Way back in late March Laura Ingraham reported on the latest study by the French research team led by the renowned epidemiologist Dr. Didier Raoult that was able to repeat his findings from a previous study.
This time Dr. Raoult administered hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin to 80 patients and observed improvement in EVERY CASE except for a very sick 86-year-old with an advanced form of coronavirus infection.
This was very promising news once again from Dr. Didier Raoult.
Unfortunately, this doctor’s work with the cheap readily available drug helped President Trump so the the liberal media either ignored, attacked or mocked his research.
Dr. Raoult tweeted his results. Translated: Our two articles published tonight help to demonstrate: 1. The effectiveness of our protocol, on 80 patients. 2. The relevance of the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, thanks to research carried out in our P3 containment laboratory.
It is ABSOLUTELY CLEAR TODAY that Dr. Raoult was correct in his findings.
Today there are over 5 global studies that support the doctor’s findings that HCQ is a cheap and very effective treatment for coronavirus.
Unfortunately, this was not the preferred treatment by professionals who hoped to reap vast rewards for their own treatment for the coronavirus. Gilead pharmaceuticals was hoping to promote its own drug remdesivir as a potential option to treat the disease. Gilead had the support of Dr. Anthony Fauci who downplayed HCQ at every opportunity.
The opposition to Dr. Didier Raoult was so strong that he even received death threats.
During testimony before parliament Dr. Raoult told lawmakers under oath that the person who sent him death threats was a top recipient of Gilead Pharmaceuticals.
Professor Raoult testified that, shortly after he started to talk about HCQ as a treatment, in March, he received anonymous death threats. He filed a complaint with the police, and an enquiry was opened by the French judiciary. The medical doctor behind the threats was found and happens to be from a Nantes university hospital. It happened to be the person who received the most money from Gilead over the past 6 years. Professor Raoult presents this as a “personal experience.” In his testimony, he remained diplomatic and suggested “to be attentive to this level of problem.”
International politics and greed are preventing millions of people from receiving the life-saving treatment of HCQ to battle the coronavirus.
Hopefully, some day the criminal minds behind the assault on HCQ will be brought to justice.
Two powerful Senate committee chairman are expanding their hunt for documents that might shine light on abuses during the bungled Russia collusion probe, demanding new evidence be turned over by CIA Director Gina Haspel and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) sent letters this week to the CIA, State Department, Office of Director of National Intelligence and the FBI that signal the scope of their probes has expanded with recent new revelations.
Many of the new requests appear to focus on people who are suspected to have contributed materials to Christopher Steele's discredited anti-Trump dossier or who trafficked information from the opposition research memo to government officials.
For instance, the chairmen demanded records from Pompeo's department concerning:
Clinton acolyte and former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, who has admitted he received and provided copies of the Steele dossier
former Clinton associates Cody Shearer and Sidney Blumenthal. Shearer, a relative of Talbott, wrote a dossier similar to Steele's that was provided to the former MI-6 agent.
former State officials Victoria Nuland, Jonathan Winer and Kathleen Kavalec, all of whom had contact with Steele as he was developing his dossier.
The senators also made their most sweeping demands for records from CIA, including any information the spy agency provided the FBI concerning the credibility of Steele as a human source. Recently declassified footnotes from Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz's report on Russia probe abuses revealed that the CIA had raised red flags about Steele's reporting, including that he had been targeted with Russian intelligence agency disinformation about Donald Trump while writing the dossier.
The lawmakers also pressed CIA for any records of requests for assistance from foreign allies in the Russia collusion probe.
Specifically, they requested "all records related to assistance requests about the persons or conduct at issue in the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, whether before or after the opening of the investigation, to the following foreign governments: a. Australia; b. Israel; and c. the United Kingdom," their letter to Haspel stated.
CIA also was pressed for records concerning the conduct of former Obama-era director John Brennan, including his contact about the Russia probe with fired FBI Director James Comey and then-Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid as well as any travel he took to Ukraine, Russia's neighbor.
