-19.
Now to be fair this study is on a whole, inactivated vaccine. It therefore may — or may not — generalize to the mRNA jabs. We do not know. But don’t you think we should know? Indeed since the jabs used in the US (and Europe) all “program” the body to produce the spike protein, and we know the spike is pathogenic, it is entirely reasonable to believe that these impacts not only exist with mRNA and viral vector jabs they may in fact be materially worse than those from whole, inactivated virus. More to the point shouldn’t we have run this sort of testing and thus known, by published studies, before we jabbed 200 million Americans and threatened the rest? If this sort of durable damage does happen how often does it happen and how-severe is it?= Folks, the change in immune markers along with creatine and A1c is flat-out nasty. Let me quote from the study itself:
“This is a comprehensive investigation of the pathophysiological changes, including detailed immunological alterations in people after COVID-19 vaccination. Results indicated that vaccination, in addition to stimulating the generation of neutralizing antibodies, also influenced various health indicators including those related to diabetes, renal dysfunction, cholesterol metabolism, coagulation problems, electrolyte imbalance, in a way as if the volunteers experienced an infection.” And while some of those returned to baseline over the subsequent 90 days renal dysfunction and diabetes markers DID NOT. “Together, these data suggested that after vaccination, at least by day 28, other than generation of neutralizing antibodies, people’s immune systems, including those of lymphocytes and monocytes, were perhaps in a more vulnerable state. “So to “evade” the risk of Covid-19’s serious outcomes you deliberately damage the immune response for at least some period of time against all manner of other things, some of which are at least as dangerous as Covid-19 is.
What differs between the two years? The glaringly obvious answer is the rollout of COVID-19 vaccination.
• Are Vaccines Driving Excess Deaths in Scotland ? (DS)
Your first explanation is that the summer excess deaths recorded as non-Covid are actually due to Covid, but have not been certified as such. I see that you yourself are not convinced by this explanation given the level of testing that has taken place. However, let us suppose this to be true. In that case the Scottish Government’s public health measures that have been put in place in summer 2021 to prevent Covid have been far worse than those put in place in summer 2020 – indeed they have been disastrous.
Your second explanation is that the non-clinical responses to COVID-19 put in place by the Scottish Government (mask-wearing, social isolation etc.) have had unintended deleterious consequences on public health and have dramatically increased the rates of death in the Scottish population. This is an admission of abject failure of the Scottish Government’s public health response to Covid. Public health policy is all about balancing the benefits and risks of interventions to achieve the lowest possible impact during a health emergency. It is pertinent to remember that no benefit-risk assessment of non-clinical interventions on the physical and mental health of the Scottish population was conducted before these interventions were enforced.
Your third explanation is that there has been a problem with access to health and social care services, and patients have not received the care they required from the NHS. Access to these services over the past 20 months has been under the control of the Scottish Government, so if this explanation is correct, then the Scottish Government is culpable for increasing the death rate in Scotland. Numerous policies have been deliberately pursued to dramatically reduce GP face-to-face consultation, to cancel appointments and operations in hospitals etc., so the evidence to support this, as at least a partial explanation, is overwhelming.
Your fourth explanation is that individuals who are in poor health have not referred themselves to health and social care services as they would at other times. To some extent this would be confounded with Scottish Government policies of restricting health care provision discussed above. However there has also been a concerted and relentless media campaign by the Scottish Government to increase fear in the public, particularly fear of hospitals where they may catch Covid. This has meant that they have not gone for treatment when it was necessary. Whatever the proximal cause of failure to seek medical attention, the ultimate cause and responsibility lies in Scottish Government policy.
