“[I have been] asked if there have been any valid
concerns raised about Pfizer clinical trials,
about poor design or data falsification…
And the answer is no, actually.” (2-14-22 BOCC meeting)
FACT CHECK:
Last February, Dr. Berry answered a question about whether or not there was the possibility of fraud in Pfizer’s (still ongoing) clinical trials. “[T]he answer is no, actually,” she said.
According to Dr. Berry, these “were very high quality trials,” and they have been “very heavily scrutinized.” She also pooh-poohed the suggestion that any degree of fraud could have occurred, proclaiming that no “valid concerns… about poor design or data falsification” had been documented.
Enter Brook Jackson
A Certified Clinical Research Professional with almost two decades of experience in a clinical trial setting, Brook Jackson joined Ventavia Research Group in 2020 as a Regional Director. Ventavia had been contracted to carry out clinical research on Pfizer’s vaccine before Jackson signed on, and she began noticing issues as soon as she started work there.
When she brought concerns such as “failure to preserve blinding,” “vaccine dilution errors,” “patient safety issues,” “enrollment and injection of ineligible trial participants,” and “falsification of data” to her supervisors, no actions were taken to remedy the situation. Jackson ultimately related the issues to the FDA, but not without repercussions: just hours after talking with the FDA under supposed confidentiality as a whistleblower, Ventavia contacted Jackson to inform her that she was “not a good fit” for the company and that she was fired.
Brook Jackson was fired from Pfizer contractor Ventavia after bringing safety concerns to the attention of her superiors and the FDA. Watch the BMJ’s 6-minute video of her story.
Refusing to be silenced, Jackson proceeded to file a legal complaint against Ventavia and Pfizer under the False Claims Act (FCA), contending, among other wrongs, that “Pfizer… represented that the clinical trial would comply with all applicable laws and regulations [but that] Defendants violated… multiple FDA regulations when conducting the clinical trial, rendering this certification false.” The 81-page complaint is accompanied by 29 exhibits spanning an additional 551 pages, including emails and text messages, Pfizer source documents, photos of HIPAA and other violations during clinical trials, blood draw data, and lists of errors and deficiencies.
The FCA allows whistleblowers to sue the defendants on behalf and/or with the intervention of the federal government. Suits brought under the FCA are sealed so that the government can investigate the allegations without the defendant’s knowledge. After a period of several months had elapsed with little communication from the government (more on this in a moment), Jackson decided to share her information with the British Medical Journal (BMJ), one of the world’s preeminent and most highly regarded medical publications, despite her case being under seal.
On November 2, 2021, the BMJ published an investigative piece focused on the incident at Ventavia, noting that “Revelations of poor practices at [Ventavia] raise questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight.” The BMJ’s publication enumerates half a dozen specific concerns identified by Jackson:
Participants placed in a hallway after injection and not being monitored by clinical staff
Lack of timely follow-up of patients who experienced adverse events
Protocol deviations not being reported
Vaccines not being stored at proper temperatures
Mislabelled laboratory specimens
Targeting of Ventavia staff for reporting these types of problems.
In its interview with Jackson, the BMJ included a photo Jackson took of a “plastic biohazard bag [that] contained used needles” which should have been disposed of in a sharps box.
(Meta’s fact checker Lead Stories quickly responded by decrying the coverage done by the “British Medical Association’s news blog.” Citing as evidence to rebut the claims of fraud were spokespeople from both Ventavia and Pfizer, the former alleging that “no part of [Jackson’s] responsibilities concerned the clinical trials at issue.”)
Jackson’s case was sealed for more than a year, until early 2022 when the government elected not to intervene in the case. Pfizer filed a motion to dismiss the case in part on the grounds that “the complaint alleges FDA was the victim of ‘fraud’ even though the agency has known about [Jackson’s] allegations for years, has not withdrawn the [vaccine] approvals in question, and continues to express confidence in the data underlying those approvals.” Therefore, even if the court were to find that Pfizer had committed fraud, it wouldn’t matter because the government would have bought their product anyway.
On October 4, the federal government then made a curious move when it submitted a statement of interest supporting Pfizer’s motion to dismiss the case: “[Jackson]’s complaint lacks factual allegations that would support a plausible claim that Ventavia’s clinical trial violations masked problems with the vaccine that were so serious that FDA would have withheld or withdrawn its authorization of the vaccine had it known the truth, such that Pfizer’s subsequent claims for Government payment for the vaccine could be rendered ‘false or fraudulent’ under the FCA.”
Jackson’s attorneys responded on October 27, characterizing the government’s response as an “unusual pleading.” “[T]he government sought this court’s extraordinary seal powers over this case for a substantial time period because of how seriously they took the pleadings as fully legally sufficient as plead…. Had the government truly believed… that [Jackson]’s complaint was devoid of evidence, they would never have required such ample time to investigate.”
Jackson’s attorneys insinuate that if the government was aware of fraud by Pfizer, it could potentially abuse its power to seal the case in order to keep the case out of the public eye — something it succeeded in doing for almost a year before Jackson took her evidence to the BMJ. One can only wonder how many people would have chosen not to take the vaccine if they had known what Jackson knew when she knew it.
