Tangle - Republicans launch Biden impeachment inquiry.

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

The Biden impeachment inquiry. On Tuesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy opened a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, pushing forward GOP efforts to find evidence of wrongdoing as the 2024 presidential election season kicks into gear.You can read today's podcast here, today’s Under the Radar story here, and today’s “Have a nice day” story here. You can also check out our latest YouTube video here.Today’s clickables: Quick hits (1:25), Today’s story (3:29), Right’s take (7:01), Left’s take (11:30), Isaac’s take (15:25), Listener question (21:16), Under the Radar (23:35), Numbers (24:28), Have a nice day (25:22)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about President Biden being impeached. Yes, that's right. Republicans have launched an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. We're going to talk about how they got there and share some responses from the left and the right to that news. Before we jump into today's story, a quick reminder that we have a YouTube channel, Tangle News on YouTube. We're promoting it. We're going

to keep promoting it because we're trying to drive some more traffic there. You can find sometimes some interviews like the ones we publish on the podcast, and then also some videos, some 15-minute videos where I'm breaking down a topic similar to how we do in the podcast or the newsletter, but it's often content that we're not covering in the podcast or the newsletter. So I very much encourage you to go check it out. And with that little promo out of the way, we're going to kick things off with some quick hits. First up, the consumer price index rose 3.7% from a year ago, above expectations of 3.6%, and driven mostly by a jump in gas prices.

Number two, authorities have captured Danilo Cavalcante in Pennsylvania. The convicted murderer escaped from prison and evaded a manhunt for over two weeks. escaped from prison and evaded a manhunt for over two weeks. Number three, an estimated 5,300 people have reportedly died in Libya, with thousands more missing after floods that overwhelmed dams. Number four, five former police officers in Memphis, Tennessee were indicted on federal civil rights charges over the January death of Tyree Nichols. And number five, Vladimir Putin said Russia will help North Korea launch satellites. And Kim Jong-un said Russia had its full backing in their fight against the West. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is going all in.

I am directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. The Speaker launching an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden on his own, without a vote of the full House, something he vowed not to do just a week ago. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is launching a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden. The Republican congressman announced yesterday that he's directing three House committees to open the investigation, further probing the Biden family's foreign business dealings. Under intense pressure from hard right Republicans in the House, Speaker Kevin McCarthy is now launching an impeachment inquiry into President

Biden. McCarthy said just two weeks ago that there would need to be a vote for this, but tonight now saying he's launching it, no vote. Today, Speaker McCarthy was pressed. Where is the key evidence to launch this investigation? Democrats, even some Republicans, have been skeptical there's any clear evidence to take this step. And politically, could it backfire? On Tuesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy opened a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, pushing forward GOP efforts to find evidence of wrongdoing as the 2024 presidential election season kicks into high gear. Republicans have been investigating whether President Biden benefited from overseas business dealings his son Hunter participated in while he was vice president. So far, little evidence has emerged showing the president received any direct benefit from those affairs or that he used his

government authority to help his son. During an investigation into Hunter, Congress obtained an FD-1023 document, which is used by FBI agents to record unverified accounts from anonymous whistleblowers. In that document, a confidential FBI source alleged President Biden received payments from Ukrainian energy firm Burisma during his tenure as vice president. The source details secondhand allegations that Burisma's CEO and founder, Mikhail Zlochevsky, thought having Hunter on this board would insulate the company from investigation, and that Zlochevsky, thought having Hunter on this board would insulate the company from investigation, and that Zlochevsky sent millions of dollars to Hunter and then-Vice President Joe Biden. Republicans have also cited President Biden's own words, claiming he lied to the public

about his involvement with Hunter's business dealings. On the campaign trail, Biden in his campaign denied his son ever made any money from China or that Biden ever met any of Hunter's business associates in Ukraine. Both of those claims were false, according to sworn testimony from Hunter Biden and one of his business partners, Devin Archer. A formal impeachment inquiry will give the House more tools to investigate Biden, including enforcement of subpoenas and an increased likelihood of access to grand jury materials. McCarthy alleges Republicans have uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden's conduct. Taken together, these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption. White House spokesman Ian Sams