Your final explanation for the dramatic rise in excess deaths in summer 2021 is that there is some other cause that has not yet been identified. As noted earlier the phenomenon of excess deaths in the presence of a Covid epidemic was not seen in summer 2020, but is seen in summer 2021. What differs between the two years? The glaringly obvious answer is the rollout of COVID-19 vaccination. There was no COVID-19 vaccination programme in 2020, but there was rollout of Covid vaccinations in a sequential way to increasingly younger age groups in 2021, a pattern that we see in the manifestation of excess deaths. All of the COVID-19 vaccines are novel and experimental with no long-term safety data. They are now associated with a wide range of serious side-effects (blood clotting, myocarditis, Guillain-Barre syndrome) whose likely frequency in the wider population was not assessed in the small-scale phase one and two trials that included only a subset of healthy volunteers. The Yellow Card adverse events reporting system, that capture only a fraction of events, has already recorded over 1,700 deaths in the U.K. population associated with the COVID-19 vaccines. There is therefore a prima facie case for COVID-19 vaccination being a contributing factor to the dramatic rise in summer excess deaths in Scotland in 2021.
“..they used a more effective vaccine to show efficacy (in the trials they completed), then they get the FDA to approve the drug but with a change in formulation, then the product with the new buffer will go out to the public with the lower efficacy, but better safety.”
• Here’s The Real Reason Comirnaty Is Not Available (Kirsch)
The reason Comirnaty isn’t available is because those shots would expose the company to liability since the fully-licensed product doesn’t have the liability waiver of the EUA product. But once the Pfizer vaccine is fully approved in kids, then Pfizer gets liability waiver on all age groups due to a “feature” in federal law for child vaccines (NCVIA). At that time, they are done. They can market the COVID vaccine products under full approval for all age groups and face no liability when it kills or disables you. This is why they are focused on the kids. This is why there is a reformulation at a 1/3 dose and they changed the buffer and the storage conditions (low temperatures not required). All of these will weaken the protection, but result in a safer vaccine (since it is ineffective).
But for the clinical trials on the 5-11 year olds, they did not use the formulation they approved in the meeting. This is known as bait and switch. So they used a more effective vaccine to show efficacy (in the trials they completed), then they get the FDA to approve the drug but with a change in formulation, then the product with the new buffer will go out to the public with the lower efficacy, but better safety. This is because they don’t want to jeopardize any adverse events happening until they are fully approved. So they basically use formula 1 for safety, get approval for formula 2 (safer, less effective), then roll out formula 2 under EUA.
They also arrange with the FDA and CDC to make sure no early treatment drugs get approved or recommended. This is why there is no movement on fluvoxamine, ivermectin, etc. since that would blow the EUA. Fluvoxamine is the best drug ever for COVID with a mortality reduction of 12X when taken early. It’s the best drug to date for COVID, but the CDC and NIH are deliberately burying it until the vaccines are fully approved. Then they’ll say, “ok, we have all the data.” So at the end, Pfizer gets a fully approved vaccine with full liability protection. At that time, then the NIH can recognize other treatments. This is how it is wired to go. Let’s be honest about it. This is why nobody wants to debate our team about what is going on.
Don’t know what to wear? Blame it on Covid!
• How Covid Can Render You Indecisive For The Rest Of Your Life (RT)
A new study has found that one unlikely result of the pandemic for many has been Panic Disorder – an increased inability to make inconsequential decisions due to the constant need for risk assessment in everyday life. If you’ve found yourself struggling with making minor decisions recently, you’re not the only one. A new study conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of the American Psychological Association found that nearly one-third of US adults (32%) are having difficulty making basic daily decisions, such as what to wear or eat. The survey also showed that, while 70% of respondents were confident that everything would work out fine once the coronavirus pandemic ended, and 77% felt like they were doing well overall, more than one-third (35%) said it has been more stressful to make major life decisions, around half (49%) said the pandemic has made planning for the future seem impossible, and 61% said the last 18 months have made them rethink how they live their lives.
