TheBlaze – Page 2 – Conspiracy Resource

Democrat-appointed Michigan judge drops all charges against 15 alternate electors in 2020 election

Fifteen Republicans who tried to overturn the election results in 2020 can breathe free after a Democrat-appointed judge dropped all charges against them on Tuesday.

District Judge Kristen Simmons found that prosecutors did not produce enough evidence to support the eight counts of forgery and conspiracy to commit election forgery that were filed against each defendant. A 16th elector involved in the operation had agreed to cooperate with the investigation in exchange for having the charges dropped.

‘Their goal is not a conviction, it is pure legal harassment.’

The judge pointedly denied that the case involved election interference.

“I believe they were executing their constitutional right to seek redress,” Simmons said, adding that the defendants “seriously believed” there were issues with the election.

The Michigan Conservative Union released a statement applauding the decision.

“Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel charged everyday citizens who are farmers, grandmothers, and retirees with eight (8) felonies in July 2023. Their ‘crime’? These citizens participated in the election process by … serving as volunteer Republican presidential alternate electors in the 2020 election, supposedly to benefit Donald J. Trump,” the statement given to Blaze News read in part.

Co-defendant Meshawn Maddock accused the attorney general of legal harassment.

“Nessel is a legal thug,” Maddock said. “We all knew from day one that we had done nothing illegal or wrong. Yes, we volunteered to be an alternate elector in support of Donald J. Trump. That is not a crime, as much as Nessel wanted it to be one. To corrupt politicians, lawfare is a ‘win’ when the punishment is the process. Their goal is not a conviction, it is pure legal harassment. Nessel’s defeat today was epic.”

Marian Sheridan, another co-defendant, also decried the attorney general.

“Dana’s alternate elector HOAX rightfully died today,” she said. “It is a shame that this corrupt Attorney General got away with her political prosecution of 15 innocent Michigan citizens for over the past two years.”

The electors targeted in the prosecution included a former Republican National Committeewoman and a former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party.

“Alternate elector slates have been used for numerous previous presidential elections,” continued the statement from the MCU. “These 15 Republicans were actually protecting Michigan from potentially losing its Electoral votes in the 2020 election by submitting a backup slate should the then-legally contested voting outcome be overturned.”

Attorney General Nessel said the ruling was “disappointing” and said her office is considering filing an appeal.

“They knew they were not electors,” Nessel said of the Republicans. “They knew Donald Trump lost, but then they lied anyway. And that is a crime.”

“They did it. They beat the AG, and justice has been served,” wrote Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall, a Republican, on social media.

“These folks endured years of a political witch hunt, targeted by Democrats, drained financially, and pushed to the limit emotionally. Today, justice prevailed and they’ve finally been vindicated against political weaponization!” he added.

Other attempted electors face similar charges in Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona.

Judge Simmons was appointed by Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2019.

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Sudden child deaths after COVID shots? Trump FDA director promises answers.

COVID-19

September 8, 2025 cdc, myocarditis, rfk jr, trump, vaers

Sudden child deaths after COVID shots? Trump FDA director promises answers.

Government officials, the establishment media, and pharmaceutical representatives spent years reassuring the American public that COVID-19 vaccines were “safe and effective.” Those who dared to correctly suggest otherwise were often attacked and censored, and many who refused the jabs lost their jobs.

Several weeks after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took an axe to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ mRNA vaccine development activities and in the immediate wake of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s revocation of emergency-use authorization for COVID vaccines, FDA commissioner Dr. Marty Makary told CNN talking head Jake Tapper that his agency is about to shine an unflattering light on the fallout of the vaccines.

Makary indicated on Thursday that the manufacturers of the latest COVID vaccines — Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax — have agreed both to conduct clinical trials on healthy subjects this flu season and to produce their results by May.

‘There have been children who have died from the COVID vaccine.’

“I think that’s going to help answer the question a lot of parents have. If you have a 6-year-old girl, does she need 70 more shots in her average lifespan, or is the population immunity, the natural immunity, and the current circulating virulence — that is, the severity of the virus circulating now — more like a common cold, and is the protection transient?” Makary said. “And what is the true death rate or myocarditis rate or serious adverse event rate of the COVID shot in a young, healthy male today?”

“We do know at the FDA — because we’ve been looking into the [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System] database of self-reports — that there have been children who have died from the COVID vaccine,” the commissioner told Tapper.

VAERS accepts reports of adverse events that take place following vaccination from members of the public, health care providers, and vaccine manufacturers.

