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§8. Notes on Trial and Error, January – December 2019 and
§8. Trial and Error, January – December 2019 at Substack
§8. Trial and Error, July 2019 – May 2020
[On the way to belated recognition of the pathogen as an engineered bio-weapon, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its sidekick the World Health Organization (WHO) cycled through numerous fictitious origin stories. These included bats, pangolins, and snakes as host animals, with fanciful explanations of how a virus might have jumped from one species to another. Facts emerged in reverse order to that in which they occurred, like a film running backwards. (With this timeline we put them back in their actual sequence.) First a lot of people got sick and died, then we learned the virus had a particular affinity for human endothelial cells that line passageways and organs, then it became clear this was not only a respiratory illness. At the same time, the CCP did its best to cover its tracks, destroy patient records, stop publication of the virus genome, silence doctors, prevent outside inspection, hoard supplies of masks and ventilators, and censor unauthorized research — strange behavior for anyone interested in learning where the virus had come from and endeavoring to stop it from spreading. But CCP officials knew where it came from — their own bio-weapons researchers. Eventually the clues, like breadcrumbs almost intentionally dropped, led back to the Wuhan Virology Institute. Its reigning chief scientist, ‘Bat Lady’ Shi Zhengli, admitted she lost some sleep over the possibility of having caused a global pandemic, due to the lab’s notoriously lax safety practices. But her sleep has been undisturbed since re-naming and re-classifying one of the predecessor viruses so that its name was disassociated from the deadly pathogen.]
[But that was not the end of the story. Going further back in time brought the discovery that Shi and her associates in the Chinese bio-weapons group had help form an unlikely quarter — the United States and its National Institutes of Health. If you thought the job of the NIH was to protect public health — a reasonable assumption, given the name — you’d be wrong. That was not how the bureaucrats in charge of NIH and its subunit the National Institute of Allergic and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), viewed their mission. If a bat virus had a hard time leaping over the species barrier from bats to humans, why not help it with a few snippets of SARS-1, a few snippets of AIDS, something to latch onto human endothelial cells with (a spike, say), and anything else to increase its virulence? That was their view — this was all a vast experiment, and if it produced some casualties, well that was all for the greater good of science. So NIH, NIAID, and other dispensers of generous U.S. taxpayer largesse, with technical assistance from another bio-weapons lab at the University of North Carolina, funded a Chinese-made bio-weapon. Like much else that came to pass as this decade drew to a turbulent close, this too had its origins at the beginning of the century, when the NIH patented the disease it had helped to engineer.]
[While a deadly pandemic terrified the American populace, the officials elected and appointed to serve them did not let the crisis go to waste. State Governors and election officials quietly changed election rules, with or without legislative approval, to loosen voting qualifications, increase the numbers of purported absentee voters, enable ‘black-box’ computerized vote tabulation and compilation, and extend deadlines for compiling final vote-counts. These changes, already well-advanced before the pandemic struck, and later justified by the pandemic and its attendant business closures and meeting-bans, effectively determined the outcome of the 2020 vote-count.]
[By the time the spy agencies, investigators, and impeachment accusers admitted they were mistaken about Russia conspiring with a presidential candidate and elected president, it didn’t matter anymore. Illegal snooping, fabrication of false evidence, lying to the secret FISA courts, striking down innocent individuals with overbearing prosecutions, media manipulation and censorship — none of this mattered anymore. Confident of their immunity from prosecution, former officials perceived it was in their career interest to allow revelations of their illegal activities. These revelations appeared years after the fact, as if inconsequential. But they enable us to fill in the blanks in our recollections of the course of events, by substituting truthful accounts for the mind-numbingly deceptive accounts disseminated at the time.]
PM
July 24, 2019: Former SC Robert Mueller testifies to Congress that Russian Govt interfered in 2016 election to support Trump, despite lack of evidence of collusion with Trump campaign in his report.
July 25, 2019: President Trump calls Ukraine President Zelensky to congratulate him on winning an absolute majority in Parliament. He asks Zelensky to ‘find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like to get to the bottom of it.‘ Zelensky responds ‘we are hoping very much that Mr Giuliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we will meet once he comes to Ukraine‘, implying that he does not trust DOJ. Trump then describes Giuliani as ‘highly respected’ and ‘very capable’, adding ‘There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.‘ Zelensky replied the issue is ‘making sure to restore the honesty, so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case’.
July 26, 2019: Ukraine-born NSC staff Lt Col Alexander Vindman provides details of President Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukraine President Zelensky to anti-Trump CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella.