One of the most highly anticipated requests in the letters involved DNI John Ratcliffe, who was asked to declassify a lengthy report written by former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes' staff highlighting major failures in the intelligence community's assessment about Russia's intentions in the 2016 election.
The report is believed to highlight both spy tradecraft mistakes and dissension among CIA analysts over the Obama administration's conclusion that Russia's intention was to help Trump win and Hillary Clinton lose. Evidence has emerged since that conclusion was reached in January 2017 — before Trump took office — conflicting with the analysis. For instance, the CIA's warning to the FBI that Russians were feeding bogus dirt on Trump to Clinton's chief researcher cut against the conclusion.
The U.S. government has asked a federal judge in Washington to seize the $2 million book advance and any royalties paid to former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton, who published a tell-all memoir about the Trump administration allegedly without clearing it first with the government for classified material.
The government said in a court filing Thursday that Bolton violated nondisclosure agreements when he released his memoir, The Room Where It Happened, without finishing a National Security Council (NSC) review process to make sure the book did not contain any classified material that could put U.S. national security at risk, according to Bloomberg.
The federal government initially sought to prevent the book’s publish in June, but failed since advance copies had already been sent out to numerous media outlets. However, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth wrote in his ruling about Bolton, “He has exposed his country to harm and himself to civil (and potentially criminal) liability.”
The government wrote in this week’s filing that Bolton was “repeatedly told that he could not publish the book absent written authorization, both before and after he submitted the manuscript for prepublication review,” but published his book anyway without that authorization.
Bolton has alleged that he did not received that written authorization and that he cleared his book with a senior NSC official.
Bolton has stoked outrage on the left for not testifying in the House impeachment hearing with what he knew about the administration’s handling of Ukraine, but also on the right for appearing to cash in on his controversial tenure in the Trump administration.
A number of groups, including the ACLU and Sierra Club, had asked the high court to get involved again after the justices last year cleared the way for the administration to use military funds for construction while the case played out in the courts.
A federal appeals court had ruled against the administration last month, but the justices, for now, have given another temporary victory to the administration.
"The fight continues,” said Dror Ladin, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project. “Every lower court to consider the question has ruled President Trump's border wall illegal, and the Supreme Court’s temporary order does not decide the case. We’ll be back before the Supreme Court soon to put a stop to Trump’s xenophobic border wall once and for all.”
The four liberal justices dissented from Friday’s order.
The groups, led by the Center for Biological Diversity, challenged a 1996 law giving the president authority to fight illegal immigration and border crossings, and limiting some legal challenges.
The coalition claimed that the Trump administration did not conduct sufficient environmental impact studies for the construction and that endangered species like the jaguar and Mexican wolf would be adversely affected by the barrier.
They had asserted in their case that the law’s allowance for the secretary of Homeland Security to waive any laws necessary to allow the quick construction of border fencing violates the Constitution’s separation of powers. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals had dismissed the case, citing a prior case from 2007 with "a nearly identical context."
"This Court finds that precedent persuasive, and it compels the conclusion that Plaintiffs' complaint fails to state plausible constitutional claims as a matter of law," the Circuit Court's ruling said.
Editor note: A previous version of this story suggested all charges were dropped against the couple. That is not yet formally the case. The Missouri AG is still seeking to dismiss the case. We’ll be sure to keep you updated on this breaking story as new details become available.
ST. LOUIS, MO – Kim Gardner, Circuit Attorney for St. Louis, brought charges against a local couple last month who were caught on video brandishing weapons on the porch of their mansion. Now the Missouri Attorney General is stepping in.
Mark and Patricia McCloskey’s response to a mob of protesters tearing down the gate to a private driveway and trespassing across their yard went viral.
The McCloskey’s who are both attorneys, were eating dinner on their patio when several hundred Black Lives Matter protesters, tore down a gate to gain access to a private community that was clearly marked as private with “No Trespassing” signs.
Mark McCloskey claims that the protesters began making threats towards his wife and himself. He went into the home and retrieved a pistol and what appeared to be an AR-15.
