Opinion
By Jeff Childers
04-14-23
Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! Your week-ending roundup includes: local wins add up; the New York Times leads the FBI to the Minecraft Papers leaker, supposedly; State Department issues highest-level travel advisory against 14 countries; Alvin Bragg loses his first Trump-related lawsuit; Jamie Foxx has a sudden stroke; KISS rocker collapses during concert; GOP Senators scheme to replace jab injured leader McConnell; Dems call for DiFi to resign and she offers her judiciary seat; and a prominent Florida county becomes a medical freedom sanctuary.
🗞 *THE C&C ARMY POST* 🗞
🪖 Normally I don’t dish on pending cases, but this small win is such a great example I can’t help myself. Yesterday we successfully pushed the local City of Gainesville to stop playing “hide and seek” with a Solar Power purchase contract where they were trying to obscure all the pricing details — even from an official State of Florida committee — behind a goofy “trade secrets” argument. The case is a great example of how anyone can do it — and we didn’t even need to file our draft lawsuit.
I often look back on my legal career and marvel at the unexpected path it’s taken. I was (am) a business litigation specialist, all cases about money — critically important to my clients — but which didn’t have much significance beyond the involved parties. For folks who weren’t around back then, my first lawsuit ever against a municipal government was filed against the City of Gainesville’s “vaccinate or terminate” policy, which I won in August 2021, securing the first broad injunction against a vaccine mandate in the country.
In another ongoing lawsuit, we are representing over 70 small landlords who are battling a bonkers climate-change ordinance. We’ve already forced the City to heavily revise the ordinance and tone down its penalties. The fight isn’t over but we are making solid progress.
These kinds of cases aren’t as glamorous or urgent as the headline-grabbing lawsuits against pharma behemoths or the federal government, but in some ways they are even more important. Every win is another block added to the fortress of freedom. For instance, when I won the country’s first mask mandate victory in April 2021 — after a successful emergency appeal — it encouraged loads of other litigators to start joining the fight; because it showed it was POSSIBLE to win covid cases at a time when everyone thought it was impossible.
My goal is to train up a thousand lawyers better and smarter than I am.
With your stalwart help — you, the C&C Army — we are continuing to push back against all the creeping authoritarianism and hopefully teaching other lawyers that it’s not only very possible but if a newbie like me can do it, any decent lawyer can.
I should also thank Citizens Defending Freedom, the terrific conservative activist group based in solid-red Polk County, Florida, with whom I’ve worked closely over the last two years and which has been quietly toiling in over 30 counties now to reproduce a successful “local, local, local” strategy. For example, in one of the lawsuits that I’m managing for CDF, in Nueces County, Texas, our legal effort to remove a literal gang member and Soros funded District Attorney is continuing to make solid progress:
I’d love to say more about that case, which has some WILD facts, but I need to be careful not to prejudice the litigation.
It’s a lot of small, incremental wins that are — I hope — helping add up to something that will ultimately be permanent change. And to think, none of this would’ve ever happened absent the overreach of the pandemic. And none of it would’ve happened without you guys.
And we’re only getting started.
🗞💬 *WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 💬🗞
🔥 Yesterday evening, the Wall Street Journal ran an utterly fabulous monstrosity of a story headlined, “Air Guardsman Arrested in Connection With Leaked Documents.”
In a story so moronic that it is painful to have to write about it (they’re practically daring me to use the ‘r’ word, and I’ll do it, just try me), the 100% government-controlled, perfectly useless, heinously criminal corporate media was made out to be the hero of the evolving narrative. As I type this, I can feel the IQ points storming out of my cranium in a huff, bags hastily packed, irate at just being asked to consider this ridiculous fairy tale sufficiently credible to even make fun of it. It’s the kind of story I would usually blithely ignore, except that a hastily-assembled taradiddle like this one evidences a historic, narrative-wrecking goof up of Bidenic proportions.
As Tennyson used to say about the poor doomed soldiers of the Light Brigade, not though the soldier knew, someone, somewhere, had blundered.
And how.
According to the breathless media reports, in the speediest investigation in history, by crack investigative journalists sprinting past law enforcement, diligent New York Times sleuths supposedly nabbed the Minecraft Papers leaker — who allegedly had physical access to top-secret, print-only documents from five different intelligence agencies — who was promptly taken down in a massive FBI raid.
