Category Archives: FBI

Seems Schiff was the ONLY Person with Trump Collusion Evidence

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And no other witness per the released testimonies had evidence. But the preamble by Congressman Schiff proves his hate and his continued lies as noted below.

Note: top Obama officials acknowledged that they knew of no “empirical evidence” of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election, despite their concerns and suspicions.

That includes top officials such as James Clapper, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, Loretta Lynch and John Brennan.

Secret Impeachment: Matt Gaetz Files Ethics Complaint ...

 

Materials from the Committee’s Investigation into Russian Active Measures

In 2017 and 2018, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) undertook an investigation into Russia’s interference campaign targeting the 2016 U.S. election. The Committee’s investigation came on the heels of an Intelligence Community assessment, which found:

“Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”

Democrats on the Committee affirmed that judgement, as did Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee. Throughout its investigation, the Committee uncovered significant evidence of Trump campaign efforts to seek, make use of, and cover up Russian help in the 2016 presidential election. To date, two witnesses have been convicted and sentenced to prison terms for lying and attempting to obstruct the Committee’s investigation.

Ultimately, this pattern of misconduct and deceit continued when President Trump once again sought to coerce a foreign government into providing him illicit assistance with his reelection campaign, this time from Ukraine. For his efforts, President Trump was impeached in the House and became the first ever U.S. President to to receive bipartisan votes to convict in the Senate.

As part of its commitment to transparency, today the Committee is releasing fifty-seven transcripts of witness interviews during the course of the Russia inquiry, as well as additional relevant material, so that every American can see the facts and decide for themselves:

Is this conduct ok?

After releasing the transcripts, Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) stated:

“From 2017 to 2018, the House Intelligence Committee conducted an investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Despite the many barriers put in our way by the then-Republican Majority, and attempts by some key witnesses to lie to us and obstruct our investigation, the transcripts that we are releasing today show precisely what Special Counsel Robert Mueller also revealed: That the Trump campaign, and Donald Trump himself, invited illicit Russian help, made full use of that help, and then lied and obstructed the investigations in order to cover up this misconduct.

Unfortunately, the President’s misconduct did not end with his election in 2016 or his attempts to cover up that effort. Rather, in the course of his presidency, he continued to seek illicit foreign help in his campaign by coercing another nation, Ukraine, to smear his opponent. After making use of Russia’s help with his first presidential campaign, President Trump pressed the Ukrainian president to help him in 2020 by withholding critical military aid to that country and a coveted head of state meeting.

These acts ultimately led to the President’s impeachment in the House of Representatives and the first bipartisan vote in the Senate in our history in support of a conviction of a President of the United States. The President’s efforts to make use of the help of a foreign power to win an election, and then to extort yet another foreign power to try to win again, represent a grave threat to the health of our democracy now and in the future.

The transcripts released today richly detail evidence of the Trump campaign’s efforts to invite, make use of, and cover up Russia’s help in the 2016 presidential election. Special Counsel Robert Mueller identified in his report similar, and even more extensive, evidence of improper links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government.  A bipartisan Senate investigation also found that Russia sought to help the candidacy of Donald Trump in 2016.

While Special Counsel Mueller found insufficient evidence to prove the crime of criminal conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt, he refused to draw any conclusion on the issue of collusion — contrary to false representations made by Attorney General Bill Barr and others. There is ample evidence of the corrupt interactions between the Trump campaign and Russia, both direct and circumstantial, in the record:

  • In June of 2016, a Russian delegation offered dirt on Donald Trump’s rival—presidential candidate Hillary Clinton—to the highest levels of the Trump campaign, and did so in writing. Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., accepted that offer, and then set up a secret meeting between the Russian delegation, himself, Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to discuss that illicit help. When news of the meeting was about to break, Trump and his son drafted a false statement for the press together in order to cover up the true purpose of the meeting. This written offer of illegal help by the Russians and its acceptance by the President’s campaign, and the secret meeting that followed, provide some of the most damning and direct evidence of the President’s to make use of Russia’s assistance in the election.

