The Daily Signal - Documents Reveal Collusion Between CDC, Big Tech

Episode Date: August 5, 2022

New documents obtained by the America First Legal Foundation have revealed deep collusion between officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its allies in Big Tech to silence dissenting voices. The documents lay bare efforts by government officials to push social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to censor so-called medical misinformation. John Zadrozny, deputy director of investigations at the America First Legal Foundation, joins the show to discuss how deep the collusion goes, and what it all means. We also cover these stories: Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., dies in a car accident. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspends Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren over his refusal to enforce state laws restricting abortion or prohibiting gender-transition treatments such as mastectomies or cross-sex hormones for minors. WNBA player Brittney Griner is sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony after being found guilty of attempting to smuggle illegal narcotics into the country. Five ballistic missiles launched during a military exercise around Taiwan by the Chinese military land inside Japan's exclusive economic zone. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, August 5th. I'm Samantha Rank. And I'm Doug Blair. New documents obtained by the America First Legal Foundation have revealed deep collusion between officials at the Centers for Disease Control and their allies in big tech. The documents lay bare efforts by government officials to push companies like Twitter and Facebook to censor so-called medical misinformation. John Zedrosny, Deputy Director of Investigations at the America First Legal Foundation,

joins the show today to discuss how deep that collusion goes. and what it all means. But before we get to Doug's conversation with John Zedrosny, let's hit today's top news. Congresswoman Jackie Wollorski of Indiana was killed Wednesday in a head-on car crash in her congressional district. Wollorski, 58, a Republican who represented Indiana's second congressional district, was traveling near Napani with her district manager, Zachary Potts, 27, who was driving the car and her communications director, Emma Thompson. 28. All of them were killed, as was the driver of the other car. The Elkhart County Sheriff's office said the Congresswoman's vehicle, which was traveling north on Indiana Route 19,

swerved left of center and collided head on with another vehicle traveling south. A woman identified as Edith Schmuger, 56, the other driver was pronounced dead at the scene. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy issued a statement on Rolorski's death, saying this news is absolutely devastating. Jackie was a dear friend, trusted advisor, and the embodiment of integrity who achieved the admiration and respect of all her colleagues in the House. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has suspended a state prosecutor over his refusal to enforce state laws restricting abortion or prohibiting gender treatments such as mastectomies or cross-sex hormones for minors. During a Thursday press conference, DeSantis, a Republican, announced that he

had suspended Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren, effective immediately. Here's some of that announcement via Florida's voice. The Constitution of Florida has vested the veto power in the governor, not an individual state attorneys. And so when you flagrantly violate your oath of office, when you make yourself above the law, you have violated your duty, you have neglected your duty, and you are displaying a lack of competence to be able to reform those duties. And so today we are suspending state attorney Andrew Warren.

affected in media. Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Kronister also spoke at the press conference and admitted his team was having difficulty with Warren via Fox. As your sheriff, I continue to work with my law enforcement counterparts who privately are frustrated with the state attorney, who seems intently focused on empathy for criminals and less interested in pursuing justice for crime victims. DeSantis appointed Hillsborough County Judge Susan Lopez to replace Warren. WNBA player Brittany Greiner has been sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony after a judge found her guilty Thursday on attempting to smuggle illegal narcotics into the country.

The women's basketball player was also fined nearly $16,300. Greiner was arrested in February at a Moscow airport where customs officials found two vape cartridges containing hashish oil. according to the New York Times. Griner said Thursday, my parents taught me two important things. One, take ownership for your responsibilities, and two, work hard for everything that you get. That's why I pleaded guilty to my charges.

President Biden issued a statement calling for Russia to release both Griner and Paul Whelan, another detained American, and to expedite their safe return to the United States. The president said, It's unacceptable, and I call on Russia to release her immediately so she can be with her wife, loved ones, friends, and teammates.

My administration will continue to work tirelessly and pursue every possible avenue to bring Brittany and Paul Whelan home safely as soon as possible. As tensions between Taiwan and China continue to heighten, Japanese defense minister Nobuo Kishi announced Thursday that five Chinese ballistic missiles launched during a military exercise near Taiwan had landed inside Japan's exclusive economic zone. That event was a first. An exclusive economic zone, by the way, such as Japan's, is an area of the ocean where a country has special rights over marine resources. Generally, it is treated as an extension of the country's land territory.

