Fauci Finally Admits Natural Immunity
BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | MARCH 25, 2022
Yes, Fauci has never worried about consistency or even contradicting himself one day to the next, often without explanation. Too often his doling out “the science” has felt like performance art. Still, the record is that Fauci and all his compatriots either downplayed or denied natural immunity for two years. That has been the source of vast confusion.
In fact, this might have been the most egregious science error of the entire pandemic. It amounted to giving the silent treatment to the most well-established point of cell biology that we have. It was taught to every generation from the 1920s until sometime in the new century when people stopped paying attention in 9th-grade biology class.
After the pandemic broke, Fauci said nothing on this topic for a year and a half. The John Snow Memorandum, written to counter the Great Barrington Declaration, claimed “there is no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection.” Mandates and passports have excluded it. Academic, medical, and corporate enforcers have generally refused to recognize it.
When CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked him specifically, September 13, 2021, Fauci quickly demurred.
“I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that. That’s something that we’re going to have to discuss regarding the durability of the response,” Fauci said. “I think that is something that we need to sit down and discuss seriously.”
In other words, no one knows!
The HHS head refused to say either way, even when grilled by Rand Paul.
Earlier, the WHO even backed up this denialism, going so far as to change their own definition of immunity in the middle of a pandemic. They eliminated the old sentence on natural immunity and replaced it with a claim that immunity comes from “protecting people from the virus” and not “exposing them to it.” That’s some clever rhetoric right there!
There’s no question that this effort to deny natural immunity was systematic and pushed from the top.
How has this changed? In February 2022, the CDC finally published on the topic that they could not forever deny. And now, Fauci himself let the following slip in an interview on March 23, 2022:
“When you look at the cases they do not appear to be any more severe [than Omicron] and they do not appear to evade immune responses either from vaccine or prior infection.”
What’s critical here is not his debatable claim about vaccines but rather his offhand remark about prior infection. It was tossed off as if: “Everyone knows this.” If so, it is no thanks to him, the CDC, or WHO.
To be sure, everything we’ve known since two years ago – if not 2.5 thousand years – is that immunity from prior Covid infection is real. Vaccines have traditionally been a substitute version of exactly that. Brownstone has assembled fully 150 studies that demonstrate that immunity through infection is effective, broad, and lasting.
Had that messaging been around during lockdowns, the attitude toward the virus would have been very different. We would have clearly seen the present reality from the beginning, namely that endemicity generally arrives in the case of a new virus of this sort due to exposure-induced population immunity. This is how humankind evolved to live in the presence of pathogens.
If we had widespread public awareness of this, the public-health priority would not have been locking down people who can manage exposure but rather alerting those who cannot to be careful until herd immunity in one’s own circle of contacts has been realized via meeting the virus and recovering.
To those who say that is dangerous, consider that mass exposure is precisely what happened in any case, stretched out over two years rather than occurring in a single season. This delaying of the inevitable might be what allowed for variants to emerge and take hold in successive rounds, each new one hitting naive immune systems in ways that were difficult to predict. Flatten the curve amounted to “prolonging the pain,” exactly as Knut Wittkowski predicted in March 2020.
A widespread understanding of natural immunity would have changed the entire calculus of public perception of how to manage one’s life in the face of a new virus. Instead of just running and hiding, people might have considered tradeoffs, as they had always done in the past. What is my risk of infection and under what conditions? If I do get the thing, what happens then? It might also have changed the priorities from disease avoidance and vaccine subsidies and mandates to thinking about the crucial thing: what should people do if they get sick? What should doctors recommend and prescribe?
The neglect of therapeutics figures into this very highly. If people believe that locking down, staying away, masking up, stopping travel, and generally giving up all choices in life were the right way to make a pathogen magically disappear, plus they are under the impression that the risk of severe outcomes is equally distributed across the whole population, plus they believe that 3-4% of the population is going to die from Covid (as was suggested in the early days), you end up with a much more compliant people.
If natural immunity had been rightly seen as the most robust and broad form of immunity from the beginning, and we instead followed the idea of focused protection, the vaccine mandates would have been out of the question.
