COVID-19
Freedom Convoy leaders’ trial concludes for 2023 but will resume in 2024

From LifeSiteNews
The trial, which began on September 5, 2023, was supposed to have lasted just over two weeks.
The trial against Freedom Convoy leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber has concluded for 2023 but will be back again early next year.
Last Thursday, day 33, was the last day of the trial for 2023. The court is expected to resume on January 4, 2024.
During day 33 of the trial, the Democracy Fund (TDF), which is crowdfunding Lich’s legal costs, noted that the court will resume in 2024 with a “voir dire,” or trial within a trial, to be “held over how comments made by the judge presiding over the Ottawa injunction order of February 2022 should be treated.”
“In the days following, there should be a decision on the defense motion to dismiss the Carter application,” noted TDF.
The trial, which began on September 5, 2023, was supposed to have lasted only a few weeks.
Last year, lawyers for both sides agreed that 16 days would be a reasonable amount of time to have a fair case. The Crown however took a long time in going through its witness list, which slowed the pace of the trial to a crawl.
On Day 33 of the trial, legal counsel for Barber reiterated to the court that it’s not a “crime” that the leaders did not tell people to leave Ottawa, as the Crown claims it was.
Thus far, per TDF, the Crown has asserted “that the absence of violence or peaceful nature of the protest didn’t make it lawful, emphasizing that the onus was on the Crown to prove the protest’s unlawfulness.”
The Crown in court has been holding steadfast to the notion in trying to prove that Lich and Barber had somehow influenced the protesters’ actions through their words as part of a co-conspiracy. This claim has been rejected by the defense as weak.
To back the claims up, the Crown has been hoping to use what is called a “Carter application” to help them make their case. The Crown’s so-called “Carter Application” asks that the judge to consider “Barber’s statements and actions to establish the guilt of Lich, and vice versa,” TDF stated.
TDF has said that a Carter application is very “complicated” and requires that the Crown prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that there was a “conspiracy or plan in place and that Lich was a party to it based on direct evidence,” and as such, the defense is asking the judge to dismiss the application.
The reality is that Lich and Barber worked with police on many occasions so that the protests were within the law.
On day 32 of Lich Barber’s trial, the defense counsel for the leaders exposed gaps in the Crown’s main argument that the protests were unlawful even though there was no violence during the demonstrations.
Lich and Barber are facing multiple charges from the 2022 protests, including mischief, counseling mischief, counseling intimidation and obstructing police for taking part in and organizing the anti-mandate Freedom Convoy. As reported by LifeSiteNews at the time, despite the non-violent nature of the protest and the charges, Lich was jailed for weeks before she was granted bail.
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, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government enacted the Emergencies Act on February 14.
During the clear-out of protesters after the EA was put in place, one protester, an elderly lady, was trampled by a police horse, and one conservative female reporter was beaten by police and shot with a tear gas canister.
Lich and Barber’s trial has thus far taken more time than originally planned. LifeSiteNews has been covering the trial extensive.
COVID-19
USAID directed over $200 million to gain of function research leading up to SARS-CoV outbreak

By John Leake
USAID gave Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance $207 million between 2009 and October 2019, right when SARS-COv-2 began to spread
With revelations emerging about USAID’s spending spree on friends and pet projects, I was reminded of the following April 2023 exchange between Senator Rand Paul and Samantha Power, Administrator of USAID from 2021 to 2025. I vividly remember the vexation I felt as I listened to the recording on my evening jog the next day. Note how she repeatedly looks Senator Paul directly in the eye and insists that USAID has disclosed the grant documents he has repeatedly requested, even though he repeatedly admonishes her that he KNOWS she isn’t telling him the truth because he has never seen them.
Note as well that in October 2019, when USAID officially ceased funding PREDICT, papers like the New York Times lamented that, bereft of such funds, the program would not be able to predict emerging infectious diseases.
A great deal of evidence indicates that this was precisely the time it became apparent that a novel SARS coronavirus was circulating in Wuhan, almost certainly the result of GoF research conducted as part of the PREDICT program.
In other words, PREDICT predicted nothing—it actually created the monster.
Yet another irony was a letter that Elizabeth Warren—the Supreme Self-Righteous Bloviator of the Senate (SSBS)—wrote on January 20, 2020 to the then Administrator Mark Green, demanding to know why PREDICT funding had been cut off.
I would bet a considerable sum that at least someone in USAID knew in October 2019 about the circulating monster that PREDICT had created with the assistance of the $207 million the agency had given the program over a ten year period.
The evidence is clear: USAID has long been a rogue agency that should indeed be brought under direct State Department Control with new, stringent transparency requirements about its activities and long prison times for people like Samantha Power who conceal the agency’s activities and then lie to Senators about them.
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Brownstone Institute
FDA Lab Uncovers Excess DNA Contamination in Covid-19 Vaccines