  • Throughout the summer of 2016, the Trump campaign and candidate Trump himself repeatedly sought damaging information on Clinton from Russia. In July of 2016, Trump publicly called on Russia to hack Clinton’s emails, and – as the Special Counsel found – that night, Russian military intelligence officers did precisely that. Our transcripts show that numerous individuals affiliated with or working for the Trump campaign were in communication with individuals offering help to set up private backchannels with the Russian government.

  • Multiple witnesses sought to hide and cover up illicit activity related to Russia during the presidential campaign. One-time campaign advisor and close confidant to Trump, Roger Stone, has been sentenced to prison for lying to the Committee about his advanced knowledge of impending WikiLeaks releases of Clinton campaign information. Former personal attorney to Trump, Michael Cohen, was imprisoned in part on charges that he lied to the Committee about Trump’s role in arranging a lucrative business deal in Russia during the course of his campaign and early presidency. The President’s pursuit of Trump Tower Moscow — potentially the most lucrative deal of his life — while lying to the American people about his business interests in Russia, provided the most serious counterintelligence risk to the United States.

  • Another associate of Trump, Erik Prince, misled our Committee about his efforts to take part in a secret backchannel with a senior Russian government official while he was unofficially supporting the Trump campaign.

  • And the transcripts also show that during the transition period in late 2016, the incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn undertook efforts to undermine U.S. sanctions on Russia imposed by the previous administration over Russia’s interference in the election on Trump’s behalf.  Flynn would later lie to the FBI about these efforts, and the President would try to pressure then-FBI Director Comey to shut down any investigation into Flynn.  It would take the firing of then Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the later appointment of an unscrupulous Attorney General, Bill Barr, for the President to achieve his aim of seeking dismissal of the case against Flynn, and only after Flynn pled guilty to lying to the FBI.

Despite taking part in this investigation and hearing these facts first-hand, the transcripts reveal how House Republicans used witness interviews not to gain the facts, but to press President Trump’s false narrative of ‘no collusion, no obstruction.’  It would be a pattern they would follow throughout the Russia investigation and into the President’s subsequent Ukraine misconduct. To that end, House Republicans sought to use the Committee’s Russia investigation to undermine the Intelligence Community’s assessment that Russia sought to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. That assessment has been affirmed by this Committee’s Democrats, the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, and Special Counsel Mueller. 

These transcripts should have been released long before now, but the White House held up their release to the public by refusing to allow the Intelligence Community to make redactions on the basis of classified information, rather than White House political interests.  Only now, and during a deadly pandemic, has the President released his hold on this damning information and evidence. 

Like the Ukraine investigation that would follow it, the investigation into the Trump campaign’s effort to seek and utilize Russian help in 2016 and to obstruct justice, reveal a President who believes that he is above the law. But we are a country where the truth still matters and where right still matters. Our investigation into the Trump campaign, and the evidence we uncovered despite formidable obstruction, affirms that.”

Read the full statement here.

Correspondence

Interview Transcripts

 

Comey Petulant Response to DOJ over Dropping the Case v. Flynn

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Losing gracefully is hardly part of the character of former FBI Director James Comey.
As the news broke that under the recommendations of Jeff Jensen to Main Justice, that the case be dropped, Comey remains petulant.

Not to be left out, Congressman Adam Schiff also tweeted the following:

 

The Democrats have formed their response already filled with bias and fake outrage….but if the reader should take the time to fully read the 20 pages in the motion to dismiss, context becomes much more clear actually. There was great division it seems within the 7th Floor of the Bureau and even at the Department of Justice. You can bet not a single Democrat read the full motion. By the way, the Judge has final authority to approve the motion.

Michael Flynn's Sentencing Delayed By Judge Sullivan After ... photo

The target paragraph(s) in the motion is as follows:

Mr. Flynn entered a guilty plea—which he has since sought to withdraw—to a single count of making false statements in a January 24, 2017 interview with investigators of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”). See ECF Nos. 3-4. This crime, however, requires a statement to be not simply false, but “materially” false with respect to a matter under investigation. 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2). Materiality is an essential element of the offense. Materiality, moreover, requires more than mere “relevance” or relatedness to the matter being investigated; it requires “probative weight,” whereby the statement is “reasonably likely to influence the tribunal in making a determination required to be made.” United States v. Weinstock, 231 F.2d 699, 701 (D.C. Cir. 1956) (emphasis added).