In other words, the silence of this topic was critical to scaring people all over the world into going along with an unprecedented attack on rights and liberties, thus losing up to two years of childhood education, closing millions of small businesses, and denying people basic religious liberties, in addition to the collapse of public health that resulted in record-breaking alcohol and opioid-related deaths, not to mention lost cancer screenings, childhood vaccinations, and general ill-health both physical and mental.
This stuff is not without consequence. One might expect some contrition. Instead we get a passing comment and nothing more. After all, frank talk about this subject might be risky: it would imply that their entire mitigation strategy was wrong from the beginning and should never be attempted again.
The inhumanity of charging you to visit a loved one in hospital
By Tom Penn | TCW Defending Freedom | March 24, 2022
UNLESS there is a change of policy, from April 1 the public will have to pay for the testing still required to visit loved ones in care homes, hospitals and other regulated healthcare settings.
It is incredible that neither the mainstream media nor the public are discussing this injustice in any depth, let alone being up in arms about it. Most have likely yet to comprehend how ruinous a policy this will prove for so many people. Again.
For a citizen of England to have to pay to visit a sick, dying, or lonely relative in a care home or hospital – even if both are triple-jabbed (and whilst unvaccinated health workers may come and go) – is an inhumane policy.
That one’s visit might not even be permitted in the first place is another story – an ‘exclusive’ the Telegraph claimed to have broken on February 18, despite TCW having written about it as far back as December 7, 2021 ( see here and here, for example).
What are the real-life consequences of having to fork out to visit vulnerable loved ones? Let’s begin with the obvious: the mounting financial cost to the individual.
The high street price of a single lateral flow test is currently predicted to be from £2 to £5, depending on how many are bought at once. Better deals will doubtless be found online, but for simplicity let’s run with £2 per test.
That’s £14 a week straight off the bat (working on the assumption that consecutive daily visits are permitted: check with your local NHS Trust) but potentially much, much more for someone such as an elderly person not able either to shop confidently online, or trawl the high street for the best deal.
Throw in the cost of fuel for a 15-to-20-mile round trip at today’s wartime prices (or public transport), plus hospital parking charges which hover around £2.50 for two hours (one hour is often free, but would not suffice), then even in a best-case scenario, visiting a dearly beloved could end up costing from £7.50 to well over £10 a time.
Suppose one were unemployed and on Jobseeker’s Allowance – visiting a gravely ill loved one in hospital every day for a week could easily use up half of one’s weekly benefit. Food and energy stability, or being at a loved one’s bedside: some of the many new decisions to be faced by the less affluent in post-Covid England.
But no matter what the expense, it is the dehumanising ideology behind the imminent change in rules that displays how far England has sunk ethically since this rotten new era of hypochondriacal public health despotism began.
How on earth can paying to visit the sick and dying be said to be ‘living with Covid’? And with cases purportedly on the rise, who foresees any loosening of visiting protocols this year?
What of the elderly in care homes – the pandemic’s original totems for mass hysteria? For two years now they have had to endure a level of enforced solitude unthinkable in pre-Covid England, and yet even though Johnson has finally swapped playing public health-Connect Four for the chess game of war, the elderly have now to navigate their relatives’ financial concerns over visiting, set against the backdrop of a sharp rise in energy prices precipitated by the Prime Minister’s latest, and totally unrelated, geopolitical switcheroo.
It boggles the mind, boils the blood and cracks the heart to imagine any of the citizens of this country either being totally denied access to their loved ones, or having to pay for the privilege if granted. Lay aside how England compares with other countries: what on earth have WE become?!
As previously touched upon, compounding this grotesque unfairness is the fact that health workers will not only retain their access to free testing, but regardless of vaccination status may continue touching, breathing upon, bathing, feeding, and dressing those in need – for remuneration – whilst triple-vaccinated relatives have nonsensically either to pay to sit quietly at the bedside of the very same needy, or be left out in the cold entirely. Riddle us that one, Covid Inquiry: we’re all ears!
As usual, with each mutation of the narrative the public are left with nothing but a list of worrisome questions:
· Will we have to pay for lateral flow tests for ever? After all, we are being told with great confidence that the virus is not going anywhere. If not, then at some point will testing be eradicated completely? How low must case numbers get before we REALLY start living with Covid?