July 26, 2019: House Intel Committee Chair Schiff hires former NSC staffer Sean Misko to direct impeachment investigation of Trump. Misko and Eric Ciaramella were close friends at NSC where both plotted to ‘take the president out (remove him from office)’. Misko coaches Ciarmella on filing a complaint about President Trump’s policy toward Ukraine.
Aug 2019: Intelligence Community IG Michael Atkinson revises ‘Disclosure of Urgent Concern’ (‘whistleblowing’) form to eliminate requirement for first-hand information, and allow hearsay, rumor, gossip to become the basis of such complaints. Sean Misko joins Rep Schiff’s staff. || Source
Aug 12, 2019: Following a plan CIA-NSC staffer Eric Ciaramella had discussed with friend and NSC associate Sean Misko on Feb 3, 2017 to ‘take out the president’, Ciaramella anonymously files complaint, the first instance with the new form allowing hearsay. Ciaramella’s complaint objects to President Trump’s policy toward Ukraine, alleging improper ‘quid pro quo’ of Biden investigation for U.S. aid. Since Ciaramella had not directly heard either of the Trump-Zelensky calls, his knowledge came either from Lt Col Alexander Vindman, who was permitted to listen-in on the calls, or a wiretap.
Aug 24, 2019: U. S. Chamber of Commerce rejects President Trump’s call to look for alternatives for operations in China. || Source
Sept 2019: WHO writes in its annual report A World At Risk of the ‘need to have a coordinated global experience of a respiratory pathogen release‘. || Source
Sept 11, 2019: U.S. District Court, Washington DC, orders Federal Government to produce for Michael Flynn’s defense all material required by Brady v Maryland requested by counsel Sidney Powell. This includes (among many other items) a letter delivered by British Embassy to incoming National Security team after Donald Trump’s election, and to outgoing National Security Advisor Susan Rice, ‘which apparently disavows former British Secret Service Agent Christopher Steele, calls his credibility into question, and declares him untrustworthy’; ‘all payments, notes, memos, correspondence, and instructions by and between the FBI, CIA, or DOD with Stefan Halper — going back as far as 2014 — regarding Michael Flynn’; ‘all transcripts, recordings, notes, correspondence, and 302s of any interactions with human sources or ‘OCONUS lures’ tasked against Mr. Flynn since he left DIA in 2014′; ‘unredacted copies of all memos created by or other communications from James Comey that mention or deal with any investigation, surveillance, FISA applications, interviews, or use of a confidential human source or ‘OCONUS lures’ (double agents outside contiguous United States) against Mr. Flynn’; ‘an internal DOJ document dated January 30, 2017, in which the FBI exonerated Mr. Flynn of being ‘an agent of Russia”; ‘all information that underlies the several FISA applications, including any information showing that any of the assertions in the applications were false, unverified, or unverifiable’; ‘recordings, notes, and memoranda by any and all persons who participated in the planning session for the interview of Mr. Flynn, at which it was decided that the agents would not inform him that it was an actual interview or that he was under investigation — so as to keep him ‘relaxed”.
Sept 24, 2019: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launches impeachment hearings.
Sept 26, 2019: Ciaramella complaint is released to public. Rep Adam Schiff quotes President Trump as having said to Ukraine President Zelensky, ‘I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand?… I’m going to put you with the attorney general of the United States, my attorney general Bill Barr… And I’m gonna put you in touch with Rudy, you’re gonna love him, trust me… You know what I’m asking, so I’m only going to say this a few more times, in a few more ways. And by the way don’t call me again. I’ll call you when you’ve done what I’ve asked.‘ Schiff later qualifies the summary as a paraphrase, not exact words.
Oct 2019: Pennsylvania Legislature allows mail-in balloting without voters having to specify a reason for requesting it, provided signature verification and canvassing-observer requirements are kept intact.
Oct 24, 2019: Durham investigation which started as administrative review changes to a criminal investigation with subpoena power.
Oct 25, 2019: Flynn files a motion to dismiss the case against him due to prosecutorial misconduct, including legally baseless threats to himself and his son. Among other claims, Flynn says prosecutors failed to turn over exculpatory material tending to show his innocence. ECF Nos. 151, 160.
