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COVID-19

The CDC Intervened in Voting Protocols

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8 minute read

From the Brownstone Institute

BY Jeffrey A. TuckerJEFFREY A. TUCKER 

What’s fascinating is the timing. The page was updated to mention the necessity of mail-in voting on March 12, 2020. That’s the same day at Donald Trump’s famous hostage-style video that announced universal travel restrictions for Americans traveling to and from the UK and the EU, for the first time in US history.

In the spring of 2020, a deliberately cultivated disease fear swept across the population. Everyone was urged to do everything possible to avoid the invisible enemy.

It is an implausible request.

The terrorist-era slogan “If you see something, say something” was bad enough. This was “You can’t see something, so just do whatever.”

If you cannot see it, you cannot know where it is, in which case people filled the epistemic void with fantasies of their own invention.

It’s on this sandwich! Wait, it’s on this whole bag of groceries! It’s in this room while that room seems safer! It’s probably on the pen I just used so I’d better wash my hands! I should wear this helmet and these gloves, plus wash my dishes five times before using them! And so on.

It was all madness and it immediately affected the subject of voting, which quickly became a subject of discussion. If we are social distancing and staying home, how can we have normal elections with crowds at polling places? Surely we need a completely different system.

It was in this thicket of sudden frenzy that the CDC got involved. But not eventually involved; it was involved at the very outset.

The page is now scrubbed from the CDC website as of January this year but it has long posted voting protocols as a means of controlling infectious disease spread.

What’s fascinating is the timing. The page was updated to mention the necessity of mail-in voting on March 12, 2020. That’s the same day at Donald Trump’s famous hostage-style video that announced universal travel restrictions for Americans traveling to and from the UK and the EU, for the first time in US history.

He was so nervous that he actually garbled a sentence. He said that he would stop all goods transport. He meant to say that he would not! The correction came a day later but only after the stock market crashed.

That very day, someone went to the page on the CDC site and added that good hygiene involves pushing mail-in voting. We only know this thanks to Archive.org and checking the day-by-day timeline.

States now armed with this exhortation had every reason or excuse to liberalize their laws concerning mail-in voting. Plus with the CARES act, they were suddenly flush with billions to make it happen, all in the name of disease control. People permitted practices that otherwise would never have gone through.

In addition, the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency, as part of the Department of Homeland Security, also took charge of securing the elections, obviously with the new liberalized ethos as part of the goal, which is to say, the opposite of security. This is the same agency that divided the workforce between essential and nonessential workers and also led the censorship charge.

There is nothing new about the controversies concerning mail-in ballots. Only half the world’s nations permit them at all. Nations such as France ban them entirely. Those that do allow this are very strict, as the US once was. You have to write in with a good excuse and then receive your mail-in ballot and there must be an exact database match. Part of this is proof of identity. This is all in the heightened interest of security.

By contrast, when I was traveling the country in October 2020, each place I landed I would receive a notification from Facebook to get my mail-in ballots. These were states where I didn’t live. I did not attempt this but I swear I could have voted six times. And otherwise you know how much controversy this elicited.

Indeed, Trump’s raison d’etre to this day is revenge for an election he says was stolen due to mail-in ballots. Well, if so, it only happened because of decisions made by his own executive agencies, CDC and CISA in particular. He has never been asked about this, by the way.

What is the precise connection between voting lines and infectious disease spread? There was every incentive to demonstrate one, something definitive to prove that in-person voting creates a super-spreader to be avoided. Despite this, there is not one single high-quality study showing some relationship. In fact, despite extensive research, I cannot find a single study that even purports to show that in-person voting spreads disease. Not one.

However, one of the few existing studies of this question from Wisconsin shows zero relationship.

In these days of fiction over science, the CDC just assumed there was some relationship and so invoked all its powers and influences over state health agencies and further to maximize mail-in voting and minimize in-person voting. It was entirely due to mail-in votes that Trump went so quickly from winning to losing literally overnight.

Here we have the nation’s great disease-mitigating agency, operating under the banner of science, issuing an order that fundamentally compromised the integrity of the very essence of American democracy without one shred of scientific evidence to justify the decision.

It does indeed stink to high heaven.

Does this imply that the goal of the whole wild episode was to unseat Trump from power? This would not explain why many of these same protocols were followed all over the world. Was Trump’s loss, real or manufactured, a benefit for those who ran the pandemic response? Most certainly. And the unearthing of this little change from the CDC – which found itself in the middle of the most contentious political struggle of modern times – certainly underscores the point.

Author

  • Jeffrey A. Tucker

    Jeffrey Tucker is Founder, Author, and President at Brownstone Institute. He is also Senior Economics Columnist for Epoch Times, author of 10 books, including Life After Lockdown, and many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

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Judge denies Canadian gov’t request to take away Freedom Convoy leader’s truck

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

A judge ruled that the Ontario Court of Justice is already ‘satisfied’ with Chris Barber’s sentence and taking away his very livelihood would be ‘disproportionate.’