· Will tests become free again in the event of another Delta variant-style wave?
· Will Ukrainian refugees also have to pay?
The majority of this nation went along with the Covid narrative – supposedly entirely out of fear, pressure from peers, family or employers; a sense of patriotism or moral duty; as a means by which to virtue-signal, or perhaps even just for kicks – either directly or indirectly succumbing to public health propaganda.
I don’t buy this wholesale. Not one bit.
My overriding impression is that most were simply too uninterested, too analytically inept or lazy, or too lacking in courage – imagination even – to rock the narrative-boat for fear of creating for themselves a modestly taxing degree of both mental gymnastics and personal sacrifices.
And so who do we ultimately have to blame for Government’s impending, exploitative and divisive ‘pay-to-love’ scheme: that of having to grovel for permission to shell out hard-earned money on visiting a perhaps dying loved one? Ourselves, unfortunately.
That’s what we get for two years of slavish obedience to the hyper-romanticised, brainless mainstream trash of the age.
In more ways than one it is not unreasonable to say that we have done this all to ourselves, and that the crippling costs of both our torpor and cowardice, as predicted, continue to be borne by all and sundry, but predominantly the weak and vulnerable.
Please don’t get seriously ill any time soon, Mum. You’ll likely have to go it mostly alone, cause I ain’t exactly flush these days.
London Mayor Advises People Not To Exercise Outside
By Richie Allen | March 24, 2022
Sadiq Khan has urged Londoners not to exercise outside because warm weather in Europe is leading to high pollution levels in the capital. According to The Telegraph :
As temperatures reached 20C in the capital on Wednesday, older people and those with heart and lung problems were told to limit “strenuous physical exertion” due to high pollution levels.
Anyone else “suffering discomfort” should also consider reducing their activity, official advice said.
A forecast from Imperial College London said that levels of fine particulate pollution, or PM2.5, would reach “high” levels on Wednesday and Thursday, causing health problems for vulnerable people.
The alert was the first issued by the Met Office since August 2020. Alerts were also broadcast in London train stations and to travellers at bus stops around the capital.
Despite the health warning, Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, also urged people to walk or cycle to limit the air pollution from vehicles…
Mr Khan said: “I’m urging Londoners to look after each other by choosing to walk, cycle or take public transport, avoiding unnecessary car journeys, stopping engine idling and not burning wood or garden waste, all of which contributes to high levels of pollution.
“This is particularly important in order to protect those who are more vulnerable to high pollution.
“While this alert is in place people with heart and lung problems should avoid physical exertion.”
Did you note the use of the term “vulnerable people” by Imperial College? Did you note the language used by Sadiq Khan?
The Mayor said that he’s urging Londoners “to look after each other by choosing to walk, cycle, take public transport and avoid unnecessary car journeys.” Londoners should do this, said Khan, to “protect those who are more vulnerable to high pollution.”
The message is a stark one.
“Citizens! Driving your car is affecting the most vulnerable in society! Walking or cycling saves lives and protects the NHS!” Exercising indoors protects you and protects the NHS!”
I said it two years ago didn’t I? Climate lockdowns featuring initiatives like personal driving allowances are coming soon. I predicted that at some point the government would attempt to place legal limits on driving.
I imagined a day when people would be told that they could only take their cars out on the first and third Sunday’s of the month depending on their postcode. Others would be permitted to drive on the second and fourth Sunday’s.
SKY News ran a hit-piece on me for predicting climate lockdowns.
I’ve emailed the journalist to ask her if she still thinks the notion is preposterous.
Silence.
Israel advocates pass new definition of antisemitism at 15 more U.S. colleges
By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | March 22, 2022
In a triumph of Orwellian newspeak, over the past academic year Israel advocates at 15 American colleges succeeded in pushing through a newly created definition of ‘antisemitism’ that focuses on Israel. The formulation for the new definition – known as the IHRA definition – originated with an Israeli official in 2004 and has been promoted worldwide ever since.