Luckily, no one was injured, and the guns that the McCloskey’s legally owned did the trick by keeping the protesters from causing them harm.
“Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt is intervening in state Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s legal action against Mark and Patricia McCloskey, for brandishing a rifle.The McCloskeys took up arms when extreme ‘anarchist’ demonstrators gathered outside their home on June 28. The weapon was confiscated after the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department searched the property. “
The AG released a video on Twitter, where he stated:
“As Missouri’s chief law enforcement officer, I simply will not stand by while Missouri laws are being ignored.
That is why I am entering the case in terms of seeking the dismissal of the case to protect the rights of Missourians to defend themselves in their property under Missouri’s castle doctrine.”
We provided a breakdown of the Missouri laws around self defense in a previous article, which will be shared again below
Schmitt said:
“The right to keep and bear arms is given the highest level of protection in the Missouri Constitution and their laws, which I am charged for protecting,”
He continued:
“This includes the Missouri castle doctrine, which provides broad rights for Missourians to protect and defend their personal safety, and property against those who wish to do them harm.”
The attorney general said that the charges issued by Gardner was nothing more than politics.
“The shameless circuit attorney filed suit against a St. Louis couple who, according to published reports, say they were doing just that–defending the safety of their property,”
He went on to say:
“A political prosecution, such as this one, would have a chilling effect on Missourians exercising their right to self-defense. The law of Missouri is clear and must be protected … enough is enough.”
We have not been able to confirm that McCloskey will get his illegally seized weapon returned to him.
Here is one of the stories we original shared after the McCloskey’s became heroes to the pro-2nd Amendment crowd, those of us who love the Constitution. ST. LOUIS, MO– In the charging documents against Patricia McCloskey, Assistant Circuit Attorney Chris Hinckley stated that the gun she waved at protestors was “readily capable of lethal use.”
According to the St. Louis police crime lab, when the gun arrived at the lab it was deemed “inoperable.” However, crime lab experts reassembled the gun and wrote that it was “readily capable of lethal use”.
In Missouri, police and prosecutors must prove that a weapon is “readily capable of lethal use” when it is used in the type of crime with which the McCloskey’s have been charged. While the gun was at the crime lab, staff members field stripped the handgun and found that it had originally assembled incorrectly.
According to the crime lab staff, specifically, the firing pin spring was put in front of the firing pin, which was backwards, thus making the gun incapable of firing. Firearm experts put the gun back together in the correct order and test-fired it.
When the gun was test-fired, they found that the gun worked just fine. According to reports from the crime lab, the workers photographed the disassembly and reassembly of the handgun.
Allegedly, the McCloskey’s said that the handgun Patricia McCloskey waved at protestors was inoperable because they had used it prior as a prop during a lawsuit they once filed against the gun manufacturer.
Apparently, in order to bring the handgun into the courtroom, they had to make it inoperable.
The McCloskey’s attorney, Joel Schwartz confirmed that they intentionally misplaced the firing pin on the handgun and that it was in that same exact position when Patricia McCloskey waved it at protestors.
Their attorney also claimed that it was in that condition when they turned it into their former attorney, Al Watkins.On Monday, St. Louis Attorney Kim Gardner announced charges against Patricia and Mark McCloskey for displaying weapons to defend their property after violent protesters broke through a locked gate and into their private neighborhood to march to the mayor’s home back in June.
Gardner, the city prosecutor, charged the couple with one felony count each of unlawful use of a weapon. According to Gardner:
“It is illegal to wave weapons in a threatening manner. That is unlawful in the city of St. Louis.”
According to Fox News, if the McCloskeys are convicted, she is recommending a diversion program as an alternative to jail, which would enable them to later have the charge removed from their records. Gardner said:
“I believe this would serve as a fair resolution to this matter.”
Within hours of the ruling, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed a brief seeking to dismiss Gardner’s charges against the McCloskeys on the grounds that their second amendment rights are being violated.