During a press conference, the Japanese Defense Ministry said that the Chinese military missiles landed southwest of Hadeiruma Island near Okinawa and called the incident a grave issue that concerns our country's national security and people's safety. The ministry also added that four of the missiles likely flew over the Taiwanese-Kanaiwanese's. capital of Taipei before landing in Japanese waters. That's all for headlines. Now stay tuned for my conversation with John Zedrosny as we discuss bombshell documents revealing CDC collusion with big tech. As I approached the walkway from around the back of the building, they had taken crow bars to almost all of our windows, two of our doors, and just shattered all of the glass. That's the voice of Susan Campbell, executive director of Blue Ridge

Pregnancy Center. In the early hours after Roe v. Wade was overturned v. Vandals smash windows and spray-painted threatening messages outside the center. I'm Virginia Allen. Next week, we're releasing a documentary about what happened to the Blue Ridge Pregnancy Center and we take a deep dive into the violence and attacks against other pregnancy centers across the country. Stay tuned and make sure you're subscribed to the Daily Signals YouTube channel to watch this documentary and other videos from The Daily Signal. My guest today is John Zedrosny, deputy director of investigations at the America First Legal Foundation. John, welcome to the show.

Hey, Doug. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. Of course. Well, we have to talk about this massive thing that you guys have found out, which is this trove of documents detailing the super cozy relationship between Center for Disease Control officials and big tech over their efforts to censor. or what is called misinformation surrounding COVID-19. So just to start out with, could you give our listeners a broad overview of some of the revelations that these documents revealed?

Absolutely, Doug. So basically, you may recall last year that when she was still White House press secretary from the White House podium in mid-July, Jen Saki, basically admitted to the public that they were working, colluding, I guess you could say, with big tech to make sure that, quote-unquote misinformation was not spread on the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. and we were immediately peaked by this. I think we sent a FOIA request literally the next day to several agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the CDC.

Not surprisingly, they were not tripping over themselves to release those documents because they were damning. We filed a lawsuit this year, and we have since been able to get documents as a result of being in court with the agency. They released a batch to us in July, and we were able to roll out about 286 pages of an production from the agency last week. And what they show, Doug, it is pretty damning. I mean, it basically shows exactly what we thought, you know, file this under horrifying but not surprising. They were in very close coordination with Google, Twitter, and Facebook. For emphasis,

we don't know if other big tech companies were involved yet. This is just what we were able to get our hands on to date. Examples of what the communications showed were very close, frequent coordination between the government and officials at Google, Twitter, and Facebook. Very excited willingness on the part of officials at those three big tech companies to work with them. In other words, it wasn't a government strong-arming companies and them reluctantly going along. It was them saying, we're eager to work with you and help you. There were instances of basically the government told these agencies what to say in terms of vaccine safety. They basically told them what to say and concealed the origins as federal.

The CDC reached out to, I believe it was Facebook and said, oh, no, I'm sorry, it was Twitter, saying, hey, we found these posts. These are misinformation. And then Twitter immediately proceeded to not only pull them down, but then suspend the accounts of some of those users. The interaction, the degree of interaction and the type of interaction, Doug, is pretty gross. And it's a reminder that we're in a very dangerous time. It's not just a question of an abusive government, but it's an abuse of government in cahoots with a large monopolistic tech industry. that has no interest in free speech for the public. That sounds incredibly dangerous. And I think the fact is that it sounds like the government is skirting around First Amendment protections for speech by kind of nudge, nudge, nudge, wink, winking to these big tech companies and having them do the dirty work for them. So it's not the government doing the censorship. It's Twitter doing the censorship or YouTube doing the censorship.

Yeah, Doug, that's a great point. But I would counter that and say the following. There's obviously a debate on the right about the private sector. discretion to do what it chooses as the private industry, as non-governmental. Remember, the First Amendment, the Bill of Rights, all those amendments are designed to curtail government conduct. However, two things, one of which is take the government out of it. In a vacuum, these companies have reached a size and dimension and reality in our modern digital age where they are essentially the, you know, the digital town square, right? There is no real public media forum absent these social

media platforms. And an argument could be made. It's not uniform. It's, there's There's definitely disagreement on the right about this, but an argument can be made that they're essentially at this point quasi-utilities. I mean, imagine a scenario where a phone company was cutting off phone calls of people when they didn't like what they were saying. We would never, we would be aghast at that, and yet somehow this is considered okay. But it's even worse than that, Doug, because basically I think the argument here is that the federal government by interacting with these companies, whether voluntarily or not, has

deputized them as an extension of the government. And so I think the First Amendment argument is very much in play here. You know, they can't say, well, we're private. Maybe, maybe they could have gotten away with that if they were doing this of their own volition. But it's pretty clear they were working hand and glove with federal officials telling them what to say and not say. How long and how extensive do these ties go back? And are there going to be any sort of implications between people like Dr. Fauci and other government officials that were directly responsible for this? Well, that's a great question, Doug.