As an Israel advocate writes, the IHRA definition is “the only definition which includes anti-Zionism within it.” Anti-Zionism is a highly diverse movement that supports Palestinian rights and opposes Israel’s ethno-religious discriminatory system, which is widely considered a form of apartheid.
The normal, traditional definition of antisemitism is simply “hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people.”
According to the American Jewish Committee,* the definition has now been endorsed by at least 30 American colleges and universities:
- Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ (September 2020)
- Brooklyn College, New York, NY (November 2020)
- California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA (April 2021)
- California State University, Northridge (CSUN), Los Angeles, CA (December 2020)
- Chapman University, Orange, CA (May 2017)
- City College of New York, New York, NY (November 2020)
- East Carolina University, Greenville, NC (February 2017)
- Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL (July 2020)
- Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, CA (October 2020)
- Indiana University, Bloomington, IN (December 2018)
- Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA (March 2021)
- Northeastern University, Boston, MA (November 2020)
- Pace University, New York, NY (October 2020)
- Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA (April 2021)
- San Diego State University, San Diego, CA (April 2017)
- St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY (November 2020)
- Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA (February 2019)
- Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY (March 2021)
- Texas A & M University, College Station, TX (September 2020)
- University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA (March 2015)
- University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA (February 2021)
- University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA (February 2021)
- University of Georgia, Athens, GA (January 2021)
- University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA (May 2021)
- University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN (March 2021)
- University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN (April 2021)
- University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX (March 2021)
- University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX (April 2021)
- University of Wisconsin, Madison, Madison, WI (September 2017)
- Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC (December 2018)
While adoption of the new definition for antisemitism may seem symbolic, pro-Israel groups have a reason for promoting it: under Trump’s 2018 executive order on antisemitism it can potentially be used to censor information about Israel-Palestine on the campuses.
*Although it is named “the American Jewish Committee,” the AJC is actually an international Israel advocacy organization with offices throughout the world.
DOJ secretly spied on Project Veritas journalists
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | March 23, 2022
Project Veritas, whose declared goal is to expose media and Big Tech bias and other irregularities happening behind the scenes at these corporations, says that the FBI spied on the organization’s email communications for close to a year.
This was reportedly done using gag orders, i.e., mandating that those whose communications were searched cannot be informed about it. An example of the gag orders can be found here.
The claim has come out in a letter (obtained here) Project Veritas sent on Tuesday to a federal judge in charge of a case involving a controversial FBI raid that took place last November of the home of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and two other employees, carried out as part of an investigation into a missing diary belonging to US President Biden’s daughter.
The FBI at the time had obtained warrants to take phones and computers from the three persons the agency targeted in the raids, but the court has since allowed a request filed by Project Veritas for a special master to look into whether protected information falling under the attorney-client privilege was violated by the prosecutors handling the investigation.
But in the letter to the judge, Project Veritas now says that for almost a year before the raids, gag orders were used by prosecutors to hide their activities around the diary investigation.
Among the information obtained in this way were three months’ worth of emails belonging to O’Keefe and several other employees, dating back to 2020, as well as grand jury subpoenas.
In one case, a Project Veritas journalist’s emails sent and received for over a year in 2020 and 2021 were secretly turned over to the FBI using the same tactic. Reports say that it appears the entity that received the bulk of the demands to turn over the emails was Microsoft.
The gag orders kept being renewed even as the special master was hearing from both sides in the probe into the lawfulness of the data the FBI seized in November. For this reason, stated Paul Calli, an attorney for Project Veritas, the government’s failure to disclose “other privilege invasions” it had carried out, “makes a mockery of the proceedings.”
Calli further stated in the letter that it was “impossible for us to understand how the government convinced multiple magistrate judges to extend non-disclosure orders for an investigation that was already public and widely-reported,” and added:
“Project Veritas had the right to know of these government infringements. The government’s clandestine invasions of journalist’s communications corrode the rule of law.”
The US Attorney’s Office in charge of the investigation is yet to comment on the letter.
Professor faces government action for questioning Ukraine narrative
Samizdat | March 22, 2022
University of Edinburgh professor Tim Hayward is being hammered in the media for sharing an article suggesting the bombing of a theater in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol may have been staged by Ukrainian nationalists. Hayward’s skepticism has already led Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi to promise a “crackdown” on such wrongthink.