called the inquiry extreme politics at its worst and said Republicans have turned up no evidence of wrongdoing. McCarthy had previously promised that he would hold a full House vote to establish any formal impeachment inquiry, but instead pushed forward without one, a sign that he may not have the votes. Some GOP lawmakers have been critical of a vote, arguing that it would needlessly divide the party. In 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opened an impeachment probe into President Donald Trump without a vote, a move that was criticized by many Republicans. Later, she held a vote on public portions of the impeachment inquiry, which passed almost entirely on party lines. Nancy Pelosi changed the rules of the House, McCarthy said. We're just following through. I warned her not to do it that way in the process, and that's what she did,

so that's what we do. Meanwhile, there are early signs that McCarthy's approval of the inquiry may not satiate some more conservative members of his party who negotiated a stipulation when initially supporting McCarthy as Speaker that allows any one member to call for a snap vote to remove him from the post. Representative Matt Gaetz, the Republican from Florida, spoke shortly after the inquiry was announced, once again threatening to remove McCarthy for a spending agreement made with President Biden. I rise today to serve notice, Mr. Speaker, that you are out of compliance with the agreement that allowed you to assume this role, Gates said. The path forward for the House

of Representatives is to either bring you into total immediate compliance or remove you. Today, we're going to take a look at some reactions from the right and the left to the impeachment inquiry, and then my take. First up, we'll start with what the right is saying. Many on the right are convinced Biden has committed impeachable offenses, though they are divided on whether an official inquiry is wise, and some concede the evidence is still thin. Some argue that the inquiry is the right move, and if done properly, could be a great way to uncover Biden's corruption. Others suggest that Biden's actions do not rise to an impeachable offense,

and this move will backfire politically. The New York Post editorial board said opening an impeachment inquiry is a no-brainer. In eight months, the House GOP probes have proven that Joe was in close cahoots with Hunter's enterprises. He broke bread with Hunter's clients, jumped on calls with them, even wrote at least one college recommendation, the board said. And when Hunter's Burisma paymasters demanded rescue from a Ukrainian corruption investigation, Joe went to Ukraine and blackmailed the government to fire that prosecutor, threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid, even though it now seems the rest of the Obama administration still had him down as a good guy. Yes, details need to be pinned down and all that. Republicans shouldn't rush to actual impeachment without a full investigation,

even though Democrats did rush to impeach President Donald Trump over his Ukraine call threatening to delay an aid payment. First, the American public needs to know what's in the thousands of pseudonym emails Joe was then sending, as well as exactly where all the millions funneled through Hunter's dozens of shell companies came from and went to. Did Joe benefit directly, or was it just the rest of his family, the board asked. Find out exactly why U.S. attorney David Weiss meekly let the statute of limitations pass when it came to prosecuting

Hunter's worst apparent crimes, and how he came this close to granting the first son immunity from all future prosecution following from his investigations. In the Wall Street Journal, William McGurn said the inquiry is justified, especially if it is done right. Normally, Republicans might defer to law enforcement, but a politicized Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation have squandered the public's trust, McGurn said. It may turn out that Joe Biden committed no crime, but even if he never received a nickel from his son's businesses, his cooperation in Hunter's selling of the Biden brand was corrupt. Ditto for President Biden's Justice Department, which repeatedly sabotaged the federal investigation into Hunter. If done judiciously, an impeachment inquiry would be a roadblock from the way Nancy Pelosi stacked every procedural deck and cut every congressional corner to get Mr. Trump.

Mrs. Pelosi announced the first Trump impeachment inquiry all by herself, holding a vote after it was already underway, and then proceeded with closed-door testimony and limits on defense witnesses. In the second impeachment, she rushed a vote on impeachment without hearings or an opportunity for the president to present a defense. Speaker McCarthy has signaled that things will be different this time around, McGurn wrote. An actual impeachment will then depend on persuading the full House that the evidence supports it. Given Mr. McCarthy's slim majority, that might be a hard sell to nervous GOP moderates, especially those in districts Mr. Biden carried in 2020. In the Washington Examiner, Quinn Hillier said it would be monumentally stupid for the House Republicans to rush an impeachment inquiry into Biden. To be clear, the mistake would be of both