Gardner also declined to discuss why Missouri’s “castle doctrine,” a law that justifies deadly force for those who are defending their homes from intruders does not apply in this case. In a statement, Schmitt said:
“The right to keep and bear arms is given the highest level of protection in our constitution and our laws, including the castle doctrine, which provides broad rights to Missourians who are protecting their property and lives from those who wish to do them harm.”
With tensions high in St. Louis in the wake of nationwide protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, the McCloskeys said they were defending themselves. The McCloskeys said that the crowd of demonstrators broke an iron gate marked with “No Trespassing” and “Private Street” signs. They also said that some protestors violently threatened them.
In a statement from the couple’s attorney, Schwartz called the decision to charge:
“Disheartening as I unequivocally believe no crime was committed.”
Missouri Governor Mike Parson said in a radio interview on Friday that he would likely pardon the couple if they were charged and convicted. According to Fox News, Parson says that he has also spoken with President Donald Trump regarding this case and the president has promised to do everything he could within his powers to shield the St. Louis couple from prosecution.
Here is another story brought to you from Law Enforcement Today on the developing McCloskey case:
Soros-backed Kim Gardner on the defense after governor, President call her out for “abuse of power” in handling of McCloskey case
ST. LOUIS, MO — The office of St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner said on Twitter that Missouri’s governor and President Donald Trump criticized her for investigating a case involving a couple who brandished guns at Black Lives Matter protesters outside their home last month.
At a news conference Tuesday, Gov. Mike Parson said Trump had expressed interest in the Mark and Patricia McCloskey case.
On June 28, protesters were marching to St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson’s home to demand her resignation when a mob of about 100 Black Lives Matter protesters went through a private gate on the McCloskey property.
“A mob of at least 100 smashed through the historic wrought iron gates of Portland Place, destroying them, rushed towards my home where my family was having dinner outside and put us in fear for our lives.”
The couple made national news when photos and video showed the couple each pointing guns at protesters. Mark was holding a rifle, and his wife, Patricia, was pointing a handgun at a crowd of about 300 protesters.
The pair had a search warrant served on them last week, and police confiscated the rifle and inoperable handgun, which the couple brought outside their home during the protest, according to Bearing Arms.
On Wednesday, police confirmed that they had presented an “unlawful use of a weapon” case to the Circuit Attorney’s office and charges could come as early as Thursday.
In the meantime, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley is calling for a federal civil rights investigation into Gardner’s handling of the case. In a letter to Attorney General Bill Barr, Hawley says that Gardner’s investigation is an “unacceptable abuse of power and threat to the Second Amendment.”
“There is no question under Missouri law that the McCloskeys had the right to own and use their firearms to protect themselves from threatened violence, and that any criminal prosecution for these actions is legally unsound.
“The only possible motivation for the investigation, then, is a politically motivated attempt to punish this family for exercising their Second Amendment rights.
The McCloskeys said they were “terrified” and called 911 as they grabbed their guns when the crowd approached their private, gated community. However, according to police, they did not receive a 911 call for help from that street during the time of the incident, according to KMOV.
Despite Mark’s claims, video circulating on social media shows protesters opening and walking through the unbroken gate. It is unclear when it was actually damaged or who destroyed it.
The couple also claims to have received death threats from the crowd. Mark told KMOV:
“One fellow standing right in front of me pulled out two pistol magazines, clicked them together and said ‘you’re next.’ That was the first death threat we got that night.”
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner said her office is investigating the incident and tweeted:
“I am alarmed at the events that occurred over the weekend, where peaceful protesters were met by guns and a violent assault. We must protect the right to peacefully protest, and any attempt to chill it through intimidation or threat of deadly force will not be tolerated.
Gov. Parson said he spoke to Trump on the phone about this case. At a news conference on July 14, the governor expressed his belief the couple should not face charges.
Joel Schwartz, the couple’s attorney, told CNN he expected charges to be forthcoming earlier on Tuesday.
On July 16, Gardner’s office posted a statement on Twitter on her behalf.