After a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information appended to the defendant’s supplemental pleadings, ECF Nos. 181, 188-190,1 the Government has concluded that the interview of Mr. Flynn was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn—a no longer justifiably predicated investigation that the FBI had, in the Bureau’s own words, prepared to close because it had yielded an “absence of any derogatory information.” Ex. 1 at 4, FBI FD-1057 “Closing Communication” Jan. 4, 2017 (emphases added). The Government is not persuaded that the January 24, 2017 interview was conducted with a legitimate investigative basis and therefore does not believe Mr. Flynn’s statements were material even if untrue.

Flynn-Motion-to-Dismiss

In part of commentary by Jonathan Turley:

The Flynn case represents one of the most ignoble chapters of the Special Counsel investigation. Notably, the motion itself could lay the foundation for suing on the basis of malicious prosecution.

While Judge Emmet Sullivan could dismiss the charges on the papers (and unopposed motion), I would expect a hearing to be called. There is a great irony here. Sullivan’s last hearing on sentencing led to controversial statements from the bench and a delay in sentencing that resulted in an easier path to dismissal.

In the motion below, the Justice Department stresses that “the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who … seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches [the] task with humility.”  It also establishes that there was never a satisfaction of the materiality element to the criminal allegation.

Who Is Emmet Sullivan, the Judge Who Will Sentence Michael ...

Keep your eyes of Judge Sullivan…will he sign the motion. Hat tip to Sidney Powell for her legal tenacity.

 

What did Biden Know and When did he Know it?

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Somehow it seems the matter of the Bidens and all things Ukraine or China have faded from the headlines.

To Fight Russia, Ukraine Must Also Fight Corruption, Biden ... photo
Maybe there is more to learn here from Biden’s video for his trip to Kyiv.

Now in sporadic form, news articles challenge Presidential candidate Biden on his history or predatory behavior with Tara Reade. Okay, so the Senate Officers in charge of records belonging to Joe Biden’s time as a senator are under seal and cannot be released. It seems two other possible repositories for government records that included Joe Biden in government are the National Archives or the University of Delaware. Is there not some official rule or protocol for where those records actually reside and unsealing them or making them available in the case of an investigation?

When it comes to the Russia/Trump investigation, how come journalists never ask candidate Joe Biden about Crossfire Razor, Crossfire Typhoon or Crossfire Hurricane? You can bet that during the last months of the Obama White House that Biden was either read in or part of the conversations dealing with the counter-intelligence investigation(s). It is no secret that during the transition, President Obama warned Donald Trump about General Flynn and earnestly suggested that President Trump not hire Flynn as National Security Advisor. Why would that be?

From General Flynn: He recounted that his agency was producing intelligence reports indicating that radical Islamists were the main force in the Syrian insurgency and “that Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of the Islamic State inside Syria”. According to Flynn, these reports “got enormous pushback from the Obama administration.

As ISIS conquered much of Iraq during the summer of 2014 and imposed its brutal, totalitarian rule, it was clear that Obama and his national security team had underestimated the strength of ISIS, while Flynn had understood the threat far better than many of his peers. But Flynn had angered his two bosses, Michael Vickers, the overall head of intelligence at the Pentagon, as well as James Clapper, the director of national intelligence.
Vickers and Clapper thought that Flynn trying to shake things up at DIA was actually sabotaging morale at the agency, according to Clapper’s autobiography, “Facts and Fears.” They decided to force Flynn out of office a year early.

Yet, the Crossfire Razor operation launched by the FBI was about to begin, even while Flynn was still at the DIA. (CR was later closed due to no evidence Flynn was a Russian agent)

301 Moved Permanently source

Stefan Halper, who worked for three Republican presidents and was a longtime informant for the American intelligence community, had a February 2014 encounter with Flynn at a London intelligence conference. Halper became so alarmed by Flynn’s close association with a Russian woman that a Halper associate expressed concerns to American authorities that Flynn may have been compromised by Russian intelligence. Flynn was forced out of the DIA six months later, although public accounts at the time cited other reasons for his removal, including his management style and views on Islam.