substance and politics. The former ought to be more important, but it is the latter consideration that should convince most Republican politicians not to slake their political bloodlust so quickly in this way, Hillier wrote. House Republicans and some Senate Republicans already are doing a good job in their legitimate oversight capacity of exposing the Biden family's ethical problems. They need no impeachment inquiry to keep doing so. They simultaneously make the political error of looking over-eager for a political scalp rather than reluctantly carrying out a sobering and solemn task for which there is no other alternative to serve the public wheel. To put it plainly, the public is sick of and disgusted with the politicized death matches. What most of the public sees as tit-for-tat impeachments is exactly what the majorities

loathe about today's politics. The public has no problem with exposing graft or withholding the other side's feet to the fire, but to threaten to kick a president from office is to threaten massive political upheaval of a sort that should be reserved for only rare and serious offenses. Further, the political reality is that the side that threatens impeachment almost never gains politically from its efforts and often loses big time. All right, that is it for the rightist saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left is unified in their opposition to the impeachment inquiry and very critical of McCarthy's motives. Some say he's being held hostage by the extreme wing of his party. Others say this impeachment inquiry does not meet the standard of past impeachments. In the Daily Beast, Eleanor Cliff said the impeachment inquiry shows McCarthy is a hostage in his own house. The speaker is living up to his last name, reviving a 21st century

McCarthyism with lots of ominous-sounding allegations about bank records and shell corporations delivered with a somber tone, but without any evidence to back up the alarming words, Cliff said. He looks California cool under fire, but launching an impeachment inquiry is a desperation measure to keep the hostage takers in his own caucus from taking away his power. Speaker Kevin McCarthy made his deal with the devil when he ceded sufficient clout to the rightists of the right-wing crazies to gain their vote after 15 humiliating ballots. That bill comes due now, as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican from Georgia, the queen of the extremists, puts down her marker. She would not vote to fund the government without an impeachment

inquiry into President Joe Biden, Cliff notes. McCarthy's job is to muster majorities for spending bills that will keep the government open beyond the September 30th deadline. He has such a narrow margin that he can't lose more than three or four votes, and MTG speaks for at least a dozen hardliners. Now, he has no choice but to do her bidding if he wants to keep his job. In Newsweek, David Farris mocked the pointless impeachment probe. Lacking support for an impeachment from his own caucus, McCarthy won't even hold a vote of the full House of Representatives before plowing ahead with what will be a doomed quest that will nevertheless further degrade the legitimacy of our political institutions. There are times

when you almost feel sorry for McCarthy. The erstwhile fiscal conservative young gun who went to D.C. to slash entitlements and make rich people richer has now somehow become the leader of a group of wild-eyed radicals who are so far down the rabbit hole of conspiracy and whataboutism that they think they're going to impeach President Biden. As for President Biden's alleged high crimes and misdemeanors, Republicans will surely get back to you at some point about that. Something, something, mumble, mumble, barisma china, laptop, cocaine. It doesn't need to make any sense because this isn't about Joe Biden or Hunter Biden. It's about former President Donald Trump. Democrats impeached him twice,

and deservedly so. According to the rules of contemporary Republican politics, that means the next Democratic president must be impeached, whether he deserves it or not. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported

across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. In the Washington Post, Philip Bump argued that Nixon, Clinton, and Trump all faced hard evidence of serious wrongdoing, but Biden does not. There remains no concrete evidence that Joe Biden was engaged in any illegal activity, particularly while serving as president. For the most part,

the Republican effort focuses on Hunter Biden and his business activity, Bump wrote. Comer and Jordan have dug deep into Hunter Biden's background, bank accounts, and communications, and have presented an argument that Hunter Biden leveraged his last name to build out his consulting business. But the House Republicans' probes have uncovered more refutations than evidence of the idea that the president was involved in his son's business activities. We are asked to believe that Archer's testimony that Joe Biden occasionally was put on speakerphone for non-business-related conversations during meetings is more incriminating than Archer's sworn denial that Biden was at all involved in Hunter Biden's business or that he applied any of his power to the benefit of Hunter's business partners, Bump said. We're also asked to believe the attestations of Comer and Jordan,

both of whom have obviously misrepresented what they've learned in interviews. But this is the point. The inquiry would maybe gin up the evidence on which impeachment could be predicated instead of clarifying existing allegations Republicans are trying to generate some. All right, that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So I think Kevin McCarthy is out over his skis. Since impeachments are inherently political, there is good reason to reference political history here. However different their misconduct, Nixon and Clinton both faced substantial evidence that prompted impeachment inquiries. It's hard to argue in retrospect that either was unjustified.

