COVID-19
Freedom Convoy leaders’ trial attorneys attempt to get judge to budge on allowing video evidence
From LifeSiteNews
One of the leaders’ lawyers ‘contended that these videos provide context and completeness to the videos and statements of the accused tendered by the Crown.’
Day 37 of the trial for Freedom Convoy leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber included some “important” updates, according to their legal team, as their lawyers argued that allowing video to be entered as evidence would provide “context and completeness” into why they led the protests.
The Democracy Fund (TDF), which is crowdfunding Lich’s legal costs, noted in a daily court update regarding Thursday’s court proceedings that Diane Magas, Barber’s counsel, “continued her submission on the admissibility of statements of videos made by her client.”
“She contended that these videos provide context and completeness to the videos and statements of the accused tendered by the Crown,” the TDF said.
In response, the government suggested that extra videos as well as statements that were shown by Magas are “not necessary for an understanding of the words spoken by Mr. Barber in the videos and statements shown by the Crown.”
The trial presided over by Justice Heather Perkins-McVey has concluded for the time being, with Friday being the last scheduled court day. LifeSiteNews has covered the trial extensively since it began last year.
As of Thursday, Perkins-McVey has not ruled on allowing extra video as evidence.
On Day 36 of the Freedom Convoy leaders’ trial, their lawyers argued that video statements made by the leaders should be allowed as “evidence of the truth.”
Thus far, the government 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 government has held steadfast to the notion in trying to prove that Lich and Barber somehow influenced the protesters’ actions through their words as part of a co-conspiracy. This claim has been rejected by the defense as weak.
The reality is that Lich and Barber collaborated with police on many occasions so that the protests were within the law.
The trial resumed for one day last week for only the second court date since the new year, with Perkins-McVey deciding to dismiss an application by the Freedom Convoy leaders that asked the court to throw out so-called conspiracy charges.
Trial could extend well into 2025
The TDF noted that during court proceedings on Thursday the defense moved to argue that the “Carter application should be ‘bifurcated’ — that is, it should be heard and ruled upon by the Court before closing submissions.”
To back the claims up, the government has been hoping to use what is called a “Carter application” to help them make their case. The government’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.
The TDF has said that a Carter application is very “complicated” and requires that the government 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.
On Thursday, the Convoy leaders’ defense counsel said, as per the TDF, that they could not “properly prepare closing submissions without an understanding of the extent and nature of the evidence the Crown intends to use against their clients.”
To date, Perkins-McVey has not made a ruling on the Carter application.
Closing off the court day on Thursday, the court asked the defense if they were ready to make an “election” and they said they will not be submitting additional evidence.
“Thus, the evidentiary portion of the trial is complete, and it remains for the parties to argue outstanding issues and then proceed to closing submissions,” the TDF said.
Closing submissions are not expected to happen until August, which the TDF predicted could extend into 2025.
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.
Besides the ongoing trial, Lich and Barber and a host of others recently filed a $2 million lawsuit against the Trudeau government for its use of the Emergencies Act (EA) to quash the Freedom Convoy in 2022.
In early 2022, thousands of Canadians from coast to coast came 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, 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.
Brownstone Institute
The Most Devastating Report So Far
From the Brownstone Institute
By
The House report on HHS Covid propaganda is devastating. The Biden administration spent almost $1 billion to push falsehoods about Covid vaccines, boosters, and masks on the American people. If a pharma company had run the campaign, it would have been fined out of existence.
HHS engaged a PR firm, the Fors Marsh Group (FMG), for the propaganda campaign. The main goal was to increase Covid vax uptake. The strategy: 1. Exaggerate Covid mortality risk 2. Downplay the fact that there was no good evidence that the Covid vax stops transmission.
The propaganda campaign extended beyond vax uptake and included exaggerating mask efficacy and pushing for social distancing and school closures.
Ultimately, since the messaging did not match reality, the campaign collapsed public trust in public health.
The PR firm (FMG) drew most of its faulty science from the CDC’s “guidance,” which ignored the FDA’s findings on the vaccine’s limitations, as well as scientific findings from other countries that contradicted CDC groupthink.
The report details the CDC’s mask flip-flopping through the years. It’s especially infuriating to recall the CDC’s weird, anti-scientific, anti-human focus on masking toddlers with cloth masks into 2022.
President Biden’s Covid advisor Ashish K. Jha waited until Dec. 2022 (right after leaving government service) to tell the country that “[t]here is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well.” What took him so long?
In 2021, former CDC director, Rochelle Walensky rewrote CDC guidance on social distancing at the behest of the national teachers’ union, guaranteeing that schools would remain closed to in-person learning for many months.
During this period, the PR firm FMG put out ads telling parents that schools would close unless kids masked up, stayed away from friends, and got Covid-vaccinated.
In March 2021, even as the CDC told the American people that the vaxxed did not need to mask, the PR firm ran ads saying that masks were still needed, even for the vaxxed. “It’s not time to ease up” we were told, in the absence of evidence any of that did any good.