SementsovaLesia/Getty Images

According to the VAERS database, there have been many thousands of reported serious reactions following COVID-19 vaccination among those 29 years of age and younger, including death and permanent disabilities.

Makary indicated that his agency is now “doing a proper investigation” into COVID-19 child vaccination deaths.

‘It was not released in the last administration, and it should have been.’

The commissioner noted that this investigation will include a review of autopsy reports, further scientific investigations, and interviews with “the primary sources, the family members who lost a child.”

“We think the public deserves to have that information,” Makary continued. “It was not released in the last administration, and it should have been.”

Blaze News reached out to the FDA as well as to Pfizer, Novavax, and Moderna for comment but did not receive responses by deadline.

After insinuating that the Biden administration sat on possible evidence of the COVID-19 vaccines’ lethality, Makary alleged that some of the recently departed officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had hamstrung efforts earlier this year to obtain data pertaining to the link between myocarditis and the COVID vaccines.

Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle that can manifest as various symptoms, including heart palpitations, chest pain, fainting, and weakness, and can also cause fatal cardiac arrest.

Months after ex-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky claimed without evidence that her agency had not “seen any reports” or “a signal” for myocarditis, the FDA and the CDC belatedly put out advisories in 2021 admitting of an elevated risk of myocarditis among mRNA COVID-19 vaccinees. Despite these admissions, the corporate media and medical establishment spent years pushing the narrative that such risks remained mild and rare.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during a Senate hearing last week that he agreed with the suggestion attributed to Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices member Dr. Retsef Levi that the COVID vaccines caused serious harm, including death, “especially among young people.”

Tapper, referencing Kennedy’s agreement on this point, asked Makary on Thursday whether there was “a reliable, credible study behind that claim,” noting that his team at CNN “went to the CDC website, and almost all the studies there, if not all the studies there, suggested the opposite, that kids were generally not poorly affected by the vaccine, that it was rare.”

“Yes, there is because they’re at higher risk, particularly males, for myocarditis,” Makary responded.

Referencing the findings of a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the commissioner added, “It can be as high as 1 in 2,600 young males between the ages of 17 and 24.”

A peer-reviewed study published last year in the pharmacotherapy journal Therapeutic Advances in Drug Safety concluded that “COVID-19 vaccination is strongly associated with a serious adverse safety signal of myocarditis, particularly in children and young adults resulting in hospitalization and death.”

‘We’re not going to just keep rubber-stamping the approvals.’

An FDA-funded study published by the Lancet journal eClinicalMedicine in October indicated that myocardial COVID-19 injuries warrant “continued clinical surveillance and long-term studies in affected patients.”

Makary suggested that his agency has “asked for the CDC to give us [myocarditis] data since we came into office” but was blocked and “given different excuses and told to wait and ‘we can’t do it.'”

The commissioner alleged that “those individuals who resigned from the CDC that were at leadership [level]” were those who “gave us the hard time about getting the data.”

Among the CDC officials who recently resigned were Debra Houry, who served as chief medical officer; Daniel Jernigan, who directed the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; and Demetre Daskalakis, the non-straight activist who directed the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

While Makary suggested during the interview that the vaccines produced as a result of President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed saved lives, especially because early on “there was low population immunity,” he stressed that now is “a different time.”

The FDA recently revoked emergency-use authorization for COVID vaccines but approved COVID-19 vaccines for adults over 65 and for individuals 6 months and older who have one or more risk factors putting them at high risk of severe COVID.

“We’re not going to just keep rubber-stamping the approvals that then lead to this incredible march and chant every year: ‘Everyone has to get their COVID shot,'” Makary told Tapper.

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Researchers tied to Fauci’s COVID cover-up still scoring big NIH grants

COVID-19

August 14, 2025 fauci

Researchers tied to Fauci’s COVID cover-up still scoring big NIH grants

The Trump administration’s National Institutes of Health is still funding some medical researchers who suppressed debate about the possibility of a lab leak as the origin of COVID-19.

Following the outbreak, then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and then-NIH Director Francis Collins strongly condemned allegations that the virus was the result of a lab leak, primarily citing a March 2020 peer-reviewed article from National Medicine titled “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.”

‘How do you put all this together, whether you believe in this series of coincidences, what you know of the lab in Wuhan, how much could be in nature — accidental release or natural event?’

However, released emails revealed that the scientists involved in drafting the Proximal Origin initially had concerns that the virus had leaked from a lab.