Hayward shared an article on Sunday from the Grayzone, a left-wing news outlet. Citing eyewitnesses in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, the article claims that Ukrainian ‘Azov’ fighters – once described by western outlets and lawmakers as “neo-Nazis” – sheltered behind civilians in a theater in Mariupol, before blowing the building up as Russian forces entered the Ukrainian city.
Azov forces and journalists linked to the extremist unit accused Russia of bombing the building, and used the incident to call for western intervention against Russia. US President Joe Biden declared Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” in response, and American politicians from both parties and from Europe renewed their calls for military aid – including fighter jets – for Ukraine.
However, no video exists showing the theater being bombed and Russia denies attacking the building, stating that it had “never been considered as a strike target.” Conflicting reports of the weapons supposedly used and the civilian casualties or lack thereof only muddy the picture further.
Yet Hayward was condemned by his colleagues for raising the issue. In a Times article on Tuesday accusing him of “spreading propaganda,” Dr. Aliaksandr Herasimenka, a ‘misinformation’ researcher at Oxford University, said that “we must be very careful” when reading reports critical of the official narrative in Ukraine, and that outlets like the Grayzone “are currently engaged in a massive disinformation campaign.” He did not provide any evidence that would support such allegations against the media outlet.
Hayward has been singled out by the Scottish government too. Having shared articles questioning the alleged bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol and claiming that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad did not gas his own citizens as Western sources insist, the professor was accused in Westminster last week by Tory MP Robert Halfon as being a “useful idiot for President Putin’s atrocities.”
Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said that academics like Hayward were already being investigated, and that their universities would be contacted.
“Putin and his cronies are a malign influence on anyone in this country buying their false narrative, and I have to repeat it is a false and dangerous narrative, and we will crack down on it hard,” Zahawi said, without elaborating on how.
Speaking to Edinburgh Live, Hayward said that he is concerned about restrictions to free speech, and considers hearing both points of view important in wartime.
“In war, miscalculations can have terrible consequences. We also know that misinformation can sometimes even slip through on our own side, as when the UK went to war in Iraq, mistakenly believing it had weapons of mass destruction,” he said. “As for the people of Ukraine, their need is for peace – not to become the epicenter of World War III,” he added, referring to the widely-held belief that were Western powers to intervene in Ukraine, the consequence would be a third world war.
UK Caught Continuing to Enforce Covid Rules on Businesses Via Health and Safety ‘Guidance’

By Will Jones | The Daily Sceptic | March 22, 2022
A reader was disturbed this week by a visit from an official from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). What the official said appears to bode ill for the idea that the U.K. is ‘living with Covid’ insofar as that means moving away from all the Covid theatre and regulations of the past two years.
I work in a London hospitality business. This week an official from the HSE came in to do a Covid compliance spot check. Despite the Government making noises about Covid regulations being binned, the HSE person informed us that from April businesses with more than five employees will still be required to adhere to general ‘Covid safe’ practices, under the threat of enforcement proceedings (and fines) by the HSE.
Overhearing what the HSE official told the General Manager, it sounded to me as though it will involve keeping a Covid risk management plan in place and ensuring ventilation, access to sanitiser for customers and so on.
Most of it was asking questions about Covid management actions we have taken and are still taking. It implied that, so far as the HSE is concerned, Covid is a now a ‘standard’ risk which needs to continue to be managed alongside others.
So briefly, it appears:
– they are doing Covid spot checks insofar as they apply to employees;
– they will be increasing spot checks from April.
This suggests the perpetuation of Covid regulations will be enforced under the guise of general health and safety law. Not as advertised by the Government at all if so, and hardly reflects ‘living with Covid’ like we live with other mostly mild respiratory viruses.
Runs counter to the official narrative of a bonfire of Covid restrictions.
If the Government is serious about moving on from the pandemic then it needs to rein in the HSE and withdraw its guidance that treats COVID-19 as a special threat.