Trump's first impeachment had much less evidentiary backing than anything that had come before him. The inquiry was prompted by a single whistleblower complaint, supported by a few news articles that suggested Trump was pressuring Ukraine's president to investigate Biden while dangling U.S. military support. As I said in response to a reader question recently, the legitimacy of Trump's first impeachment inquiry becomes even more tenuous if investigating Biden proves to be a worthy endeavor. As McCarthy is now threatening to do, Nancy Pelosi launched that inquiry without a formal House vote. And next to the evidence preceding Nixon and Clinton's impeachment, the evidence against Trump was comparatively thin, though his alleged misconduct was serious. And next to the evidence preceding Trump's impeachment, the evidence of Biden

corruptly leveraging his vice presidency, remember, this is not about anything Biden has done as president, is even thinner. So, once again, we're moving in the wrong direction on evidentiary standards to launch impeachment inquiries. With Trump, we had a recorded phone call and a formal whistleblower complaint from a known whistleblower who worked in the American government. Trump's own words and correspondences between his administration and Ukraine's government, combined with a senior budget official's instruction to the Pentagon to withhold aid to Ukraine, painted a pretty full picture to justify an impeachment inquiry. Republicans don't have any of that. They have one form detailing an uncorroborated claim from an anonymous source

that past investigators didn't seem to find particularly reliable. Even in conservative media, there has not been any blockbuster story proving that President Biden corruptly benefited or aided in his son's dealings. And to be clear, this is not some partisan take on this. Republicans themselves concede they are still on the hunt for evidence. As Representative Nancy Mays said, the inquiry would give us another tool in the toolbox specifically to look at Joe Biden's bank records. Everyone's screaming about the evidence. Where's the evidence? The bank records hold all of the evidence. In other words, we don't have evidence, but launching an impeachment inquiry might help us find some. That is not how these

things are supposed to work. If anything, I think a Biden impeachment inquiry is a lot more analogous to the FBI investigation of Trump's ties to Russia. That investigation was predicated on a bunch of hearsay and sketchy, uncorroborated claims from foreign sources, and we know how that turned out. As I said about Trump at the time, he paid the price for bringing on sleazy political operatives like Paul Manafort, who were known entities in whom he should have never had running his campaign. In an even closer parallel to Biden, he also paid the price for allowing his children to freelance as campaign managers, and they used that opportunity to take shady meetings with shady Russian lawyers offering dirt on his political opponents and doing all kinds of things to get noticed by the FBI.

In essence, he danced on the line and he got burned. Biden is now paying a similar price for his son's shady business dealings that he has never done enough to stop and has repeatedly lied about to the American public. The idea that he and Hunter never spoke about business was always farcical, that Hunter didn't get money from China, that Biden was never meeting with his business partners was a little more believable but always suspicious, and now we know those were lies too. Finally, the most worrisome aspect of this story is that the investigation into his son looks like it was sent astray by a Justice Department being led by officials that Biden appointed. That is a story

about something that happened while Biden was president, and there is far more evidence for it than any allegations Biden took cash and influenced American policy to help his son. Do I think Biden acted corruptly as vice president and this impeachment inquiry will uncover a massive scandal? Not especially. My reaction is probably closer to John Fetterman's, who made a bunch of ghost noises and pretended to be terrified when he was informed of the impeachment inquiry. McCarthy doesn't even have the votes for this inquiry among Republicans, and even the ones who support the inquiry don't seem particularly gung-ho about the evidence they found in the

multiple investigations they have already launched. The appearance of corruption might make drawing this out with an impeachment worth it for Republicans, politically, but I don't think they are on the verge of breaking a new political scandal. The New York Post editorial board, under what the right is saying, made the best case for the inquiry that I saw, which is that there's enough circumstantial evidence and small details floating around that a full-throttle investigation to link them together is warranted. But even the Post concedes that the details need to be pinned down, while almost all of the conduct the board references is about things Biden did as vice president. To me, the biggest scandals of the