Kristian G. Andersen, who would go on to be listed as the primary author of the article, wrote in an email to Fauci on January 31, “The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered.”

Andersen further noted that he, Edward Holmes, Robert Garry, and Michael Farzan “all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.”

“But we have to look at this much more closely and there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions could still change,” he added.

Holmes and Garry also helped draft the Proximal Origin.

Photo by Jane Barlow – WPA Pool/Getty Images

In an email to Fauci and Collins on February 2, 2020, Farzan was quoted as saying, “Nothing seems to specifically suggest whether this virus was most likely to be ‘adapted,’ ‘evolved,’ or maybe even ‘engineered.’ So I think it becomes a question of how do you put all this together, whether you believe in this series of coincidences, what you know of the lab in Wuhan, how much could be in nature — accidental release or natural event?”

“I am 70:30 or 60:40,” he concluded. Farzan later backtracked, claiming those numbers were “inverted.”

A House subcommittee found that the report was created after Fauci and Collins held a conference call in February with roughly a dozen scientists, four of whom drafted the paper days later. That draft was reportedly sent to Fauci and Collins “for editing and approval” before it was published.

During a 2023 congressional hearing, Andersen denied allegations that Fauci prompted researchers to write the Proximal Origin report and rejected claims that grants were used to persuade scientists to dismiss the lab-leak theory.

Despite early suspicions about the virus’ origins, the final published version of the paper stated that the scientists’ “analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”

The report sparked allegations that the once-skeptical authors were now complicit in the cover-up of the virus’ origins.

Yet grant records show that Andersen, Garry, and Ian Lipkin are still receiving taxpayer-funded grants, several of which are being used to conduct COVID-related research.

Andersen is receiving a few grants from the NIAID: one worth over $2.5 million, another for $319,000, and a third for $602,000.

The first grant provides funding to the Center for Viral Systems Biology. Andersen is the director and principal investigator of CViSB, while Garry is the co-director.

The project’s summary states, “The COVID-19 pandemic is a stark reminder of the threat posed by infectious diseases, but other priority pathogens, such as Lassa and Ebola viruses, continue to pose signiﬁcant challenges in endemic areas.”

“Our central hypothesis remains that complex networks of viral and human factors, including distinct clinical, immunological, genetic, virological, and physiological attributes play key roles in determining the outcome and spread of Lassa, Ebola, and COVID-19,” it continues. “Our overall goal is to identify these molecular networks and provide a deep system-level understanding of the virus, host, and environmental drivers of disease severity and spread to discover predictive markers of human disease.”

Anthony Fauci. Photo by J. Scott Applewhite-Pool/Getty Images

The second grant provides funding for the CViSB’s Administrative Core, led by Andersen, which includes support for all of the center’s research projects to ensure its goals are successfully met.

The third grant funds “Project 2,” which aims to “investigate the complex interplay of virus genetics and host immunity in determining epidemiology and outcome of infection with Lassa virus, Ebola virus, and SARS-CoV-2.”

Garry was listed as the project leader on a separate grant for “Project 1,” totaling nearly $515,000. The project’s goal is “to generate an integrated, systems-level dataset that will enable development of models that predict disease severity or long-term sequelae in individuals infected with Lassa virus, Ebola virus or SARS-CoV-2, and protective responses to vaccines.”

Another separate grant, totaling over $1.9 million, went to Columbia University’s Center for Infection and Immunity for a project to study “gene-environment interactions between the immune system and infectious agents.” The project lead and investigator was listed as Ian W. Lipkin, another co-author of the Proximal Origin.

Lipkin informed Blaze News that he is not pursuing SARS-CoV-2 research.

“Unless new data are uncovered that unequivocally demonstrate a point source, I don’t see how there will be resolution of this contentious and destructive debate,” Lipkin said. “What is unequivocal is that wild animal markets and unregulated research with known or potential pandemic pathogens pose unacceptable risks to public health.”

According to the NIH RePORTER, Holmes and Andrew Rambaut, also a Proximal Origin co-author, do not appear to have any active projects that are receiving grants at this time.

Dr. Richard H. Ebright of Rutgers University told Blaze News that there is “compelling evidence” that the authors of the Proximal Origin knew the paper’s conclusions were “invalid at the time it was submitted for publication, at the time it was accepted for publication, and at the time it was published.”

He accused the authors of committing “science fraud by publishing conclusions they knew to be invalid” and then “compound[ing] that science fraud by publishing patently unsound follow-up papers purporting to support the invalid conclusions.”