In 2021, to support the Biden/Harris administration’s push for vax mandates, the PR firm pushed the false idea that the vax stopped Covid transmission. When people started getting “breakthrough” infections, public trust in public health collapsed.
Later, when the FDA approved the vax for 12 to 15-year-old kids, the PR firm told parents that schools could open in fall 2021 only if they got their kids vaccinated. These ads never mentioned side effects like myocarditis due to the vax.
HHS has scrubbed the propaganda ads from this era from its web pages. It’s easy to see why. They are embarrassing. They tell kids, in effect, that they should treat other kids like biohazards unless they are vaccinated.
When the Delta variant arrived, the PR firm doubled down on fear-mongering, masking, and social distancing.
In September 2021, CDC director Walensky overruled the agency’s external experts to recommend the booster to all adults rather than just the elderly. The director’s action was “highly unusual” and went beyond the FDA’s approval of the booster for only the elderly.
The PR campaign and the CDC persistently overestimated the mortality risk of Covid infection in kids to scare parents into vaccinating their children with the Covid vax.
In Aug. 2021, the military imposed its Covid vax mandate, leading to 8,300 servicemen being discharged. Since 2023, the DOD has been trying to get the discharged servicemen to reenlist. What harm has been done to American national security by the vax mandate?
The Biden/Harris administration imposed the OSHA, CMS, and military vax mandates, even though the CDC knew that the Delta variant evaded vaccine immunity. The PR campaign studiously avoided informing Americans about waning vaccine efficacy in the face of variants.
The propaganda campaign hired celebrities and influencers to “persuade” children to get the Covid vax.
I think if a celebrity is paid to advertise a faulty product, that celebrity should be partially liable if the product harms some people.
In the absence of evidence, the propaganda campaign ran ads telling parents that the vaccine would prevent their kids from getting Long Covid.
With the collapse in public trust in the CDC, parents have begun to question all CDC advice. Predictably, the HHS propaganda campaign has led to a decline in the uptake of routine childhood vaccines.
The report makes several recommendations, including formally defining the CDC’s core mission to focus on disease prevention, forcing HHS propaganda to abide by the FDA’s product labeling rules, and revamping the process of evaluating vaccine safety.
Probably the most important recommendation: HHS should never again adopt a policy of silencing dissenting scientists in an attempt to create an illusion of consensus in favor of CDC groupthink.
You can find a copy of the full House report here. The HHS must take its findings seriously if there is any hope for public health to regain public.
COVID-19
Freedom Convoy protester Pat King found guilty on 5 of 9 charges
From LifeSiteNews
While Pat King has been labeled as one of the leaders of the Freedom Convoy by the mainstream media, he is largely considered by those who followed the event to be a tertiary actor.
A Canadian judge has found Pat King, a controversial figure connected to the Freedom Convoy, guilty of a total of five charges related to his involvement in the 2022 protests held in the nation’s capital which called for an end to COVID mandates.
An Ottawa judge found King guilty of two counts of disobeying a court order, one count of mischief, one count of counselling others to commit mischief, as well as one count of counselling others to obstruct police.
As reported by the Canadian Press, King was also found not guilty of four other charges, those being three counts of intimidation and one count of obstructing police.
King’s lawyers had argued that his involvement with the Freedom Convoy was peaceful in nature and did not warrant any of the charges laid against him.
Crown lawyers claimed that King was one of the main leaders of the Freedom Convoy who played a key role in the month-long protests that took place in January and February of 2022.
The Crown’s case relied heavily on videos posted to social media, which were shared by King throughout the protests.
While King has been labeled as one of the leaders of the Freedom Convoy by the mainstream media, he is largely considered by those who followed the event to be a tertiary actor.
For instance, True North’s Andrew Lawton, who wrote a book on the Freedom Convoy, wrote in 2022, “the media keeps calling Pat King the ringleader of the convoy, but in reality, organizers told him to get lost when they realized he was toxic.”
In 2022, King was granted bail after spending five months in jail for his involvement with the protests. He had to pay a $25,000 fine and was banned from speaking to other Freedom Convoy members and was placed under curfew.
In February 2022, during the height of the Freedom Convoy, King told protesters to “Hold the line, ladies and gentlemen,” and to “not back down, we got your backs.”
In late February that same year, King was denied bail by a judge. He was arrested on February 18 and was charged with various offenses, including mischief and counseling to commit mischief.
As it stands now, the Freedom Convoy’s actual main leaders, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, are awaiting their fate in their trial for their involvement in the 2022 protests. As reported by LifeSiteNews, Lich and Barber face a possible 10-year prison sentence for their role in the 2022 Freedom Convoy.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, some protesters charged for participating the Freedom Convoy have seen their charges dropped.
In early 2022, thousands of Canadians from coast to coast came 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. Trudeau revoked the EA on February 23.
The EA controversially allowed the government to freeze the bank accounts of protesters, conscript tow truck drivers, and arrest people for participating in assemblies the government deemed illegal.
COVID vaccine mandates, which also came from provincial governments with the support of the federal government, split Canadian society. The mRNA shots have been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects in children.
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