A Canadian judge has dismissed a demand from Canadian government lawyers to seize Freedom Convoy leader Chris Barber’s “Big Red” semi-truck.

On Friday, Ontario Court of Justice Judge Heather Perkins-McVey denied the Crown’s application seeking to forfeit Barber’s truck.

She ruled that the court is already “satisfied” with Barber’s sentence and taking away his very livelihood would be “disproportionate.”

“This truck is my livelihood,” said Barber in a press release sent to LifeSiteNews.

“Trying to permanently seize it for peacefully protesting was wrong, and I’m relieved the court refused to allow that to happen,” he added.

Criminal defense lawyer Marwa Racha Younes was welcoming of the ruling as well, stating, “We find it was the right decision in the circumstances and are happy with the outcome.”

John Carpay, president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), said the decision is “good news for all Canadians who cherish their Charter freedom to assemble peacefully.”

READ: Freedom Convoy protester appeals after judge dismissed challenge to frozen bank accounts

“Asset forfeiture is an extraordinary power, and it must not be used to punish Canadians for participating in peaceful protest,” he added in the press release.

At this time, the court ruling ends any forfeiture proceedings for the time being, however Barber will continue to try and appeal his criminal conviction and house arrest sentence.

Barber’s truck, a 2004 Kenworth long-haul he uses for business, was a focal point in the 2022 protests. He drove it to Ottawa, where it was parked for an extended period of time, but he complied when officials asked him to move it.

On October 7, 2025, after a long trial, Ontario Court Justice Perkins-McVey sentenced Barber and Tamara Lich, the other Freedom Convoy leader, to 18 months’ house arrest. They had been declared guilty of mischief for their roles as leaders of the 2022 protest against COVID mandates, and as social media influencers.

Lich and Barber have filed appeals of their own against their house arrest sentences, arguing that the trial judge did not correctly apply the law on their mischief charges.

Government lawyers for the Crown have filed an appeal of the acquittals of Lich and Barber on intimidation charges.

The pair’s convictions came after a nearly two-year trial despite the nonviolent nature of the popular movement.

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Freedom Convoy protester appeals after judge dismissed challenge to frozen bank accounts

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Protestor Evan Blackman’s legal team argues Trudeau’s Emergencies Act-based bank account freezes were punitive state action tied directly to protest participation.

A Freedom Convoy protester whose bank accounts were frozen by the Canadian government says a judge erred after his ruling did not consider the fact that the funds were frozen under the Emergencies Act, as grounds for a stay of proceedings.

In a press release sent out earlier this week, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) said that Freedom Convoy protestor Evan Blackman will challenge a court ruling in his criminal case via an appeal with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

“This case raises serious questions about how peaceful protest is treated in Canada and about the lasting consequences of the federal government’s unlawful use of the Emergencies Act,” noted constitutional lawyer Chris Fleury. “The freezing of protestors’ bank accounts was part of a coordinated effort to suppress dissent, and courts ought to be willing to scrutinize that conduct.”

Blackman was arrested on February 18, 2022, during the police crackdown on Freedom Convoy protests against COVID restrictions, which was authorized by the Emergencies Act (EA). The EA was put in place by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, which claimed the protests were violent, despite no evidence that this was the case.

Blackman’s three bank accounts with TD Bank were frozen due to his participation in the Freedom Convoy, following a directive ordered by Trudeau.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, in November of this year, Blackman was convicted at his retrial even though he had been acquitted at his original trial. In 2023, Blackman’s “mischief” and “obstructing police” charges were dismissed by a judge due to lack of evidence and the “poor memory of a cop regarding key details of the alleged criminal offences.”

His retrial resulted in Blackman getting a conditional discharge along with 12 months’ probation and 122 hours of community service, along with a $200 victim fine surcharge.

After this, Blackman’s application for a stay of proceedings was dismissed by the court. He had hoped to have his stay of proceedings, under section 24(1) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, allowed. However, the judge ruled that the freezing of his bank accounts was legally not related to his arrest, and because of this, the stay of proceedings lacked standing.

The JCCF disagreed with this ruling, noting, it “stands in contrast to a Federal Court decision finding that the government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act was unreasonable and violated Canadians’ Charter rights, including those targeted by the financial measures used against Freedom Convoy protestors.”

In 2024, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley ruled that Trudeau was “not justified” in invoking the Emergencies Act.

In early 2022, the Freedom Convoy saw thousands of Canadians from coast to coast come to Ottawa to demand an end to COVID mandates in all forms. Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, Trudeau’s federal government enacted the EA in mid-February.

After the protesters were cleared out, which was achieved through the freezing of bank accounts of those involved without a court order as well as the physical removal and arrest of demonstrators, Trudeau revoked the EA on February 23, 2022.

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