Ebright called for the NIH Office of Research Integrity and the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate and “pursue retraction of their fraudulent paper and unsound follow-up papers, termination and clawback of their federal funding, and debarment from eligibility for future federal funding.”

An NIH spokesperson told Blaze News, “NIH does not discuss grants compliance reviews on specific funded awards, recipient institutions, or supported investigators, whether or not such reviews occurred or are under way.”

Andersen and Garry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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MASSIVE: RFK Jr. CANCELS all mRNA vaccine development

Vaccines

August 8, 2025 maha, rfk jr

MASSIVE: RFK Jr. CANCELS all mRNA vaccine development

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent announcement has most of the MAHA movement feeling energized about the future of vaccines, including BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales — though she remains a little skeptical.

“At HHS, we have a division called the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA,” he began. “BARDA drives some of our most advanced scientific research. It funds developments of vaccines, drugs, diagnostics, and other tools to fight emerging diseases and national health threats.”

“Over the past few weeks, BARDA reviewed 22 mRNA vaccine development investments and began canceling them,” he continued.

The reasons behind these cancellations were that most of the shots were for flu or COVID, but the pandemic demonstrated that “mRNA vaccines don’t perform well against viruses that infect the upper respiratory tract.”

“Here’s the problem: mRNA only codes for a small part of the viral proteins, usually a single antigen. One mutation, and the vaccine becomes ineffective. This dynamic drives a phenomen[on] called antigenic shift, meaning that the vaccine paradoxically encourages new mutations and can actually prolong pandemics as the virus constantly mutates to escape the protective effects of the vaccine,” he explained.

“After reviewing the science and consulting top experts at NIH and FDA, HHS has determined that mRNA technology poses more risk than benefits for these respiratory viruses. That’s why after extensive review, BARDA has begun the process of terminating these 22 contracts totaling just under $500 million,” he concluded, noting that the agency will still be prioritizing the development of safer vaccine strategies.

Gonzales isn’t fully satisfied with RFK’s announcement.

“I’m glad that we’re not now investing $500 million worth of taxpayer money to mRNA technology that doesn’t work. But it is annoying to hear him like, ‘Okay, let me be clear before people call me an antivaxxer: We definitely support safe and effective vaccines,’” Gonzales says.

“Which ones are those?” she mocks.

However, despite her slight disappointment, she doesn’t believe that getting rid of vaccines immediately is the answer.

“You don’t want to do something that’s going to turn more people off than maybe intrigue them or spark some sort of a curiosity,” Gonzales says. “And I understand that you have to do this with intention. You have to do this the right way. You can’t just come in and upend the entire system.”

“So I’m actually happy with the way that he has addressed it so far,” she adds.

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RFK Jr pulls plug on mRNA jabs because they ‘pose more risks than benefits’

COVID-19

August 6, 2025 antivax, cdc, myocarditis, rfk jr

RFK Jr pulls plug on mRNA jabs because they ‘pose more risks than benefits’

Government officials, the establishment media, and pharmaceutical representatives advertised the experimental mRNA vaccines that were rushed to market during the pandemic as “safe and effective.”

Those who correctly suggested otherwise were often attacked and censored, and many of those Americans who refused the jabs — the first-ever mRNA vaccines approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — lost their jobs. Meanwhile, the liability-shielded manufacturers of the vaccines enjoyed record profits.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long understood that the mRNA vaccines “don’t prevent transmission” and suggested in 2021 that the COVID-19 jab might be “the deadliest vaccine ever made,” announced on Monday that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is winding down its mRNA vaccine development activities under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.

‘The vaccine paradoxically encourages new mutations.’

Blaze News senior editor Daniel Horowitz, author of “Rise of the Fourth Reich: Confronting COVID Fascism with a New Nuremberg Trial So This Never Happens Again,” said in response to the announcement that “there have been concerns in the medical freedom movement that RFK has forgotten about the issue that brought him to the ball amidst his focus on healthy food. However, yesterday’s cancellation of mRNA research contracts shows that he has steadily maintained his focus on the dangers of mRNA.”

“Over the past few weeks, BARDA reviewed 22 mRNA vaccine development investments and began canceling them,” said Kennedy.

“Most of these shots are for flu or COVID, but as the pandemic showed us, mRNA vaccines don’t perform well against viruses that affect the upper respiratory tract.”

Kennedy noted that mRNA “only codes for a small part of the viral proteins” and that all it takes for the vaccine to become useless is a single mutation.