CHD Wins Federal District Court Injunction On DC’s Minor Consent for Vaccinations Act
Children’s Health Defense | March 21, 2022
Washington, DC – On March 18, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued an order granting a preliminary injunction to prohibit the mayor of the District of Columbia, the D.C. Department of Health and D.C. public schools from enforcing the D.C. Minor Consent for Vaccination Act of 2020 until further order of the court.
“This is a major legal victory for children, parental rights, and informed consent,” said Rolf Hazlehurst, senior staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense (CHD) who argued the case. “Government overreach such as this has dire implications for children’s health and the constitutional rights of citizens.”
The D.C. Minor Consent for Vaccination Act of 2020, allows children eleven years of age and older to consent to vaccinations without their parents’ knowledge or consent. The law specifically targets children whose parents have religious exemptions for their children. The D.C. Act contains several provisions designed to deceive parents and hide the fact that their children have been vaccinated against their parental judgment, authority or religious convictions.
The court order states that the parents “have shown they are likely to succeed on the merits because the District’s law requires providers to hide children’s vaccination status from parents who invoke their religious exemption rights…”
The D.C. Minor Consent Act requires health care providers to falsify records by leaving the child’s school vaccination records “blank.” The doctors may bill the parents’ insurance companies for the vaccines administered to the children against the parents’ written directive. However, to deceive the parents, insurance companies may not send the parents an Explanation of Benefits (EOB).
CHD and Parental Rights Foundation filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking a court order to declare the D.C. Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act of 2020 unconstitutional. Plaintiffs, (Booth, et al.) are four parents of minor children who attend public school in Washington, D.C. Oral arguments were heard on March 3, 2022.
In the opinion issued on Friday, March 18, the court found the parents likely to succeed on the merits in their arguments that the D.C. Act is unconstitutional for two reasons. First, the D.C. Act is preempted by federal law because it directly contradicts the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. The D.C. Act also violates the right to free exercise of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Hazlehurst argued that the District has created a “pressure-cooker environment, enticing and psychologically manipulating [minor children] to defy their parents and take vaccinations against their parents’ will.”
The Plaintiffs overcame a high legal hurdle that “threatened injury must be certainly impending” as established by the U.S. Supreme Court precedent Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l., in part by the use of a drawing entitled “Peer Pressure,” drawn by one of the plaintiff’s children. The drawing depicts the dilemma children face at school when they do not want to get the COVID vaccine or have been advised by their parents not to take the shot.
“This preliminary injunction is part of ongoing litigation in an extremely important national precedent-setting case,” said Hazlehurst. “The rights of parents to decide what is best for their children’s health is at stake. Government can’t be allowed to make such decisions for minor children.”
Two similar but separate lawsuits, Booth (argued by CHD/Parental Rights Foundation) and Mazer (supported by Informed Consent Action Network), were filed against the D.C. Minor Consent Act. In both Booth and Mazer, the court ruled the plaintiffs have “standing” based on preemption because the D.C. Minor Consent Act conflicts with Congress’ National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. In CHD’s Booth case, the court made the additional finding that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits that the D.C. Minor Consent Act violates the free exercise of religion clause in the First Amendment of the Constitution.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden stated, “Removing the law would revert the District to the standard age of consent of 18.” Although the case is not yet final, the preliminary injunction reverts D.C. to the standard age of consent of 18.
###
Children’s Health Defense is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Its mission is to end childhood health epidemics by working aggressively to eliminate harmful exposures, hold those responsible accountable, and establish safeguards to prevent future harm. For more information, visit ChildrensHealthDefense.org.
CHD Links:
a) 1 of 38-page document- PI Memo Opinion DC Minor Case:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/PI-memo-opinion-DC-minor-case.pdf
b) 1 of 2-page document- Booth Preliminary Injunction Order:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/Booth-Preliminary-Injunction-Order.pdf
c) 1 of 88-page document- #31 Amended Complaint:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/31-AMENDED-COMPLAINT-against-All-Defendants-filed-by-SHANITA-WILLIAMS-SHAMEKA-WILLIAMS-VICTOR-M.-BOOTH-JANE-HELLEWELL.-AttachmentsHazlehurst-Rolf.pdf
d) 1 of 131-page document- #31 Appendix:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/31-1-Appendix.pdf
e) DC Plaintiff Drawing (Exhibit 11 & timestamp included):
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/Exhibit-11-DC-plaintiff-drawing-.png
FBI Invites Public In On Its Forfeiture Racket, Promises Them A Cut Of The Take
By Tim Cushing – techdirt – March 16, 2022
There aren’t many ways to make something as objectively awful as civil asset forfeiture worse, but the FBI has found a way to do it. As it stands now, forfeiture allows law enforcement to take cash and property from people under the (unproven) theory that it was illegally obtained. The rest of the process does nothing to prove the theory. The burden of proof is often shifted to people who had their stuff taken by law enforcement and the process of seeking the return of property is so expensive and counterintuitive, most people just take the L and move on.