Exactly where are the archived files for VP Biden these days? What did he know and when? There is still the open question(s) of the Biden interactions or deals with China and Ukraine.

***

As for the assignments given to VP Biden by the Obama White House, it is fascinating that even today speaking intermittently from his basement, media has not challenged the candidate about his work. Per the White House archives, Biden was the lead in many areas.

As the 47th Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden has continued his leadership on important issues facing the nation and has represented our country abroad traveling over 1.2 million miles to more than 50 countries. Vice President Biden has convened sessions of the President’s Cabinet, led interagency efforts, and worked with Congress in his fight to raise the living standards of middle class Americans, reduce gun violence, address violence against women, and end cancer as we know it.

Eight years ago, the turmoil in the financial sector led to crippling conditions in the real economy — the livelihood of millions of American households and businesses outside of Wall Street. Eight years later, we’re in the midst of the longest streak of job growth in history — with more than 15 million jobs added. The Vice President played a key role in acting aggressively to arrest the crisis, restart growth and job creation, rebuild our economy on a stronger long-term foundation, and expand opportunity for all Americans. The Vice President was tasked with implementing and overseeing the $840 billion stimulus package in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which has helped to rebuild our economy and lay the foundation for a sustainable economic future. He fought for America’s auto industry, saving 1.5 million jobs up and down the supply chain. The Vice President also leads the Ready to Work Initiative, the Administration’s key effort to identify opportunities to improve our nation’s workforce skills and training systems to help better prepare American workers for the jobs of a 21st century economy.

Candidate Biden can hardly put together a cogent thought or sentence these days during any public or virtual appearances. Gotta wonder.

 

DNI/Grenell Gives Adam Schiff Ultimatum

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Hey Adam….the transcripts are ready….are you? Release the documents.

Transcripts of closed-door interviews from Russia probe ... source

EXCLUSIVE — DNI TO SCHIFF: THE TRANSCRIPTS ARE READY TO RELEASE. A big development in the fight over 53 secret interviews the House Intelligence Committee conducted during its Trump-Russia investigation. Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell has sent a letter to chairman Adam Schiff notifying him that transcripts of all 53 interviews, over 6,000 pages in all, have been cleared for public release. “All of the transcripts, with our required redactions, can be released to the public without any concerns of disclosing classified material,” Grenell wrote to Schiff in a letter dated May 4.

The Intel Committee did the first probe into Russia’s 2016 campaign interference and allegations of Trump-Russia collusion. Even today, its findings make up most of what we know about the affair. As part of that investigation — it was run by then-majority Republicans — the committee interviewed some key witnesses in the Trump-Russia matter: Donald Trump Jr., Steve Bannon, Andrew McCabe, Sally Yates, Michael Cohen, Hope Hicks, and many more.

list2

The interviews were conducted in secret. But by September 2018, with the committee’s report long finished and made public, the Republicans who still controlled the committee decided the interview transcripts should be released to the public. In a rare moment of comity, Democrats agreed, and on September 26, 2018, the committee voted unanimously to release the transcripts. But there was a catch: The documents would have to first be checked for classified information by the Intelligence Community. So off they went to the IC — never to be seen again.

Now, in May 2020, they’re still secret. Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal editorial board reported that the IC had finished its review of 43 of the transcripts, but Schiff was refusing to release them. The paper said Schiff was also preventing declassification of the remaining ten transcripts.

In the letter, Grenell revealed that the 43 transcripts have been finished since June 2019. Schiff has been sitting on them all that time. Grenell said the final ten have just been finished as well. “I urge you to honor your previous public statements, and your committee’s unanimous vote on this matter, to release all 53 cleared transcripts to Members of Congress and the American public as soon as possible,” Grenell said. Just in case Schiff is still not interested, Grenell added, “I am also willing to release the transcripts directly from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as to ensure we comply with the unanimous and bipartisan vote to release the transcripts.”