“This dynamic drives a phenomenon called ‘antigenic shift,’ meaning that the vaccine paradoxically encourages new mutations and can actually prolong pandemics as the virus constantly mutates to escape the protective effects of the vaccine,” said the health secretary.

After consulting with experts and reviewing the relevant science, HHS has concluded that “mRNA technology poses more risks than benefits for these respiratory viruses,” said Kennedy.

HHS indicated that its wind-down of the mRNA regime includes axing the agency’s contracts with Emory University and Tiba Biotech; the “de-scoping of mRNA-related work in existing contracts with Luminary Labs, ModeX, and Seqirus”; and canceling or rejecting pre-award solicitations, including proposals from Pfizer and Sanofi Pasteur.

‘Those shots are very problematic yet have received new approval.’

HHS has further instructed Global Health Investment — its partner that managed BARDA Ventures — to cease all mRNA-based equity investments and indicated that no new mRNA projects will be greenlit. However, a handful of final-stage contracts will apparently be permitted to wrap up “to preserve prior taxpayer investment.”

Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images

When pressed for further comment, HHS referred Blaze News to its press release.

“Let me be absolutely clear: HHS supports safe, effective vaccines for every American who wants them,” said Kennedy. “That’s why we’re moving beyond the limitations of mRNA for respiratory viruses and investing in better solutions.”

While celebrating the cancellations, Horowitz noted that the key test will be whether Kennedy goes after existing approval for the current mRNA shots both for COVID and RSV.

“Those shots are very problematic yet have received new approval,” said Horowitz. “Moderna has received approval for its new COVID shots. Likewise, despite its children’s RSV shot showing negative efficacy … Moderna had its mRNA RSV shot for seniors approved.”

Horowitz added, “It reflects what is likely a balancing act for Bobby — attempting to implement what he knows is right in the face of some mRNA lobbyists close to the president who want to see the shots continue. This is going to be a constant tug-of-war, but it’s good to see that RFK hasn’t given up on the fight.”

HHS’ about-face on mRNA technology comes just weeks after the FDA required Pfizer and Moderna to update the side-effect warnings on their mRNA vaccines.

The FDA indicated on June 25 that it required Pfizer and Moderna to note the estimated unadjusted incidence of heart conditions following administration of the 2023-2024 formula of the Comirnaty and Spikevax vaccines, as well as the longitudinal results of a 2024 study concerning cardiac manifestations and outcomes of vaccine-associated myocarditis in American youths.

The agency required both vaccine manufacturers to include this information in the adverse reactions section of the jab information inserts.

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NIH scrubs Biden-era COVID origin narrative from website following Blaze News reporting

COVID-19

August 1, 2025 china, fauci

NIH scrubs Biden-era COVID origin narrative from website following Blaze News reporting

The National Institutes of Health told Blaze News on Friday that it updated its website to remove claims from the previous administration that dismissed the COVID-19 lab-leak theory.

‘The NIH has removed these factually incorrect positions from the last administration.’

As of Thursday, an NIH webpage stated:

Unfortunately, because the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 have not yet been identified, misleading and false allegations have been made about NIAID-supported research on naturally occurring bat coronaviruses. Specifically, these allegations have targeted research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, funded through a subaward from NIAID grantee EcoHealth Alliance. The naturally occurring bat coronaviruses studied through this subaward were significantly, genetically different from SARS-CoV-2 and, therefore, could not have caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

Blaze News contacted the NIH, inquiring whether it was aware of the webpage — which was last reviewed in March 2022 — and if it had plans to update its website to remove statements that the lab-leak theory was a hoax.

The NIH responded on Friday, stating that it had recently updated the website.

Department of Health and Human Services communications director Andrew Nixon stated, “The Biden era NIH position on origin of the COVID pandemic — that the lab-leak theory is a ‘conspiracy theory’ — is out of line with the considerable scientific and forensic evidence to the contrary. The NIH has removed these factually incorrect positions from the last administration.”

Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images

Blaze News confirmed that as of Friday afternoon, the NIH had taken down the webpage. It now reads, “You are not authorized to access this page.”

Nixon added that the “true origin” of the virus could be found on the White House’s website, which states that COVID-19 “possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature” and that the data supports that cases stemmed from “a single introduction into humans.” The website further notes the Wuhan lab’s “history of conducting gain-of-function research … at inadequate biosafety levels.”

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The Trump administration’s National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya was one of the prominent voices during the COVID era insisting that there was a cover-up regarding the origins of the virus.