Oct 29, 2019: Lt Col and NSC staff Vindman testifies to HPSCI and two other committees about the April 22 Trump-Zelensky phone call: ‘I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen.‘ Since call transcript does not indicate a ‘demand’, and Trump, Zelensky, Pompeo, and Pence affirm there was no demand, Rep Ratcliffe asks Vindman the origin of his opinion that a ‘demand’ was made. Vindman’s response: ‘I didn’t parse the words all that clearly…. I just wrote it the way I kind of felt it.‘
Oct 30, 2019: Former CIA Acting Director John McLaughlin (2004) responds to an expression of concern about intelligence agencies seeking to depose an elected president, ‘Thank God for the Deep State’. He praises the current and former intelligence officials calling for the ouster of Trump as ‘doing their duty and responding to a higher call’. This statement marks the first official acknowledgement something often disparaged as a ‘conspiracy theory’, a Deep State of U.S. Government agencies acting on their own behalf, not tethered to civilian authority. || Source1 ; Source2
Oct 31, 2019: Pennsylvania approves mail-in voting, without requiring voters to have a reason for making such request.
Nov 2019: Wuhan Institute of Virology researcher Huang Yan Ling contracts unidentified virus with pneumonia-like symptoms, though it is not reported at the time. Possibly ‘Patient Zero’, she later disappears and her biography is deleted from the lab’s website. || Source
Nov 17, 2019: First case of virus later identified as SARS-2 appears in Wuhan, China. This virus spreads in China but is not disclosed at the time. || Source1, Source2
Nov 15, 2019: President Trump releases transcript of April 21, 2019 call with Ukraine President Zelensky. Rep Devin Nunes reads transcript aloud in impeachment hearings.
Nov 17, 2019: First case of SARS-CoV2 identified in Wuhan, China.
Nov 20, 2019: DNA test shows with scientific certainty that Hunter Biden is the father of a baby born to Arkansas stripper and basketball player Lunden Alexis Roberts. Hunter Biden previously denied having sex with Roberts. || Source
Dec 9, 2019: DOJ releases IG Horowitz’s report detailing FBI’s lack of probable cause in submitting FISA warrant applications, and its reliance on a bogus source, Steele, who had been paid to conduct political opposition research.
Dec 9, 2019: FBI seizes water-damaged MacBook Pro (Serial # FVFXC2MMHV29) brought to computer Wilmington repair shop April 2019, but never picked up. An April 17, 2015 email from Burisma Advisor Vadim Pozharskyi to Hunter Biden is recovered from the computer.
Dec 10, 2019: Wei Guixian, one of the earliest known SARS-2 patients, starts feeling ill.
Dec 16, 2019: Patient admitted to Wuhan Central Hospital with infection in both lungs resistant to anti-flu drugs. || Source
Dec 18, 2019: House Democrats vote to impeach President Trump, but delay sending Articles of Impeachment to Senate.
Dec. 19, 2019: An investigation by Inspector General Michael Horowitz finds FBI and Justice Department officials falsified documents, and failed to verify assertions in the Steele dossier while falsely claiming they had done so, in order to obtain FISA warrants to spy on Trump associate Carter Page.
Late Dec 2019: Chinese laboratories identify a mystery virus as a highly infectious new pathogen. Caixin Global reports they are ordered to stop tests, destroy samples and suppress the news. On Jan 1, a regional health official in Wuhan, center of the outbreak, demands destruction of the lab samples that established the cause of unexplained viral pneumonia. || Source
Late Dec 2019: Chinese authorities refuse to provide individual data on early cases of SARS-2 to World Health Organization, obfuscating exact origins of the virus. Chinese authorities turn down requests to provide such data on 174 cases of SARS-2 from the early phase of the outbreak in Wuhan. || Source
Dec 30, 2019: Ai Fen, a top director at Wuhan Central Hospital, posts information on WeChat about the new virus. She is reprimanded for doing so and told not to spread information about it. || Source
Dec 31, 2019: Taiwan implements border control and quarantine measures ‘based on the assumption that human-to-human transmission was in fact occurring’, warns WHO of Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. Taiwan CDC sends email to WHO focal point, informing them of online reports from China concerning ‘at least seven atypical pneumonia cases’. || Source: Frank Chen, “WHO ‘Refused to Act‘ on Taiwan’s Virus Alert.” Asia Times, Mar 27, 2020.
Dec 31, 2019: Wuhan health officials confirm 27 cases of illness and close a market they think is related to the virus’ spread. Wuhan doctors report existence of virus to U.S. website, but not to WHO.