One more thing. In March 2019 — that was when Democrats were newly in charge of the House and considering impeaching President Trump over the Russia matter — Schiff requested that the DNI “under no circumstances…share House Intelligence Committee transcripts with the White House, President Trump, or any persons associated with the White House or President.” Some Republicans viewed that as a dubious request, since some of the witnesses came from the White House. Nevertheless, Grenell complied. “Pursuant to your guidance, these transcripts have not been shared with the White House,” he wrote to Schiff.

The next move is up to Schiff. The chairman has shown no hesitation to keep secrets even when they involve non-classified information of great national interest. For example, Schiff is still concealing the committee’s impeachment inquiry interview with Michael Atkinson, at the time the Intelligence Community Inspector General, in the Ukraine matter. As for the Trump-Russia interviews, Republicans remember when Schiff claimed he had “direct evidence” of collusion — a charge special counsel Robert Mueller was never able to establish. Some GOP lawmakers believe the transcripts will help show that Schiff was making it up all along. It’s time for the public to learn that, too.

***

When Schiff continues to lie —> update: Schiff is moving to release them but not without trying to place blame.

Schiff accused the White House of “hijacking” the process during an interview with Politico in September. The outlet reported at the time that “Schiff still intends to release the bulk of the Russia transcripts in the near future.” Nearly a year later, he had not done so.

“All of the transcripts, with required redactions can be released to the public without any concerns of disclosing classified material,” Grenell’s letter said. “In the interests of transparency and accountability, I urge you to honor your previous public statements, and your Committee’s unanimous vote on this matter, to release all 53 cleared transcripts to all Members of Congress and the American public as soon as possible.”

The acting spy chief added: “I am also willing to release the transcripts directly from the ODNI, as to ensure we comply with the unanimous and bipartisan vote to release the transcripts.”

The declassification process by the ODNI was expected to take just a few weeks or months. Nearly two years later, GOP lawmakers and Trump administration officials blamed Schiff for the delay.

“Adam Schiff is thwarting the will of the House Intelligence Committee as expressed in the bipartisan vote in September 2018 to make these transcripts public,” one senior intelligence official told the Washington Examiner late last month. “He has appointed himself arbiter of what the public should see and has refused to allow the White House to review its own equities, making declassification of 10 of the transcripts impossible. It’s difficult to imagine any motive other than Schiff is still trying to control the narrative on Russia collusion.”

Schiff’s spokesperson said Wednesday, “We are now reviewing the proposed redactions from ODNI based on classification, law enforcement sensitivity, or items ODNI requests be for official-use only.” The official also cast doubt on the trustworthiness of the redactions, claiming that, “given the overtly political role now played by the Acting DNI, including the leak of his letter, this committee and the public can have little confidence that his determinations are made on the merits.”

The spokesperson added: “Our review of ODNI’s newly proposed redactions will be as expeditious as possible given the constraints of the pandemic, and we look forward to releasing these transcripts, which relate to misconduct by the Trump campaign and the president himself.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report, released in April 2019, said his investigation found the Russians had interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” but that it “did not establish” any criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Led by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, 27 GOP lawmakers said in a Tuesday letter that the delay was Schiff’s fault.

“We understand now that Chairman Schiff is blocking the release of these transcripts. This news, if accurate, is disturbing — especially in light of Chairman Schiff’s cries in 2019 for transparency regarding allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia,” the congressmen said.

The 10 transcripts that Schiff successfully blocked the White House from viewing are from interviews of Trump son-in-law and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, former chief executive for the Trump campaign Steve Bannon, former Obama deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, former White House deputy assistant Keith Schiller, and Mary McCord, a former assistant attorney general for national security who was involved in the FBI’s Russia investigation.

Among the 43 other witness interviews was testimony by former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Donald Trump Jr., White House adviser Hope Hicks, longtime Trump friend and recently convicted “fixer” Roger Stone, former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Perkins Coie lawyers Michael Sussman, a former DOJ lawyer who passed along alleged details about Russian interference to former FBI general counsel James Baker, and Marc Elias, the chairman who was the Clinton campaign’s general counsel and who hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the campaign, were also among them.

 

 

GWB was Obsessed with Pandemic Preparations in 2005

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The efforts of the Bush administration was intense over the ensuing three years, including exercises where cabinet officials gamed out their responses, but it was not sustained. Large swaths of the ambitious plan were either not fully realized or entirely shelved as other priorities and crises took hold.