Bhattacharya told Politico in May that he is “convinced” the research experiments in Wuhan, China, “led to this pandemic through a lab leak.”

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COVID lab leak denial lingers on NIH’s website: ‘Misleading and false’

COVID-19

July 31, 2025 china, fauci

COVID lab leak denial lingers on NIH’s website: ‘Misleading and false’

Allegations that COVID-19 was the result of a lab leak were strongly and swiftly denied by the former Biden administration and some prominent health officials, despite dissenting opinions within the medical field, including from Jay Bhattacharya, who now serves as President Donald Trump’s National Institutes of Health director.

‘I’m convinced that research agenda led to this pandemic through a lab leak in China, in Wuhan.’

A page on the NIH’s website, last reviewed by the agency on March 16, 2022, has not yet been updated by the new administration, still claiming that the leak theory is “misleading and false.”

The NIH webpage reads:

Unfortunately, because the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 have not yet been identified, misleading and false allegations have been made about NIAID-supported research on naturally occurring bat coronaviruses. Specifically, these allegations have targeted research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, funded through a subaward from NIAID grantee EcoHealth Alliance. The naturally occurring bat coronaviruses studied through this subaward were significantly, genetically different from SARS-CoV-2 and, therefore, could not have caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bhattacharya was one of the voices amid the COVID-era insisting that there was a cover-up of the virus’ origins.

In a May interview with Politico, Bhattacharya stated that he believes the U.S. should do more to reveal the origins of the virus, but noted that China has not been cooperating with those investigations.

“There’s enough evidence that I’ve seen from the outside that suggests that there was at the very least a cover-up of dangerous experiments that were done in China with — by the way — the help of the U.S. and also Germany and the U.K.,” Bhattacharya told the news outlet.

Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images

He referred to the experiments as “a very, very dangerous kind of utopian research agenda.”

“I’m convinced that research agenda led to this pandemic through a lab leak in China, in Wuhan,” Bhattacharya continued. “But that was a global effort.”

Photo by ALLISON BAILEY/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

He called it “absolutely striking” that then-Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci and other leaders would invest so much effort into suppressing the theory and “denigrating scientists who very legitimately raised this possibility.”

Blaze News contacted the NIH to determine whether it is aware of the webpage dismissing lab leak claims and if it plans to update its website. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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The Russia hoax and COVID lies share the same deep-state fingerprints

COVID-19

July 30, 2025 cia, deep state, russia

The Russia hoax and COVID lies share the same deep-state fingerprints

“Conspiracy theory” is the go-to smear against those of us who questioned any aspect of the government’s authoritarian response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But as the great Austrian economist Murray Rothbard once observed, the smear serves one purpose: to divert the public’s attention away from the truth.

“An attack on ‘conspiracy theories,’” Rothbard writes in “The Anatomy of the State,” means that the subjects of a regime “will become more gullible in believing the ‘general welfare’ reasons that are always put forth by the State for engaging in any of its despotic actions.”

The democratization of information means that censorship just doesn’t work as well as it used to.

“A ‘conspiracy theory,’” he continues, “can unsettle the system by causing the public to doubt the state’s ideological propaganda.”

The more I dig into the origins of the COVID pandemic, the more “despotic” our state seems to become — and the more “conspiratorial” I get.

Unsettling the system

I am trying to put together the final pieces of the puzzle of what I consider among the greatest public policy scandals of my lifetime — not only who did it, but more importantly, why would they do it?

A few months ago, I spent a day with Matt Taibbi, the iconoclastic muckraker and “Twitter Files” reporter, for the latest episode of my BlazeTV investigative series, “The Coverup.”

As he dug through the trove of emails and texts, Taibbi discovered the conspiracy to blacklist and silence Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the subject of the first episode of “The Coverup” and now the head of the National Institutes of Health. Taibbi soon learned that the same tactics and tools — and even many of the very same deep-state actors — have their fingerprints all over both the Russia collusion hoax and the COVID cover-up.

A precedent for censorship

Recently released documents from Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard reveal that the so-called Russia collusion hoax wasn’t just wrong — it was deliberate. The Obama administration orchestrated the fabrication, pushing U.S. intelligence agencies to leak a report suggesting Vladimir Putin had helped Donald Trump steal the 2016 election.

That leak, repeated endlessly by the press, fueled a national narrative branding Trump’s presidency as illegitimate — despite those same agencies having already dismissed the claim.

This kind of manipulation would be outrageous if it weren’t so familiar.