The devilish traitor — definitely NOT a whistleblower exposing official White House lies, no, never, this is NOT like the Pentagon Papers at all, how dare you, do you love Putin or something? — is supposed to be a 21-year-old part-time member of the Air National Guard and video game aficionado.
Give me a break. The story is utterly preposterous and the Journal knows it. Although it couldn’t risk biting the withered, decaying hand that feeds it tasty intelligence snacks, the Journal still couldn’t quite help expressing some thinly-veiled skepticism:
It wasn’t immediately clear why somebody with his job title—cyber transport systems journeyman—would have access to the types of files that have surfaced.
You don’t say! I can’t wait to hear the convoluted cock and bull they come up with to explain how videogamer Jack Texiera, 21, outwitted the top intelligence agencies in the country. This should be good.
The Journal reported with a straight face that Joe Biden and President Zelenskyy both said the leaks were completely harmless and didn’t give away anything worth noting. The leaked files “have no operational significance,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, said in an interview. “They have no impact on the front line or the planning of the General Staff.” The Former Vice President, when asked for an update on the leak investigation Thursday during a trip to Dublin, said he was concerned that the leak happened, but “there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that’s of great consequence.”
Well then, what’s all the hoopla about?
Meanwhile, the alphabet networks (CNN, MSNBC, etc) piled on Mr. Texiera, breathlessly reporting the young Massachusetts man is a racist, sexist, homophobe with a gun fetish and probably a Trump supporter. In other words, he’s a terrifically bad person. Virtue signal fail. So obviously Mr. Texiera can’t be a whistleblower or anything good like that.
Coincidentally, this was also, of course, the official, government-approved narrative:
Even more insanely, the New York Times took credit for finding Texiera. It ran a story yesterday headlined, “Inside the Hunt for the Discord Leaker, and Twitter Chaos Updates.” The sub-headlined bragged, “How Times journalists tracked down the alleged leaker of military intelligence.”
The Times apparently even helped with the arrest, “gathering” around arresting FBI agents:
As reporters from The New York Times gathered near the house on Thursday afternoon, about a half-dozen F.B.I. agents pushed into the home of Airman Teixeira’s mother in North Dighton, with a twin-engine government surveillance plane keeping watch overhead.
Haha, the Times even got there BEFORE the FBI:
When Times reporters approached the house again, the truck was parked in the driveway. Airman Teixeira’s mother and his stepfather were standing in the driveway. When asked if Airman Teixeira was there and willing to speak, his stepfather, Thomas P. Dufault, said: “He needs to get an attorney if things are flowing the way they are going right now. The feds will be around soon, I’m sure.”
Mr. Dufault knows which way the wind is blowing these days. The Times, like the alphabet networks and the Pentagon, stressed that Texiera is DEFINITELY NOT A WHISTLEBLOWER:
[A]ccording to people who knew him online, Airman Teixeira was no whistle-blower. Unlike previous huge leaks of information, from the Pentagon Papers to WikiLeaks to Edward Snowden’s disclosures, outrage about wrongdoing or government policies does not appear to have been a factor.
I hardly know where to start with this ridiculous buffoonery. We are meant to believe that a junior Air National Guardsman somehow collected top-secret documents from multiple highest-level intelligence sources and then plunked them onto his Minecraft video game server for no reason whatsoever. And then somehow the New York Times, which still can’t even find Antifa or ActBlue, somehow traced the leak all the way back to Texiera before the FBI, CIA, DoD, NSA, and everyone else who was looking for him.
Still — all of of this crack reporting blindly ignores the plain fact that Texiera — if he really was the leaker, and regardless of how virtuous he is or isn’t — is actually a hero who apparently single-handedly uncovered the U.S. government’s illegal secret proxy war and top officials’ countless lies to Congress and the American people.
Can someone remind me how you spell “patsy?”
🔥 It’s not just me. Last night, Tucker Carlson also got it, he found the real story in all the noise. Tucker broadcast his monologue about the actual significance of this story: the constant lying and the illegal, unauthorized proxy war.
Fox’s most popular commenter correctly identified that the U.S. isn’t just helping out an underdog democratic government fight off an evil invader. This is actually World War III:
“The slides show that this is not Ukraine’s war. It’s our war. The United States is a direct combatant in a war against Russia. As we speak, American soldiers are fighting Russian soldiers. So this is not a regional conflict in Eastern Europe. This is a hot war between the two primary nuclear superpowers on Earth.”