From the Brownstone Institute
By
An explosive new study conducted within the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) own laboratory has revealed excessively high levels of DNA contamination in Pfizer’s mRNA Covid-19 vaccine.
Tests conducted at the FDA’s White Oak Campus in Maryland found that residual DNA levels exceeded regulatory safety limits by 6 to 470 times.
The study was undertaken by student researchers under the supervision of FDA scientists. The vaccine vials were sourced from BEI Resources, a trusted supplier affiliated with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), previously headed by Anthony Fauci.
Recently published in the Journal of High School Science, the peer-reviewed study challenges years of dismissals by regulatory authorities, who had previously labelled concerns about excessive DNA contamination as baseless.
The FDA is expected to comment on the findings this week. However, the agency has yet to issue a public alert, recall the affected batches, or explain how vials exceeding safety standards were allowed to reach the market.
The Methods
The student researchers employed two primary analytical methods:
- NanoDrop Analysis – This technique uses UV spectrometry to measure the combined levels of DNA and RNA in the vaccine. While it provides an initial assessment, it tends to overestimate DNA concentrations due to interference from RNA, even when RNA-removal kits are utilised.
- Qubit Analysis – For more precise measurements, the researchers relied on the Qubit system, which quantifies double-stranded DNA using fluorometric dye.
Both methods confirmed the presence of DNA contamination far above permissible thresholds. These findings align with earlier reports from independent laboratories in the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, and France.
Expert Reaction
Kevin McKernan, a former director of the Human Genome Project, described the findings as a “bombshell,” criticizing the FDA for its lack of transparency.
“These findings are significant not just for what they reveal but for what they suggest has been concealed from public scrutiny. Why has the FDA kept these data under wraps?” McKernan questioned.
CSO and Founder of Medicinal Genomics
While commending the students’ work, he also noted limitations in the study’s methods, which may have underestimated contamination levels.
“The Qubit analysis can under-detect DNA by up to 70% when enzymes are used during sample preparation,” McKernan explained. “Additionally, the Plasmid Prep kit used in the study does not efficiently capture small DNA fragments, further contributing to underestimation.”
In addition to genome integration, McKernan highlighted another potential cancer-causing mechanism of DNA contamination in the vaccines.
He explained that plasmid DNA fragments entering the cell’s cytoplasm with the help of lipid nanoparticles could overstimulate the cGAS-STING pathway, a crucial component of the innate immune response.
“Chronic activation of the cGAS-STING pathway could paradoxically fuel cancer growth,” McKernan warned. “Repeated exposure to foreign DNA through COVID-19 boosters may amplify this risk over time, creating conditions conducive to cancer development.”
Adding to the controversy, traces of the SV40 promoter were detected among the DNA fragments. While the authors concluded that these fragments were “non-replication-competent” meaning they cannot replicate in humans, McKernan disagreed.
“To assert that the DNA fragments are non-functional, they would need to transfect mammalian cells and perform sequencing, which wasn’t done here,” McKernan stated.
“Moreover, the methods used in this study don’t effectively capture the full length of DNA fragments. A more rigorous sequencing analysis could reveal SV40 fragments several thousand base pairs long, which would likely be functional,” he added.
Regulatory Oversight under Scrutiny
Nikolai Petrovsky, a Professor of Immunology and director of Vaxine Pty Ltd, described the findings as a “smoking gun.”
“It clearly shows the FDA was aware of these data. Given that these studies were conducted in their own labs under the supervision of their own scientists, it would be hard to argue they were unaware,” he said.
Nikolai Petrovsky, Professor of Immunology and Infectious Disease at the Australian Respiratory and Sleep Medicine Institute in Adelaide
Prof Petrovsky praised the quality of work carried out by the students at the FDA labs.
“The irony is striking,” he remarked. “These students performed essential work that the regulators failed to do. It’s not overly complicated—we shouldn’t have had to rely on students to conduct tests that were the regulators’ responsibility in the first place.”
The Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), which has consistently defended the safety of the mRNA vaccines, released its own batch testing results, claiming they met regulatory standards. However, Prof Petrovsky criticised the TGA’s testing methods.
“The TGA’s method was not fit for purpose,” he argued. “It didn’t assess all the DNA in the vials. It only looked for a small fragment, which would severely underestimate the total amount of DNA detected.”
Implications for Manufacturers and Regulators
Now that DNA contamination of the mRNA vaccines has been verified in the laboratory of an official agency and published in a peer-reviewed journal, it becomes difficult to ignore.
It also places vaccine manufacturers and regulators in a precarious position.
Addressing the contamination issue would likely require revising manufacturing processes to remove residual DNA, which Prof Petrovsky explained would be impractical.
“The only practical solution is for regulators to require manufacturers to demonstrate that the plasmid DNA levels in the vaccines are safe,” Prof Petrovsky stated.
“Otherwise, efforts to remove the residual DNA would result in an entirely new vaccine, requiring new trials and effectively restarting the process with an untested product.”
Now the onus is on regulators to provide clarity and take decisive action to restore confidence in their oversight. Anything less risks deepening the scepticism of the public.
Both the US and Australian drug regulators have been approached for comment.
Republished from the author’s Substack
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