So for clarity, we have other letters out to other agencies to find out the degree to which they were involved in manipulating these big tech companies and their speech. Troublingly, if you go look at the documents that we've produced, remember, it's only 286 pages. I suspect we've only scratched the surface. Some of those communications do go back to 2020. And so I think some of the people might say, well, gosh, doesn't that mean the Trump administration was doing this? I think the answer is, based on all we saw during the Trump administration, and I was part of it, There were a lot of secretive nefarious actors who were not working in conjunction with the political leadership of the administration and doing what they wanted.

I suspect these ties existed between these officials and these employees of these companies for years. And they were, gosh, only knows what else they were doing behind the scenes, Doug, to undercut the administration while the administration was happening. But it picked up another few notches and speed once we were gone in order to facilitate the Biden administration's rollout of the vaccine. I mean, you know, the horrible part about all this, Doug, is that the Biden administration and the big tech companies, they wouldn't need to do any of this if they had anything resembling credibility on any issue, including the vaccine issue. But the reality is when you're in a position where nobody believes anything you're saying, you have to censor. I mean, at least if you think like the left does. And that's exactly why they're doing what they're doing, instead of having a full and open public debate saying, look, these people who are critical of the safety of the vaccines, they're completely wrong. Here are the data.

We're in the right. Trust us. they can't do that because the data don't support them. And so they've had to engage in this conduct. And I think, again, I really think we've only scratched the surface again. It's only the first 286 pages, and that's just from the CDC. So there's a lot more going on. And Doug, I can break some news for you.

We are issuing a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General, Ms. Grimm, asking her to conduct an investigation of this. We think this is clearly illegal, clearly inappropriate. And with any luck, we'll get a serious response from the IG. we're really hoping that we do. Well, John, that's incredible news. And I guess if you could go a little bit more in depth about what you're hoping to find with that letter, what you're hoping to find with these sort of revelations here.

Yeah. So I think what we're hoping is that the Inspector General's investigation is not only able to bring to light some of the other components of HHS that were involved in this. Again, we only were talking about CDC, which is tactively under HHS. We sent letters to the National Institutes for Health. We sent letters to HHS headquarters and other federal officials and federal agencies. She may be able to pull it all together in her investigation, but also she'll have access to documents that we don't. And with any luck, she'll actually bring to light the full scope of this.

We had to use what's called the Freedom of Information Act to get the documents that we've got. And even then, we had to take this all the way to a federal judge. She doesn't have those constraints. With any luck, she'll actually do her job. We'll see. Now, it sounds like she's obviously not likely to do that unless she's forced to do so. What does it say about this administration that it seems like these revelations have to come out through the work of citizen journalists and organizations like yours instead of them just saying,

look, we have a vested interest in this policy going this one way? What does that say about how this administration is viewing this topic? I mean, I think it shows to me, what it says to me, Doug, is that they view themselves as on the wrong side of the issue where they need to hide from the truth and the, They can't have an open conversation and win a credibility-based conversation with the American public. And I think you could, unfortunately, I think you can apply this to almost every issue area in their purview right now, everything from energy production to national security and so on. I mean, they're too busy throwing, I guess, American parents who attend school board meetings in jail as domestic terrorists

to focus on actual medical safety and integrity. I think what we're going to, I think another lesson too, Doug, if I may, is I think, I think we're probably seeing what happens when we have a federal government that's just way too large. People on the right for years, you know, and to their credit, it's a good argument. It just hasn't really fallen on the ears and hasn't resonated. The small government argument has always been a fiscal one, right? Argument has always been, we spend too much money, we spend too much money. Well, that's all true.

And we may actually be seeing, we may have finally hit the point in the United States where we are starting to see those proverbial chickens come home to roost with high inflation, etc. But it doesn't resonate. And I think it's partly without, you know, getting too much into it. I think it's because most Americans don't deal with anything near those numbers of those, that type of money. And those numbers just kind of glaze over, you know, a trillion hair or a trillion there. But I think the argument that really does resonate with Americans across the country at home

in small communities is this is what happens when you have, when you have a government that's too large and has too much money and has too many employees, it becomes tyrannical. And you need to just rein it in. And the only way to really rein it in, it's not a bunch of old white guys wagging fingers at oversight hearings. It's shrinking federal agency budget saying, look, you're being punished for not doing your jobs. In fact, you're being punished for using money for things that are dangerous unconstitutional and suppressing rights. Right. And I think it's one of the most serious conversations we need to have over the next 10 years, Doug, is have we reached the point where we've seen too much.