Tucker also noted that the government’s internal records say the reverse opposite of the lies the U.S. government and its credulous cronies in the corporate media have been peddling for 14 months:
“The second thing we learned from these slides is that despite direct U.S. involvement, Ukraine is in fact losing the war. Seven Ukrainians are being killed for every Russian. Ukrainian air defenses have been utterly degraded. Ukraine is losing.”
Don’t listen to Tucker, he’s a Putin-lover!
Tucker also accurately concluded that, absent Congressional approval, the proxy war is radioactive-level illegal: “But Lloyd Austin has not been arrested for committing that crime,” Tucker said. “Instead, the only man who has been taken into custody or likely ever will be, is a 21 year old Massachusetts air national guardsmen.”
Here’s Tucker’s 10-minute monologue:
🔥 Things are going great! This week, the U.S. State Department issued a “level 4 do not travel” advisory for 14 countries, most of which won’t surprise you, but which just appeared on the banned list:
A “Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory is the highest-level warning issued by the U.S. Department of State for adventure seekers contemplating a visit to exotic countries and regions. The advisory means the destination is a veritable hotbed of danger, teeming with unsavory elements, simmering conflict, rampant crime, insidious diseases, and cataclysmic natural elements.
In other words, under a Level 4 advisory, the U.S. government basically says, don’t even THINK about going there, and if you do, you’re on your own. It’s a tourism death-sentence. Think of it like another layer of sanctions.
🔥 Plump Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is off to a bad start. Just The News ran a story yesterday headlined, “Judge Rejects DA Bragg’s Emergency Restraining Order Against Rep. Jordan Same Day It Was Filed.”
Earlier this week, Bragg angrily sued Jim Jordan, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, to stop him and other Republican lawmakers from “impeding” the district attorney’s criminal case against former President Donald Trump. Bragg complained the House probe of his case was a “brazen and unconstitutional attack.”
But the judge was unimpressed. “The Court declines to enter the proposed Temporary Restraining Order and Order to Show Cause,” U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil wrote Tuesday — the same day Bragg filed his request.
Just The News reported that a modest expenditure of federally regulated funds — $5,000, to be exact — by Bragg’s office could complicate his efforts to keep federal lawmakers from nosing around, thanks to court rulings that date to the 1970s Pentagon Papers leak. Ironic, huh?
“Our review of the Office’s records reflect that, of the federal forfeiture money that the Office helped collect, approximately $5,000 was spent on expenses incurred relating to the investigation of Donald J. Trump or the Trump Organization,” Bragg wrote Jordan in a testy letter dated March 31st.
For his part, Representative Jordan told reporters he has many legitimate legislative reasons to probe Bragg’s orifice, I mean office, including drafting legislation precluding local prosecutors like Bragg from weaponizing investigations against sitting or former presidents.
Legal experts like Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said the Trump indictment could even trigger Congress’ oversight of foreign relations, since prominent leaders from El Salvador to Mexico have publicly stated Bragg’s pursuit of a political enemy is a setback to worldwide democracy.
Sorry Alvin. Maybe next time.
💉 Earlier this week, A-List Hollywood actor “Jamie Foxx [was] rushed to the hospital after suffering a stroke,” according to the headline of a TMZ story.
Foxx is currently in an Atlanta hospital recovering from his sudden and unexpected stroke. Sources with direct knowledge told TMZ the “beloved actor,” 55, euphemistically suffered a “medical emergency” Tuesday morning and was immediately rushed to the hospital. Thanks to rapid treatment, Foxx is reported to be improving and as of yesterday, even communicating again.
Coincidentally, the Screen Actors’ Guild required actors to be jabbed before working on Hollywood sets during the pandemic.
💉 The UK Standard ran a story yesterday headlined, “Rockers KISS Forced to Halt Concert After Gene Simmons Becomes Unwell on Stage in Brazil.”
So there they were, rocking out in Rio, when heavy-metal maestro Simmons, a spry 73 years young, suddenly and unexpectedly decided to take an impromptu break from his energetic strumming. In a move that whispered “I’m not as young as I used to be,” he gracefully slumped into a conveniently placed chair. But fear not, rock fans. The intrepid rocker bounced back, albeit with a newfound appreciation for the sedentary life, as he continued to shred from his throne of musical respite, albeit much less energetically.