2019: Democracy Integrity Project (TDIP), a nonprofit operated by former Feinstein staffer Daniel Jones, pays $1,222,714 in 2019 to Bean LLC, the shell company that controls Fusion GPS, and $700,000 to Walshingham Partners Ltd, a British company co-owned by Christopher Steele, according to a tax filing (date of payment not disclosed). || Source
Jan 1, 2020: Wuhan Public Security Bureau arrests eight doctors who had posted information about the illness on WeChat. An official at the Hubei Provincial Health Commission orders labs, which had already determined that the novel virus was similar to SARS, to stop testing samples and to destroy existing samples. || Source
Jan 1, 2020: Chinese authorities close Wuhan seafood market, to support the cover story of natural origin of the SARS-2 virus. || Source
Jan 2, 2020: U.S. kills Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani in drone strike near Baghdad Airport. Soleimani, the foremost confidante of Iranian Supreme Leader Khameini, was the architect of the Iranian takeover of Iraq, of the roadside bombs (IEDs) that killed hundreds of U.S. soldiers, and of attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq.
Jan 2, 2020: Chinese researchers map the new coronavirus’ complete genetic information, release genome info Jan 9, 2020.
Jan 3, 2020: China’s National Health Commission (NHC) orders institutions not to publish any information related to the unknown disease and orders labs to transfer any samples they had to designated testing institutions or destroy them. Dr. Li is forced by Wuhan Public Security Bureau to sign letter admitting ‘making false comments’ that ‘severely disturbed the social order’.
Jan 4, 2020: Hong Kong U Infection Center head Dr. Ho Pak-leung publicly warns human-to-human transmission of SARS-CoV2 likely.
Jan 9, 2020: CCP denies human-to-human transmission of SARS-CoV2.
Jan 11, 2020: Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center Professor Zhang Yongzhen publishes his lab’s genomic sequencing data of SARS-2 on virological.org and GenBank, an open access online database maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information within the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Jan 12, 2020: CCP closes Shanghai lab which had published SARS-CoV-2 genome. Labs analyzing the pathogen are instructed to destroy samples, a health center that had published the virus’s genome sequence is temporarily shut down the following day, and doctors are prevented from submitting case information to the country’s infectious disease tracking network. WHO says no human-to-human transmission. ‘WHO advises against the application of any travel or trade restrictions on China based on the information currently available on this event.‘ || Source
Jan 13, 2020: First known SARS-CoV-2 case outside China reported in Thailand.
Jan 14, 2020: Head of China’s National Health Commission, Ma Xiaowei, says in a confidential teleconference with provincial health officials that ‘clustered cases suggest that human-to-human transmission is possible,’ and ‘the risk of transmission and spread is high.‘ Commission issues secret report to this effect. Teleconference is organized in response to appearance of first case in Thailand on Jan 13. Memo: ‘With the coming of the Spring Festival, many people will be traveling, and the risk of transmission and spread is high. All localities must prepare for and respond to a pandemic.‘
Jan 15, 2020: The patient who becomes the first confirmed U.S. case leaves Wuhan and arrives in the U.S., carrying the SARS-2 virus.
Jan 15, 2020: House delivers Articles of Impeachment (abuse of power and obstruction of Congress) to Senate. House Democrats had approved impeachment Dec 18, 2019.
Jan 15, 2020: China adds an annex to trade deal with U.S. letting itself out of purchase commitments in case of ‘act of God’ such as a pandemic.
Jan 16, 2020: Mike Flynn files another motion to withdraw his guilty plea, based on disclosures of additional exculpatory material related to FBI’s ambush interview, post-interview alternation of purportedly contemporaneous ‘302’ notes, and other evidence of DOJ entrapment.
Jan 20, 2020: South Korea announces first case of SARS-2.
Jan 21, 2020: CCP flagship newspaper People’s Daily mentions the SARS-2 epidemic for the first time. China’s top political commission in charge of law and order warns that ‘anyone who deliberately delays and hides the reporting of [virus] cases out of his or her own self-interest will be nailed on the pillar of shame for eternity.‘ Presumably the advisory notice is not retroactively applicable.
Jan 21, 2020: Senate trial of Trump impeachment charges begins.
Jan 23, 2020: Wuhan and three other cities are put on lockdown. About one million people leave the city without being screened for the illness. China bans further domestic travel from Wuhan and Hubei Province, while keeping international flights on normal schedule.
Jan 30, 2020: Sen Rand Paul submits question to Senate impeachment trial, ‘Are you aware that House intelligence committee staffer Sean Misko had a close relationship with Eric Ciaramella while at the National Security Council together?’ Chief Justice Roberts, presiding at the Senate impeachment trial, rules the question out of order.
Jan 31, 2020: U.S. imposes ban on travel from China.
Jan 2020: Chinese scientists reverse-engineer SARS-2 virus to simulate natural evolution similar to a virus entered into a gene database years earlier. Virus strains newly entered into the database in Jan 2020 are recorded as having been collected years earlier. Earliest original examples of SARS-2 virus data are deleted from the database. || Source: Birger Sørensen and Angus Dalgleish paper published in Cambridge QRB Discovery.