We've seen what a big federal government really means for the Republican. It's not good and it needs to be shrunk. Right. Now, John, I mean, that sort of raises an interesting point. We have this information. It sounds like you are taking action specifically with this letter to the IG. But what can conservatives do? We have the proof now. We have the evidence to show that there was collusion between these massive government bodies and big tech. What do we do with that information? That's a great question. That's the million dollar question, right? I think for now, because we don't, you know, Republicans, conservatives don't run the executive branch. There's nothing that can be done there. In theory, Republicans, if they are to win control of Congress and take it seriously and actually sort of push back against the corruption of this administration. They could cut budgets. There could be some oversight. Maybe they could recommend potential civil or criminal action against people who have potentially violated federal law. That's obviously not going to be acted on by this current administration. But you know,

you can you can put a file together and have it sit there and wait for the right time and then say, look, this person should be looked at for civil violations. This person should be looked at for criminal violations. I think this information opens doors for states and even private litigants to possibly file their own litigation? And so, like, you're tempted to say, I am tempted to say, I'm sure you are too. Well, so, John, another lawsuit. It does add up. And having been on the inside of administration, every time you get sued, it takes attorneys and people away from doing X or Y, because they have to deal with a lawsuit. And if they find something, and if it's not a frivolous lawsuit, and they shouldn't be frivolous lawsuits, they should be legitimate lawsuits,

you're going to find a lot. There's going to be a lot to talk about. And there's going to be a lot to answer for. So for now, I think that's kind of the best case scenario. But I would also say that the one thing everyone can do, public, anyone listening here, anyone who cares about this issue or any of these issues, just pay attention to all of this. And then when the time comes, make sure we remember all of this to take action inside the executive branch. An awful lot of people are going to need to be fired. Now, I mean, as we're having this conversation, it seems so odd to me that there's been no, I don't want to say justification because it doesn't really sound like it's justifiable, but like there's nothing coming from the administration to say,

like, yeah, we own up to this. They're almost sort of trying to push back. Has big tech even tried to justify this? Or are they just kind of hoping this blows over? It's to be determined, I haven't really seen anyone on the government side respond to this in any meaningful way. I suspect that private companies, the big tech companies are going to say exactly what you mentioned in the beginning, saying, well, we're private, we can do what we want. Although at the same time, it's interesting because they're in an interesting spot. You know, there are some Republicans, not all, it's not a uniform opinion, but some Republicans have proposed getting rid of Section 230 of the Federal Communications Act, which would strip

the big tech platforms who operate via the Internet with some of their protections. I mean, don't forget the whole justification for Section 230 is immunity from content, right? So they get a lot of benefits by saying, look, we're just kind of the wild. West Forum, we don't police. Well, now they're policing and they're policing a government direction. And it changes the equation. And getting rid of Section 230 could or could be, you know, may or may not be a helpful thing. I actually defer to others on that. But I do think that the private sector is going to say we can do what we want. But then if you dare say, well, we have to change how you're regulated. I'm sure they'll, you know, bristle at that. I don't

expect the federal government to own up to any of this. But the reality is, again, this is just the tip of the iceberg. These people are very comfortable. It's pretty clear too, by the way, there's no concealment in these documents of their conduct. In other words, it's not like we got five emails back and all of this happened by phone. They see no problem with this. And so I don't suspect that they are willing to say we've done anything wrong because they probably don't think they've done anything wrong. I'm sure they'd couch it as we're doing this for the right reasons. Right. But as you know, as well as I do, Doug, the road to hell is in fact paid with good intentions. And so just because you feel like doing something and you think it's a good thing, it's also doesn't mean it's

constitutional. Right, right. I wonder if there was even some success to this. One of the arguments that I've almost heard a couple of different times from people on the right is that these, when you start to push censorship, it becomes much more difficult for you to justify yourself as the person in the right. When, you know, to be super nerdy for a second, the quote from Game of Thrones, if you rip a man's tongue out, you're afraid of what he has to say. It almost sounds like maybe there's this sense of, well, you know, we know we're not in the right here, so we're just going to do it anyway, and that actually creates a backlash. What are your thoughts on that? No, I think you're correct, except the problem is I get the sense that the Biden administration as the metaphor for the left writ large is just kind of going for

broke on all things right now, because I think they've, it's a combination of things, at least that's my theory. One is I think they see the writing on the wall for the fall elections. Now, Republicans can be weak at times, but I think at the end of the day, they're still rather have control of Congress, and they're not happy with the possibility of a wildcard Congress asking a lot of questions and obviously ruining their chances of winning re-election in 2024. But I don't think they see that they've done anything wrong. I think they're going to double down or triple down. And they have to do a lot of this stuff because I think to some degree on this issue and many, many others, the gig is up.