As of the publication of this Free Press article, the court has still not ruled on the motion to dismiss.
Jackson’s claims of wrongdoing have received a lot of press, but they aren’t the only reason to suspect fraudulent activity in Pfizer’s clinical trials.
Who is Maddie de Garay?
Earlier this month, Dr. Berry received a simple question: “Who is Maddie de Garay?” In a long-winded response where she not only failed to identify the young teenager by name, but also avoided describing any of the many problems de Garay suffered (and continues to suffer from) immediately after receiving her second Covid-19 shot as part of Pfizer’s clinical trials, Berry also managed to digress from the topic and harp on such things as “right wing talk radio.”
Maddie’s mother, Stephanie de Garay, says that “[i]n less than 24 hours of her second dose, [her previously] healthy and vibrant 12-year-old had a severe systemic adverse reaction.” In her mother’s words, Maddie is now “in a wheelchair, receives all her nutrition and medicine through a feeding tube, cannot control her neck, has constant stomach, back, neck and body pain, vision problems, tinnitus, can’t feel from the waist down, allergic reactions, dysautonomia and… her condition is declining.”
Maddie’s parents have given numerous interviews and even testified on what happened to their daughter (see videos here and here).
Stephanie de Garay testifies on her daughter’s behalf in Washington: “She had severe chest pain. The way she described it, it felt like her ‘heart was being pulled out of her neck.’”
In Pfizer’s report on its trial, there was one participant listed with an ongoing adverse event at the trial cutoff date. Maddie’s adverse events were ongoing when the trial ended, meaning that either the description of that participant, who was “eventually diagnosed with functional abdominal pain,” referred to Maddie, or that Pfizer omitted Maddie from its report to the FDA altogether. Pfizer deemed the adverse event unrelated to the individual’s injections.
Berry sent warm thoughts Maddie’s way over the airwaves noting that she “hope[s] she gets well,” but only after hammering down that “[i]t’s very difficult to say whether or not this girl was even in the trial.” This is an easily contestable claim. Perhaps one of the most convincing pieces of supporting evidence is a recorded phone call between Maddie de Garay’s parents and Dr. Robert Frenck, lead author of the study on the safety of Pfizer’s vaccine in adolescents.
When Dr. Berry then attempted to quash Maddie’s story by suggesting that “it’s just really unclear that those concerns are related to the vaccine,” it became obvious why she had opted not to describe Maddie’s condition in any detail — her paltry ‘lack of causality’ argument is utterly unconvincing and talking about Maddie’s reactions could have potentially fueled local ‘vaccine hesitancy.’
Even if Maddie’s declining physical condition was not a result of vaccination, the situation still merits investigation. To date, this has not occurred, and the de Garay family has been left to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills out of pocket. Maddie was one of 1,131 participants in her trial who received the shot, meaning that her extremely severe adverse reaction occurred at a rate of around 884 per million.
Pfizer is accused of fraud not only in the US, but the EU, too.
These are two of the most notable instances of fraud allegations in the context of Pfizer’s Covid-19 shots, but not the only ones.
Concerns have surfaced following the court-ordered release of Pfizer’s clinical trial documents requested under FOIA by Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT). A non-profit organization comprised of international scientists and medical experts, PHMPT advocates for data relied upon by the FDA to license Covid-19 vaccines to be publicly available for independent review and analysis. After the FDA attempted to keep the data sealed for 75 years, and Pfizer intervened to also delay its exposure, the court ordered release at a rate of 55,000 pages per month starting on March 1, 2022.
With so much data being released, many eyes have been necessary to pore over the many documents. The FDA has still not yet finished producing all of Pfizer’s data, so it can be difficult to draw certain conclusions until it has released all of its publications.
Just recently, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office announced an investigation into vaccine contracts signed by the EU and Pfizer, opening up the possibility of fraudulent financial activity.
And let’s not forget Pfizer’s track record of paying out multi-million dollar settlements for fraudulent practices (see here, there and everywhere), including what was the largest health care fraud settlement in the history of the US DOJ.
Silencing the alarm and refusing to acknowledge that there even might be fraud going on in Pfizer’s clinical trials as Berry has attempted to do is disingenuous, although perhaps unsurprising given that her incessant exaltation of the vaccines over the past two years has married their two fates together.
“Jefferson doesn’t have the level of population immunity that others do, because it did such a good job controlling the virus before.” — Dr. Allison Berry
_______________________________
Public Health Officer Dr. Allison Berry has presided over a pandemic response that boasts the most draconian mandates in the state. Primary series vaccination uptake is reported to be 80% in Jefferson County, the third highest statewide. And at 32.1%, uptake of the bivalent booster is double the state average.
The result is that JeffCo is currently identified as one of the highest-risk counties in Washington, often with some of the worst case numbers and surely the greatest ongoing fear quotient.
Wrap your head around the bizarre non-sequitur (above) of why we have the worst level of immunity statewide. It is precisely because her destructive mandates and high vax uptake were so successful, she explains, that we are now the most vulnerable.