Five years after the COVID lockdowns stripped millions of Americans of basic liberties, we’re still uncovering how the deep state used propaganda to silence dissent. Throughout the pandemic, scientists and doctors raised alarms about the damage lockdowns would cause — and did cause. Some of the world’s most respected experts signed the Great Barrington Declaration to oppose the government’s heavy-handed response.

But the public never heard from them. Bureaucrats and media allies moved swiftly to smear, suppress, and sideline these voices using one of the oldest authoritarian tactics: control of information.

In fairness, public health agencies didn’t have to twist many arms. The legacy media followed their lead willingly — even when the guidance contradicted itself or defied basic logic.

But unlike the days of Project Mockingbird, when the CIA could shape coverage by nudging the New York Times or CBS, controlling the old guard wasn’t enough. The rise of social media — decentralized, fast-moving, and open to anyone with a computer or phone — posed a new challenge. The administration needed a more aggressive strategy to dominate the narrative.

Strong-arming social media

In episode 5 of “The Coverup,” I ask Taibbi how they pulled it off. As one of the first journalists to dig into the Twitter Files, Taibbi exposed the machinery behind the censorship regime. Americans suspected that platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube were suppressing dissent during COVID. But the Twitter Files confirmed what many feared: They weren’t acting alone. They took orders from the FBI directly.

And these weren’t polite requests, either. When the government “suggested” something, tech companies treated it as a command.

It all traces back to — surprise, surprise — the Russia hoax.

In 2017, Congress hauled tech executives into hearings and accused them of letting Russian disinformation run wild. Essentially, they were given an offer they couldn’t refuse: Allow the government to play a role in content moderation or prepare to be regulated into submission.

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Their surrender gave U.S. intelligence agencies de facto control over what Americans could say online. The feds told platforms which posts to delete, which users to silence, and how to suppress the rest. You could post your opinion — as long as no one could see it. “Shadow bans” became the preferred method of censorship: clean, quiet, and deniable.

The silver lining

Thanks to Taibbi — and a handful of journalists who still value truth over access — we now see how the government sold Americans on fiction. Russia hacked the election. COVID came from a bowl of bat soup. Question either and you’d vanish from the digital public square.

Millions believed these lies. And under their influence, they did real damage — locking down schools, closing businesses, and sowing doubt about fair elections.

But truth has a way of leaking out.

It’s taken time, but the lies are unraveling. And that’s the silver lining. In a world where information moves faster than censors can keep up, suppression doesn’t work like it used to. So long as we have truth-tellers willing to dig and defy — like Taibbi — the regime won’t have the last word.

We won’t get fooled again.

Episode 5 of “The Coverup” premieres Thursday, July 31.

Elections

July 16, 2025 2020 election, trump

Election officials rage as Trump administration pushes for election security

President Donald Trump has consistently raised concerns over election integrity, and as the 2026 midterm elections loom, his team is taking action. His administration is reaching out to several states to shore up election security, and officials from both sides of the aisle are up in arms.

The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration has begun a multifaceted campaign in several states to inspect voting equipment and gather voter data.

The Justice Department has taken what the Post called the ‘unusual step’ of asking at least nine states for copies of their voter rolls.

The Washington Post claimed that the “most unusual activity” was occurring in Colorado, where an alleged federal consultant working with the White House has asked county clerks if they would allow the federal government to physically examine the voting equipment. Election laws strictly limit physical examinations by federal agencies, though they can offer technical assistance and advice to state and local election officials.

Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images

“That’s a hard stop for me,” Carly Koppes, a Republican clerk in Weld County, Colorado, told the Post. “Nobody gets access to my voting equipment, for security reasons.”

A White House spokesperson declined to comment on whether the agent who was asking the clerks for this voting information, identified as Jeff Small, is connected to the White House. However, the White House official did reiterate the president’s commitment to ensuring the citizenship status of all voters on the voter rolls.

Still, this recent move has been met with bipartisan pushback.

“President Trump and his allies are trying to lay the groundwork to interfere with a free and fair election in 2026,” Samantha Tarazi, CEO of the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab, told the Washington Post.

In a separate case, the Justice Department has taken what the Post called the “unusual step” of asking at least nine states for copies of their voter rolls. At least two states have complied with this request.

While the Constitution largely limits the federal government’s power over election proceedings in favor of the states, the events of the last two presidential elections have raised widespread concern over election security. Trump himself has been a vocal advocate for stronger election integrity.