And the more is exposed, the more it reveals the brokenness of federal government and the need to do things more than just wag fingers at oversight. hearings. And I'm hoping that what this does is actually get people to realize, like, we can't just do things the way we used to. The same old, same old is just not going to work in a future Congress and a future administration. Like, this federal government needs to be scrubbed and reassembled for the benefit of the American people. And do you think that removing things like Section 230 or taking action against big tech companies that do this type of thing would be an acceptable solution. I think putting them in a place where they have to consider a liability for removing people inappropriately or otherwise could actually be helpful. You know, there's, why is,

why is it so that they get this protection that allows them to be immune from content? In a way, you would, you would think that if they had this immunity, this would be their way of saying, responding to the federal government, look, sorry, Mr. President, we're not going to work with you guys because we don't want to lose our 230 status. We want this. to be sort of a wild west medium of communication. But so yeah, I think that's one thing that would make a difference. I think if you want to drive a point home, point at their dollars, right? And their ability to make money here is something that's a big deal.

I've often thought like one thing, if governments, and I don't just mean the federal government, I mean the state governments, local governments, they want to make a difference. I think one thing you could do is just get rid of your Twitter accounts, get rid of your Facebook accounts. Why are these governments that proclaim? to be opposed to what these platforms are doing still on them. Now, the devil's advocate argument is, well, you might as well use their medium against them, but the reality is once you start using their medium against them to an effective degree,

you get pulled off. So why give them the revenue? Just get out of it. And at some point, I'd love to see the federal government deal with this when there is an administration that is not interested in supporting these platforms anymore. And we'll see what happens. But yeah, follow the money. If you can make it painful for them economically, they'll stop their behavior.

Now, as we begin to wrap up here, I want to give you sort of an opportunity to really focus in and highlight on what you think people should be looking at. So first off, where can people, if they want to look at these documents for themselves, where can they go? And then what do you recommend they really pay attention to as they're troving through these documents? As you mentioned, there's quite a few of them. So what do you think they should be looking out for? Well, Doug, one thing I would strongly recommend is if people do want to see the documents, and thank you for the plug. Please come to aflegal.org. that's aaflegal.org.

You can see the work we've done on this and also many, many other things, everything from immigration to national security to education. But in terms of this trove, again, this is, we're going to need some eyes and people's expertise and thoughts based on their conduct.

So when you go look at these emails, please, please let us know if you see anything of interest. For example, it'd be curious to know if anyone knows. So you'll see names in these emails, but not all of them because some of them are redacted.

So if anyone has any information about any of the names around those FOIA exemptions the agency used to cover other people's names, let us know. One thing I'm curious to know is, you know, are there any professional or economic connections between the people in the federal government and these companies? For example, it identifies by name some people who work for Twitter, Facebook, and Google who interact with the federal government. But do they have a spouse at the CDC? Do they have a spouse at NIH? Right. These are things that are frequently concealed. It's funny because the leftist administrations always tend to have couples involved in things.

And sometimes that manifests in the form of, you know, Mr. Jones works at the Department of Treasury and Ms. Jones works on the White House counsel staff. But sometimes it's not even all in government. So, like, for example, maybe the federal job of Mr. Jones is dependent upon Mrs. Jones at Twitter doing what the federal government says. It's the stuff that we don't know. In fact, the best way I could say it, Doug, is. It's the unknown unknowns in the production, if anyone's got any thoughts. Also, if you happen to be one of these people who are working for these big tech companies

who are familiar with some of this, come reach out to us. You don't exist. We will make sure you don't exist, but we could use your help and information and anything you've got to offer. Because really, it comes down to the people behind the scenes who say, hey, I know I'm part of this, I've seen this, it's wrong, I want to help. If you're willing to come check out those documents, please give us a shout and keep your eyes out for further tranches of documents and further information from these agencies and hopefully

an honest inspector general's report regarding the content of this whole scandal across the Department of Health and Human Services. Sounds like a wonderful opportunity for Americans to get involved. That was John Zadrosny, Deputy Director of Investigations at the America First Legal Foundation. John, very much appreciate your time. Thank you, Doug, for your time. I appreciate it. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. If you have not done so already, be sure to subscribe to The Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, IHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcast. And please leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and, of course, encourage others to subscribe.

Thanks again for listening, and we're back with you all on Monday. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. The executive producers are Rob Blewey and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen, Doug Blair, and Samantha Rank. Sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visit DailySignal.com.