Feb 1, 2020: Joe Biden calls President Trump’s travel restriction ‘xenophobic’. || Source
Feb 2, 2020: China Civil Aviation Administration of China states ‘In order to meet the needs of passengers in and out of the country and the international transport of supplies during this special period… airlines [are required to]… continue transport to nations that have not imposed travel restrictions.‘
Feb 3, 2020: WHO chief Tedros states ‘There is no reason for measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade‘.
Feb 5, 2020: Senate acquits President of both impeachment charges, abuse of power by 52 – 48 vote, obstruction of Congress 53 – 47.
Feb 6, 2020: First U.S. death from SARS-2 recorded in Santa Clara County, California.
Feb 7, 2020: Dr Li, who first disclosed human-to-human transmission and was forced to sign a letter admitting to ‘seriously disturbing social order‘, dies of SARS-2.
Feb 7, 2020: Lt Col Alexander Vindman, who testified that he disagreed with President Trump’s Ukraine policy, is removed from White House NSC detail and transferred to Army. EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland, who testified to his belief that President Trump had improperly conditioned aid to Ukraine on a corruption investigation, is fired, with immediate effect.
Feb 13, 2020: DOJ indicts Huawei and subsidiaries on charges of racketeering, theft of trade secrets, and violation of sanctions on trade with Iran and North Korea. DOJ Assistant AG for Criminal Div Brian Benczkowski and Assistant AG for National Security John Demers, together with U.S. Attorneys in New York, Illinois, Texas, Washington, and California cooperate in the case. DOJ alleges that Huawei entered into confidentiality agreements the terms of which it later violated, recruited employees of other companies whom it directed to steal those companies’ technology and intellectual property, paid bonuses to employees for such thefts, and formed hidden subsidiaries to sell advanced communications equiment to Iran and North Korea, which they used for mass surveillance.
Feb 14, 2020: Chinese President Xi Jinping calls for a new biosecurity law to be accelerated. Chinese government issues new regulations requiring approval before any research institution publishes anything on the origin of the novel SARS-2 virus.
Feb 14, 2020: Wuhan Virology Institute Director Shi Zhengli and military scientist Zhou Yusen publish Molecular Mechanism for Antibody-Dependent Enhancement of Coronavirus Entry on enhancing entry of novel viruses into human cells, purportedly for vaccine design purposes. || Source
Feb 24, 2020: Zhou Yusen, a military scientist for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and with U.S. scientists, files a patent application for the SARS-2 virus on behalf of the Institute of Military Medicine, Academy of Military Sciences of the PLA. The Head of China’s National Health Commission, Ma Xiaowei, had admitted the fact of human-to-human transmission of the SARS-2 virus on Jan 14, 2020. WHO’s declaration of a pandemic occurs later on March 11, 2020. Zhou dies under unexplained circumstances in May 2020. || Source
Feb 2020: Molecular biomechanics researcher Botao Xiao, of South China University of Technology, publishes a paper stating ‘the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.’ Three weeks later Xiao withdraws the paper.
Feb 2020: Iran announces its first SARS-2 case. Within one week, 12 people in Iran die of SARS-2.
March 2020: Congress renews §215 of the Patriot Act, authorizing the Federal Government to capture without a warrant all records of all people in America held by third parties, nullifying the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment. || Source: Judge Andrew Napolitano
March 10, 2020: Chinese magazine Renwu publishes interview with Dr. Ai on her first-hand account of her treatment and the CCP’s suppression of information regarding the outbreak. Within three hours, the original report is removed by CCP censors.
March 11, 2020: With the SARS-2 virus in 114 countries, WHO declares pandemic.
March 15, 2020: New York City closes its school system.
March 17, 2020: EU bans nonessential inbound travel from 26 countries.
March 2020: China expels journalists from New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.
April 2, 2020: 10 million Americans are unemployed.
April 24, 2020: Government provides four pages of long-withheld Brady (exculpatory) material.
April 29, 2020: An FBI memo by Bill Priestap asking whether the goal with Flynn is to ‘get him to lie‘, or ‘get him fired‘, is revealed.
May 7, 2020: Federal prosecutor Van Grack withdraws from Flynn case. U.S. Attorney files Motion to Dismiss criminal case against Flynn. D.C. U.S. Attorney explains Jensen’s review had uncovered new evidence and DOJ no longer believes Flynn’s Jan 24, 2017 statements to the FBI agents — even if they were false — were material. The purportedly false statements were not material under Section 1001, the government explains, because there was no valid investigative purpose for questioning Flynn about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.