The FBI wants to make asset forfeiture even shittier. It’s rolling out what appears to be a pilot program in Charlotte, North Carolina — supposedly a major hub on the East Coast drug distribution chain. Behold these (also unproven) claims the FBI has deployed to justify its new forfeiture ride-along program.
The FBI Charlotte Field Office is offering cash rewards for tips that help agents intercept drug trafficking shipments through Charlotte. With multiple interstates running directly through the Queen City, the route is appealing to traffickers who deliver their products and transfer the cash proceeds up and down the East Coast. While law enforcement agencies are effective at intercepting many of the shipments, the FBI recognizes the value the public can offer to our investigations.
Did you get that? Multiple interstates leading to a large city is all the “evidence” the FBI needs to call literally any city with a network of accessible roads a hotspot for drug trafficking activity. Everything is a hub and every road is an artery. That’s how the interstate highway system works. And because it works, every road must be a drug trafficking route and every city must be simultaneously a source for drug distributors and the home to thousands of drug customers.
All of North Carolina is suspect, according to the FBI. To clean up this southeastern drug paradise, the FBI is asking the public to contribute to its government theft program.
If a drug/cash shipment is successfully seized, the tipster could receive up to 25% of the seized money. FBI Charlotte will use the Department of Justice Asset Forfeiture Program to pay tipsters. Currently, the new program is only active in the Charlotte metro area with plans to expand across North Carolina in the future.
The FBI has set up an SMS accessible tip line in addition to its normal field office phone numbers. Tipsters who know where some drug cash might be found can directly profit from providing information that points agents in the direction of seizable property.
Unlike other tip lines with reward offers like CrimeStoppers, there’s no need to wait around to see if the tip results in arrests or convictions. The civil asset forfeiture process doesn’t require arrests and convictions, only nebulous accusations about the cash itself, which is named as the “defendant” in forfeiture proceedings as though it committed criminal acts all by itself.
And while it might be tempting to flood the tip line with bogus reports, keep in mind making false statements to federal agents is a federal crime, one that can lead to real, in-fucking-federal-prison sentences. It isn’t like filling out a false police report, which may lead to little more than a few months of probation and local cops treating future reports as highly suspect. Federal crimes are no joke and the FBI loves to catch people lying because it allows the DOJ to add to its prosecutorial wins even when agents are unable to find evidence of any actual criminal activity.
The hard rule (DON’T!) about talking to federal agents without a lawyer present applies here as well. Think about it. You provide a tip, thinking you’re doing a good deed by sending agents to seize the ill-gotten gains of an alleged criminal enterprise. But if any entity is capable of ensuring no good deed goes unpunished, it’s the FBI.
Agents may decide the submitted tip indicates the tipster is involved in drug trafficking or, at the very least, may be able to provide even more tips on criminal activity. This may lead to some in-person “interviews” with agents who — as noted above — can always accuse a tipster of lying if they believe they’re not being fully honest about their relationship to the seized cash or the people who formerly possessed it. They may also attempt to pressure a tipster into becoming a federal snitch and make their lives miserable if they refuse to play ball.
No good can come of this. No good comes from civil asset forfeiture and this invitation for the public to skim the federal government’s take makes it much, much worse. If the FBI’s going to be this stupid, it’s time for federal lawmakers to take this abusable revenue stream away from it by requiring forfeitures to be tied to convictions.

On March 23, PM Justin Trudeau was called a dictator in front of the entire European Union over his response to the 