In a July 14 tweet by the Circuit Attorney’s office, Gardner does not specifically mention what case she’s referring to in her statement or expand on how the governor or President Trump allegedly went after her:
“Today, both the Governor and Donald Trump came after me for doing my job and investigating a case. While they continue to play politics with the handling of this matter, spreading misinformation and distorting the truth, I refuse to do so. As I always do, I am reviewing all available facts and the law and will apply them equally, regardless of the people involved.”
Gardner previously told CNN in a statement that she was alarmed by the events involving the McCloskeys and her office is investigating.
“Make no mistake: we will not tolerate the use of force against those exercising their First Amendment rights, and will use the full power of Missouri law to hold people accountable,” she said earlier this month, according to CNN.
Gardner has fired back at Hawley, Gov. Parson and President Trump, telling the Washington Post she has received death threats and racial abuse as a result of the publicity the story about the McCloskeys has gotten.
Gardner called the threats a “modern day night ride” and added that for “the president to participate in it, in the larger context of racism and cronyism, is scary.”
Gardner is up for re-election and recently had a heated debate with her opponent, Mary Pat Carl, who was the city’s lead homicide attorney and prosecutor for 15 years. During the debate with Carl, Gardner said:
“I’ll tell you who won’t stop me from reforming [the] system is police union chief Jeff Roorda; doesn’t matter. The Trump wannabe Missouri attorney general, along with others that continue to tell lies and divisive rhetoric.”Carl said the circuit attorney’s office is dysfunctional and nobody wants to stay:
“We’re down to 17 trial attorneys and cases are being handed off from one attorney to another. That’s not stability and cases are being dismissed because nobody is there to try them.”
On Friday, attorney Alan Dershowitz again defended himself from wild sex abuse accusations after his name appeared in a pile of unsealed documents linked to an already settled defamation case involving Ghislaine Maxwell.
The Harvard Law professor was accused of having sex with then-minor “Jane Doe #3,” identified in court documents as Virginia Roberts Giuffre, and of witnessing Jeffrey Epstein and others sexually abusing girls and young women.
The claims, that were lodged in a 2014 court filing, popped up again in over 600 pages that were unsealed Thursday night in Giuffre’s 2015 defamation case against Maxwell.
Dershowitz argues that the document dump exonerates him. I never heard of the “Those documents showing I’m guilty exonerate me” defense.
“I demanded release of all documents because they contain emails and manuscripts proving in Giuffre’s own words that she never met me,” Dershowitz said in a tweet Friday morning. “I knew they would repeat her false accusations against me, Al and Tipper Gore and others, which her own lawyers admit are ‘wrong’.”
He added, “There are no new accusations against me in the documents I got unsealed. All her accusations were made in suits she filed years ago. They were false then and now, as shown by her emails and manuscript that prove I never met her.”
In 2016, former attorneys for Giuffre beforehand said it was a “mistake” to have accused Dershowitz of sexual misconduct.
In 2008, Dershowitz helped Epstein draft a non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors after which the convicted pedophile was jailed for 13 months on state prostitution charges. That agreement also gave immunity to Dershowitz immunity.
Robert Mueller was the FBI Director in 2008 when feds accepted the agreement.
The renowned attorney, who’s now part of President Trump’s legal team, has fiercely denied Giuffre’s allegations.
Last year, he defended a 1997 op-ed he wrote on a legal argument to lower the age of consent.
Giuffre says she was 15 when she was allegedly recruited by Maxwell as a masseuse for Epstein, who then turned her into his “sex slave” from 1999 to 2002, forcing her to have sex with Epstein’s prominent friends and associates.
The document dump Thursday included a deposition from Giuffre where she asserted that former President Bill Clinton was a visitor at Epstein’s private Little St. James island, and that she herself traveled on Epstein’s private plane, The Lolita Express, with people like Al Gore and more.
Giuffre also revealed that orgies were held regularly on the plane as well as on the island.
Epstein died by suicide [wink wink] last August while sitting in a Manhattan jail cell awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
In the meantime, Maxwell was arrested on July 2 and charged with procuring victims for Epstein. She is also accused of taking part in some of the sexual abuse, but we reported Friday that court documents show Maxwell was having constant orgies with young girls.