Biden administration so far are the story we covered yesterday about social media censorship and the Justice Department's handling of the Hunter Biden investigation. I think if McCarthy were not being pressured by his right flank, he would have waited for much more evidence before launching this inquiry. My hope is that the coming investigation is at least conducted above board, soberly and responsibly. There is an ocean between an impeachment inquiry and an actual impeachment, and Republicans would be wise, politically and otherwise, to investigate Biden thoroughly before trying to actually impeach him. For that, they will certainly need a lot more evidence than they have now. In the meantime,

it appears a new dam in our partisan trench warfare has been broken, and it's likely to get a lot messier from here. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Chuck in Austin, Texas. Chuck said, I heard from two sources on TV who reported that appointing David Weiss as special counsel was illegal because such a person could not be involved with the subject. I didn't see such a comment in Tangle's coverage. What do you think? Great question, Chuck. So we reference criticisms and concerns about Weiss's role from both the left and the right in that piece, and I

talked about how I shared those concerns in my take. One thing we didn't discuss, however, was section 600.3 in the Code of Federal Regulations. Some right-leaning pundits, like Charlie Kirk, did mention it, claiming that this section of the federal regulations makes Weiss's appointment illegal. Accordingly, quite a few of our readers wrote in asking about this claim. And the reason we didn't include it in our coverage is that the answer is a confusing not really. Yes, the text of that section defines the qualifications of the special counsel, stating specifically that, quote, the special counsel shall be selected from outside the United States government. And yes, in that regard, Weiss's appointment is a violation of the code. However, that's the Code of Federal Regulations, which is a non-binding compilation of rules and regulations issued by federal agencies and executive departments. They're regulations, not laws, like the U.S. Code of Law, and thus

ignoring them is not illegal. Not only that, but this has been done before, including by Republicans. In 2003, Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed as special counsel by President George W. Bush's acting attorney general, James Comey. When conservative pundit William McGurn referenced these federal regulations in his opinion piece we cited in today's main story, he said, quote, the elevation of Mr. Weiss to special counsel has persuaded many that the fix is in, given that justice guidelines say a special counsel should come from the outside. He describes the Code of Federal Regulations as guidelines, and I think this is more accurate than calling them laws, which have punitive force behind them.

Attorneys general have the right not to abide by them when making their appointments, and while it wasn't a good look to ignore this regulation, there is a real distinction between ignoring a regulation and breaking the law. All right, that is it for Your Questions Answered, which brings us to our Under the Radar section. President Biden has simultaneously called himself the most pro-union president in history and the most effective environmental champion to ever sit in the White House. Now, those two claims are colliding as United Auto Workers are threatening to strike. Those workers are concerned in part by a push from the Biden White House to transition the auto industry to clean energy technologies. Many workers fear more electric cars will mean

fewer jobs and lower pay. United Auto Workers has withheld an endorsement of Biden's re-election over these concerns. And now, a potential strike could destabilize the car industry, deliver a blow to economies in the Midwest, and even boost inflation as the price of cars is likely to go up if a strike is prolonged. The Washington Post has the story, and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The year U.S. Senator William Blount of Tennessee was impeached, making him the first federal official to be impeached in U.S. history was 1797. Blount was accused of conspiring to assist Britain in capturing Spanish territory. The year President Andrew Johnson was impeached, making him the first U.S. president to

be impeached, was 1868. Johnson was accused of violating the Tenure of Office Act. The number of times the House has impeached a federal official, including three presidents, one cabinet secretary, and one senator, is 21. The number of individuals, all federal judges, who have been impeached by the House and convicted and removed from office by the Senate is eight. The number of presidential impeachment proceedings conducted by the House in the first two centuries of the U.S. government is two. The number of presidential impeachment proceedings conducted by the House in the past 25 years is three. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day story. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has created a 14-foot long robot hoping to use AI to help us find water on other planets. The Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor, or EELS, is being trained so it can

work autonomously while on the moon or Mars, able to determine the environment it is in and make decisions based on its surroundings. You're talking about a snake robot that can do surface traversal on ice, go through holes and swim underwater. One robot can conquer all three worlds, JPL robotics technologist Rohan Thakur said. No one has done that before. Rovers can have a hard time with bumpy surfaces and steep terrain. And eels, which is set to be deployed in a few years, will be able to slip into areas easier. The most interesting science is sometimes in the places that are difficult to reach,

said Matt Robinson, EELS project manager. The Los Angeles Times has the story, and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to readtangler. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to readtangle.com and consider becoming a member. And don't forget to go check out our YouTube channel. You can find us by searching Tangle News on YouTube. We'll be right back here at same time tomorrow.

Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by John Long. Peace. For more on Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can

you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.