“There was a realization that it’s no longer fantastical to raise scenarios about planes falling from the sky, or anthrax arriving in the mail,” said Tom Bossert, who worked in the Bush White House and went on to serve as a homeland security adviser in the Trump administration. “It was not a novel. It was the world we were living.”

According to Bossert, who is now an ABC News contributor, Bush did not just insist on preparation for a pandemic. He was obsessed with it.

“He was completely taken by the reality that that was going to happen,” Bossert said. In a November 2005 speech at the National Institutes of Health, Bush laid out proposals in granular detail — describing with stunning prescience how a pandemic in the United States would unfold. Among those in the audience was Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leader of the current crisis response, who was then and still is now the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Bush told the gathered scientists that they would need to develop a vaccine in record time.

“If a pandemic strikes, our country must have a surge capacity in place that will allow us to bring a new vaccine on line quickly and manufacture enough to immunize every American against the pandemic strain,” he said.

Bush set out to spend $7 billion building out his plan. His cabinet secretaries urged their staffs to take preparations seriously. The government launched a website, www.pandemicflu.gov, that is still in use today. But as time passed, it became increasingly difficult to justify the continued funding, staffing and attention, Bossert said.

“You need to have annual budget commitment. You need to have institutions that can survive any one administration. And you need to have leadership experience,” Bossert said. “All three of those can be effected by our wonderful and unique form of government in which you transfer power every four years.”

***

Then in 2006, enter Senator Burr:

The Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act (PAHPAI) is legislation introduced and passed by the U.S. Congress in 2019 that aims to improve the nation’s preparation and response to public health threats, including both natural threats and deliberate man-made threats.[1]

A previous bill (with a near-identical name), the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA), was signed into law in 2006 and reauthorized in 2013 in order to create a system that prepares for, and responds to, public health threats that could turn into emergencies.

The 2019 bill (PAHPAI) was introduced by U.S. Senators Richard Burr (R-NC), Bob Casey (D-PA), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), and Patty Murray (D-WA).[1] Congress passed the bill and sent it to President Trump for his signature in June 2019. (The bill number is S. 1379).

What went on at the State level during all this time? Well in recent years, there was an exercise called Crimson Contagion.

Crimson Contagion 2019 was/is a Functional Exercise, a national level exercise series conducted to detect gaps in mechanisms, capabilities, plans, policies, and procedures in the event of a pandemic influenza.  Current strategies include the Biological Incident Annex to the Response and Recovery Federal Interagency Operational Plans (2018), Pandemic Influenza Plan (2017 Update), Pandemic Crisis Action Plan Version 2.0, and CDC’s Pandemic Influenza Appendix to the Biological Incident Annex of the CDC All-Hazard Plan (December 2017). These plans, updated over the last few years, were tested by the functional exercise with emphasis on the examination of strategic priorities set by the NSC. Specifically, examined priorities include operational coordination and communications, stabilization and restoration of critical lifelines, national security emergencies, public health emergencies, and continuity. The Crimson Contagion 2019 Functional Exercise included participation of almost 300 entities – 19 federal departments and agencies, 12 states, 15 tribal nations and pueblos, 74 local health departments and coalition regions, 87 hospitals, 40 private sector organizations, and 35 active operations centers. The scenario was a large-scale outbreak of H7N9 avian influenza, originating in China but swiftly spreading to the contiguous US with the first case detected in Chicago, Illinois. Continuous human-to-human transmission of the H7N9 virus encourages its spread across the country and, unfortunately, the stockpiles of H7N9 vaccines are not a match for the outbreak’s strain; however, those vaccines are serviceable as a priming dose. Also, the strain of virus is susceptible to Relenza and Tamiflu antiviral medications. The exercise was intended to deal with a virus outbreak that starts overseas and migrates to the US with scant allocated resources for outbreak response and management, thereby forcing the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to include other agencies in the response. To do so, the exercise began 47 days after the identification of the first US case of H7N9 in Chicago, otherwise known as STARTEX conditions. Then, the HHS declared the outbreak as a Public Health Emergency (PHE), the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic, and the President of the United States declared a National Emergency under the National Emergencies Act. As was the case in the 1918 Great Influenza, transmissibility is high and cases are severe. At STARTEX, there are 2.1 million illnesses and 100 million forecasted illnesses as well as over half a million forecasted deaths. As the pandemic progresses along the epidemiological curve, the overarching foci of the federal-level response adjusts across four phases:

  1. Operational coordination with public messaging and risk communication
  2. Situational awareness, information sharing, and reporting
  3. Financing
  4. Continuity of operations

The outcome of the Crimson Contagion is that vaccine development is the silver bullet to such an outbreak, but there are complications beyond its formulation. Namely, the minimization of outbreak impact prior to vaccine development and dispersal, strategy for efficient dissemination of the vaccine across the country, allocation of personal protective equipment (PPE), and high expense of vaccine development and PPE acquisitions. The exercise concluded that HHS requires about $10 billion in additional funding immediately following the identification of a novel strain of pandemic influenza. The low inventory levels of PPE and other countermeasures are a result of insufficient domestic manufacturing in the US and a lack of raw materials maintained within US borders.  Additionally, the exercise revealed six key findings:

  1. Existing statutory authorities, policies, and funding of HHS are insufficient for a federal response to an influenza pandemic
  2. Current planning fails to outline the organizational structure of the federal government response when HHS is the designated lead agency; planning also varies across local, state, territorial, tribal, and federal entities
  3. There is a lack of clarity in operational coordination regarding the roles and responsibility of agencies as well as in the coordination of information, guidance, and actions of federal agencies, state agencies, and the health sector
  4. Situation assessment is inefficient and incomplete due to the lack of clear guidance on the information required and confusion in the distribution of recommended protocols and products
  5. The medical countermeasures supply chain and production capacity are currently insufficient to meet the needs of the country in the event of pandemic influenza
  6. There is clear dissemination of public health and responder information from the CDC, but confusion about school closures remains.

A few years go, DHS published the National Response Framework Second Edition May 2013 and later,  FEMA published a 143 page report known as the Biological Incident Annex to the Response and Recovery Federal Interagency Operational Plans Final – January 2017

as a follow up to the work that began in 2008.

Many things certainly were going on that otherwise have not received media attention and the above is by no means a full accounting. The above is only referenced for perspective and context.

So while so many are working to find a single solution to Covid 19, there is not one cure but more in the realm of hundreds or perhaps thousands. Furthermore, while so many want to place blame, that too is misguided to point to U.S. politicians and medical experts. When it comes to Dr. Fauci or Bill Gates and his Event 201, understand that every medical counter-measure to pandemics call for growing viruses in laboratories and getting patents for the work each does including pharmaceutical companies and universities. We of course have the bureaucracy of clinical trials and they do take lots of time to launch and process.

Slow down readers, stop with the blame games, stop with finding fault, let’s deal with the here and now to get this behind us, never to repeat. If anything, blame the Communist Party of China, begin and end there and re-examine national policy with Beijing.

Vendors Return in Wuhan as China Prepares COVID-19 ... source

While Pelosi and Schiff have a new oversight commission led by Congressman Clyburn, which was in the $2T stimulus bill, so what? You say it is just another plot to go for another impeachment of President Trump? Nah…it is only the Democrats and media’s plot and wont happen. A full investigation of all things Covid 19 would hardly be completed by 2024.

Oh yeah, for those of you angry at Senator Burr for selling stock, we dont know how many in congress did sell stock. Remember, Senator Burr authored that pandemic bill in 2006….and it was signed into law.

Senators did receive a closed-door briefing on the virus on Jan. 24, which was public knowledge. A separate briefing was held Feb. 12 by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which Burr is a member of. It’s unclear if he attended either session.

One must ask if the Senate Intelligence Committee received the briefing, who gave the briefing and did that same briefing happen in the House? That is always the policy. If so, how come the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, you know, Adam Schiff never said a thing about it. Inquiring minds want to know.

Meanwhile….

Just follow hygiene rules and let’s get America into full restoration mode…FAST.