Later, Simmons blamed his sudden fondness for sitting on a pesky case of rainforest humidity-enhanced dehydration. Luckily, the band has a day off to rehydrate and rock on, and they say they intend to keep the tour alive and kicking (or, in Simmons’ case, sitting).
💉 The Spectator ran an alarming story yesterday headlined, “Sources: GOP Senators Preparing for McConnell Retirement.”
It’s been weeks since McConnell suddenly and unexpectedly lost his balance and had a nasty tumble down the stairs at the Waldorf-Astoria during a swanky GOP fundraiser. He has not been back to work since.
The Spectator reported multiple sources confirming that GOP heavyweight Senators John Barrasso (Wyoming), John Cornyn (Texas), and John Thune (South Dakota) are actively canvassing fellow Republican senators to prepare for an expected leadership vote — a vote that would occur right after an announcement that McConnell will be retiring from his duties as leader, and presumably the Senate itself.
The Spectator added an update last yesterday afternoon, reporting that two hours after the original report, Senator McConnell feistily tweeted that he was “looking forward to returning to the Senate on Monday.” The tweet is an obvious play to squash Republican efforts to replace the controversial, disabled Senate Leader.
💉 Fox News ran a story Tuesday headlined, “Democrat Says Sen. Dianne Feinstein Must Resign, Says Absences Wouldn’t Be Allowed ‘In Any Other Job’.”
Feinstein has been out for weeks after getting a sudden and unexpected case of shingles. The Senator has missed 58 Senate votes so far, and Democrats are fretting about their ability to confirm any judicial nominations without her.
Representative Ro Khanna (D-Ca.), told reporters that long-serving Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.), 89, should “know when to step aside,” as her extended absence from the judiciary committee has been holding up Joe Biden’s judicial picks. Khanna told “America Reports” yesterday that it’s time for Feinstein to get out:
“I think I was the first member of Congress to do that, and I took some heat from my own party. But here’s the reality. I have a lot of respect for Sen. Feinstein. She’s unable to fulfill her duties. And I guess I don’t know any other job where if you’re unable to fulfill your duties, you can continue to have the position. So, I think she should do the dignified thing. I respect her years of public service and she should know when it’s time to step aside.”
Like McConnell, Feinstein quickly responded to the calls for her to quit the Senate, issuing a statement promising to be back real soon, and offering to “temporarily” resign from the Judiciary Committee:
To replace Feinstein on the judiciary committee, even temporarily, Democrats will need to pass a resolution requiring bipartisan support, because it will take 60 votes. Hopefully, Republicans would oppose the measure. Hopefully.
But at least Dianne didn’t get covid. That’s the important thing.
The Babylon Bee’s take:
💉 Take a moment to give a ‘like’ to this recent YouTube trailer for an independent vaccine-injury documentary (5 mins):
🔥 The Collier News-Press ran a story Tuesday headlined, “Collier Leaders Pass ‘Health Freedom’ Ordinance to Protect Individual Liberties.”
The best way to describe the new Collier County, Florida, resolution, titled the “Health Freedom Bill of Rights,” is that it would make the county a medical freedom sanctuary. It passed 4-1. Collier is a prominent county covering the Naples area of Southwest Florida.
The controversial ordinance rejects health directives from the World Health Organization and “other international bodies,” according to its summary. It adopts several state statutes, including Florida’s Patient Bill of Rights, into local law and allows for code enforcement to enforce the ordinance.
It also gives Collier residents a right to non-discrimination based on their healthcare decisions, informed consent without interference, the right to personalized care, the right to not be refused care, and many others. It expressly rejects vaccine mandates, passports, and masking requirements, and strictly limits the county’s quarantine powers.
By all accounts, the session where the final vote was taken was loud and jam-packed with supporters and opponents. Hysterical liberals cried that protecting patients would wind up killing everybody. Various doctors took the podium dramatically complaining that giving citizens health freedom would jeopardize carefully-orchestrated international public health plans.
The commissioners passed it anyways.
Remember: the way forward is local, local, local. This ordinance’s importance may echo far beyond Collier County, providing a template for other freedom-oriented counties to follow. Terrific progress.
Have a fabulous Friday! I’ll see you guys back here tomorrow morning for your fresh, hot refill of the Weekend Edition.
Join C&C in moving the needle and changing minds. I could use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/-learn-how-to-get-involved-
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© 2022, Jeff Childers, all rights reserved
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida.