Those results are not surprising in and of themselves. We’ve all read the headlines about the general anxiety and feelings of dread that people have experienced throughout the pandemic, as well as the stories about people completely re-evaluating their lives thanks to all of the free time for self-reflection. Deciding whether or not to quit your job and move to Missouri is always stressful, even when there isn’t a global pandemic going on. But the statistics about anxiety over minor daily decisions struck me as new and interesting, not least because I’ve been experiencing this myself. sI’ve always been a relatively antsy overthinker, but I have never been reduced to beads of sweat over whether or not to do a yoga class, as has recently been the case. I can spend an entire afternoon debating whether or not to go to a party. My boyfriend has taken to simply ordering for me at restaurants, like I’m a baby. I know, on a rational level, that none of these decisions are A Big Deal, but they feel like The Biggest Deal Ever in the moment, and knowing that they’re not simply makes me annoyed at myself on top of everything else.
This type of anxiety – in which you can have a panic attack over something relatively small – is known as a Panic Disorder. You might even recognize that debating whether to go to the gym or straight to work is not worth the agony it’s causing you, but you still feel like you’re in an airplane that’s about to crash into the ocean. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, an estimated 4.7% of US adults experience panic disorders. Based on this new survey, it seems like quite a few more of us are suffering from them now. The survey blames this new surge of anxiety almost entirely on the pandemic. “For many, the pandemic has imposed the need for constant risk assessment, with routines upended and once trivial tasks recast in light of the pandemic. Many people ask, ‘What is the community transmission in my area today and how will this affect my choices? What is the vaccination rate? Is there a mask mandate here?’ When the factors influencing a person’s decisions are constantly changing, no decision is routine.”
Recap: Steele promised to get the goods on Trump from Russia. But Steele hadn’t been to Russia in at least a decade. He needed an inside source. That became Danchenko, but he too was in the US (Brookings Institution). Danchenko asked some buddies to deliver the hot info, and they got him stories and -later- admitted they had made it all up under the influence of copious amounts of booze. He also apppears to have been fed fat tales by Dem associates. By then the Steele Dossier had become a important political tool in DC.
• Arrest Of Steele Dossier Source A “Seismic Development” (ZH)
Shining further light on today’s arrest of Igor Danchenko – the primary source for the debunked Steele dossier – is constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley, who calls it a “seismic development.” The office of Special Counsel John Durham has confirmed that Igor Danchenko, a key source for British ex-spy Christopher Steele, has been arrested. This is the third arrest by Durham who is moving toward the prosecution stage of his investigation into the origins of the Russian collusion scandal. Durham is variously described as either painfully methodical or positively glacial as a prosecutor. But he is widely credited with being a dogged and absolutely apolitical prosecutor. Danchenko’s arrest is a seismic development and confirmed Durham is far from done with his investigation.
Washington was recently rocked by the indictment of Michael Sussman, former counsel for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, for his alleged role in spreading a false Russia conspiracy theory. Now Danchenko is being charged with lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Danchenko is widely referenced as the sub-source for former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele for his controversial dossier. That dossier, funded by the Clinton campaign, served as the basis for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Trump campaign aide Carter Page. Danchenko told the FBI that the dossier was “unsubstantiated” and said that Steele asked him to look for any “compromising” information on Trump.
Mr. Danchenko worked for the Brookings Institution, a liberal Washington think-tank that often produced reports critical of Trump. Danchenko is not someone who immediately comes across as an apex defendant — the highest target in an investigation. He was a key source used by others to advance false or unsubstantiated claims against Trump. He is the type of defendant that prosecutors pressure to flip against those who retained him or used him in this effort. In other words, he strikes me as someone who can be used as a building block to apex defendants. Potential apex targets above him in investigation range from Steele himself to Clinton general counsel Marc Elias to Clinton campaign officials. There is no indication if Durham has possible evidence of criminal acts by those figures but there is every indication that he is not done by a long shot with this investigation.
Betrayal – Mario Sánchez Nevado
Grewal
No way I’d pay that amount, even if I had the money. $5000, tops. https://t.co/8qEPYVBadr
— Andy Grewal (@AndyGrewal) November 4, 2021
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