In a long Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump reiterated his administration’s continued focus on investigating election fraud: “Kash Patel, and the FBI, must be focused on investigating Voter Fraud, Political Corruption, ActBlue, The Rigged and Stolen Election of 2020.”

In the same post, Trump added, “The 2020 Election was Rigged and Stolen, and they tried to do the same thing in 2024 — That’s what [Pam Bondi] is looking into as AG, and much more.”

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MTG asks DOJ to drop charges against ‘hero’ doctor accused of destroying COVID vaccines, giving out fake vax records

COVID-19

July 11, 2025 antivax, cdc, marjorie taylor greene, myocarditis, rfk jr, robert malone

MTG asks DOJ to drop charges against ‘hero’ doctor accused of destroying COVID vaccines, giving out fake vax records

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Republican lawmakers expressed support this week for Dr. Michael Kirk Moore Jr., the Utah plastic surgeon presently on trial and facing more than 35 years in jail for allegedly destroying COVID-19 vaccines and handing out fraudulent fake vaccination records during the pandemic.

Moore, his neighbor Kristin Jackson Andersen, and two others were charged in 2023 with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government; conspiracy to convert, sell, convey, and dispose of government property; and conversion, sale, conveyance, and disposal of government property as well as aiding and abetting.

According to the federal indictment, Moore — a member of a group seeking to “‘liberate’ the medical profession from government and industry conflicts of interest” — signed a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 Vaccination Program Provider Agreement in order to secure COVID-19 vaccines and vaccination record cards. He then ordered hundreds of doses of vaccines from the CDC.

Instead of administering the vaccines, Moore, 58, allegedly dumped around $28,000 worth of doses down the drain and handed out vaccination record cards in exchange for cash or donations to a charitable organization.

Between May 2021 and September 2022, the defendants also allegedly administered harmless “saline shots to minor children to trick them into thinking they had received a vaccine” at the request of their parents.

The Biden Department of Justice was evidently keen to throw Moore in jail; however, he has since become something of a folk hero for giving Americans a way to avoid experimental medicine at a time when vaccines were being foisted on the population.

‘This man is a hero, not a criminal.’

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. noted in April that Moore “deserves a medal for his courage and his commitment to healing.”

“He’s one of the few surgeons who stood against the worst COVID-era mandates,” said Texas surgeon Dr. Eithan Haim. “Which is why they’re trying to send him to prison.”

Photo illustration by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

As jury selection began for his 15-day trial on Monday, supporters rallied in support of Moore outside the Orrin G. Hatch U.S. Courthouse in Salt Lake City.

Among those who showed up were Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz (R) and Republican state Reps. Karianne Lisonbee and Trevor Lee, reported the Utah News Dispatch.

“The way those of us [who] stood up and pushed back were treated was wrong. We were treated like second-class citizens if we didn’t get the shot, we didn’t get the vaccine,” Schultz told the crowd. “Think about it for just a minute. You had to have a vaccine passport to walk down the streets and go into a shop, to go to a Jazz game, to go to a restaurant. That was unbelievable.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced Tuesday that she was writing a letter to the Department of Justice asking that all charges be dropped against Moore — a move celebrated by Dr. Robert Malone, one of Robert F. Kennedy’s new appointments to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

“This man is a hero, not a criminal,” wrote Greene. “The Covid vaccine kills and injures people, but this brave doctor, who is a veteran by the way, is being prosecuted for helping people avoid tyrannical vaccine mandates under Democrats.”

“Big Pharma was given billions of taxpayer’s [sic] dollars for experimental covid vaccines and then the MrNA covid vaccines were forced on Americans, our military, and our children against their will,” continued Greene. “Covid vaccines do not stop the spread of covid and are proven to cause life threatening myocarditis, miscarriages, strokes, blood clots, and many other issues that many Americans are angrily still dealing with today.”

Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie (R) echoed Greene, noting that Moore “should NOT be prosecuted for helping people avoid the tyrannical vax mandates, which were based on a corrupted FDA approval process.”

Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images

Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R), who has repeatedly suggested that Kirk be let off the hook, said on Thursday, “I’m both surprised and disappointed that Dr. Kirk Moore is still being prosecuted — potentially facing three decades in prison — considering all that we’ve learned about COVID, the vaccines, and the unjust mandates imposed by the Biden administration.”

“I just did what was right,” Dr. Moore said outside the courthouse, clearly overwhelmed by the support.

Blaze News has reached out to the DOJ for comment.

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Unsettling the system

A precedent for censorship

Strong-arming social media

The silver lining