It is absurd pronouncements like this, delivered with impunity, that make it so difficult to narrow down Berry’s disinformation statements to a short list.
Despite her mantra that the shot will protect you, we need only look at all the double-vaxxed and boosted public figures championing these leaky injections who have succumbed to the virus. Often more than once. Dr. Anthony Fauci and President Biden top that list nationally, and locally are County Commissioners, Port Townsend’s City Manager, most of the City Council, and members of the Board of Health.
Nonetheless, embracing Einstein’s definition of insanity, Berry’s response is that more of the toxic mRNA spike protein brew will fix that. Even as the two-year fear narrative dissolves in admission after admission after admission of false information perpetrated on a traumatized public, Berry still continues to push for more dangerous shots in arms and for useless masking that destroys our human connections.
As with our year-end TOP TEN 2021 Spin Doctor Disinformation Statements, four of us have contributed to this series — the editorial team (Annette Huenke, Stephen Schumacher and Ana Wolpin), plus Free Press contributor Kincaid Gould.
Part One begins with a fact-check of Berry’s inconsistent claims about v-safe.
_______________________________
BERRY on the CDC’s cover-up of v-safe data:
“V-safe [is] actually publicly available datasets.
Nobody had to be sued to release them because
they’re already publicly available.” (10-20-22 BOH meeting)
FACT CHECK:
The above two assertions about v-safe are outright lies. Curiously, on October 10 Berry told the county commissioners a different story: “There is an anti-vaccine group that has been suing the CDC to get access to this raw data.”
Spinning the story one way for the commissioners, then doing a complete about-face for the Board of Health (BOH) ten days later, she lied that “nobody had to be sued.”
“I think it’s important to kind of review that for folks,” Berry riffed. At that Oct. 20 meeting she insisted that v-safe data had always been publicly available. “They are public access datasets,” she assured the BOH. “You can go in right now and track your side effects related to getting vaccines.”
What is v-safe and why has the CDC avoided transparency?
V-safe is a phone app developed to “tell CDC about any side effects after getting the COVID-19 vaccine.” It was designed to monitor adverse reactions, to capture problems following the experimental shots initially identified in pharma’s trials. The American public was told that v-safe would detect safety signals more rapidly and reliably than VAERS and that all v-safe data collected would be transparent.
Contrary to Berry’s assertion to the Board of Health that these are “are public access datasets,” the opposite has been true. Not only has the CDC hidden v-safe data for most of the past two years, the agency spent a year playing legal games — dodging FOIA requests and multiple lawsuits — to keep the data under wraps.
As reported in my March 2021 Free Pressarticle, information from the v-safe Active Surveillance system was publicly disclosed for only the first five days of America’s Covid vaccine rollout, December 14-18, 2020:
“Over those five days, more than 5,000 “Health Impact Events” immediately following injections were identified. On December 18 alone, 2.79% of people who received first dose shots—3,150 out of 112,807—used this smartphone app to report reactions so severe that they were ‘unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, [and/or] required care from a doctor or other health professional.’”
When initial v-safe reporting undermined pharma’s Safe and Effective narrative that the federal government had committed over a billion dollars to promote, the data went dark. Only one other snapshot from v-safe — titled “First Month of Covid-19 Vaccine Safety Monitoring” — can be found in CDC materials. In a 2021 “Safety Update” justifying the shots, the CDC included this table below. It showed high percentages of “local and systemic reactions” like headaches, fatigue, fever, myalgia and joint pain, the reactions health officials spin as “proof the vaccines are working.”
Those signals alone were significant enough to raise red flags. More important is what the CDC avoided disclosing. What this first-month report didn’t show were severe adverse events, emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and other serious outcomes which, as revealed below, were formidable. Following that incomplete cherry-picked snapshot, for nearly two years all v-safe information was then covered up.
In June 2021 Aaron Siri, lead counsel for the nonprofit Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for release of the CDC’s V-safe data.
6/24/21 FOIA request for “All de-identified data submitted to v-safe since January 1, 2020.”
“Mandating that millions of Americans inject a product for which they cannot hold the manufacturer liable if the product injures them demands complete transparency, especially when it comes to releasing the data underlying the product’s safety. FOIA exists precisely so that Americans can obtain transparency, and, in this case, obtain the data which supports the CDC’s claims to intensive safety monitoring.”
After a response from the CDC that the data requested “could not be located,” an appeal was filed in August 2021. A second, reworded FOIA request was submitted on behalf of ICAN in September.
When that request was also sidestepped, a lawsuit was filed in December.
Page 1 of first lawsuit from ICAN petitioning for release of the CDC’s v-safe data.
The CDC continued their attempts to hide the data. A third FOIA request was submitted in April 2022, and in May another lawsuit was filed. It had been almost one year since the first FOIA request was submitted.
The second lawsuit declared that ICAN “intends to make all v-safe data immediately available to the public so that independent scientists can immediately analyze that data.” It referenced the need “to address serious and ongoing issues with the vaccine program, including waning immunity [and] adverse reactions.” Preventing independent scientists from reviewing this data, the suit argued, was “at best, irresponsible and unethical.”
CDC Ordered to Release Data
While Berry lied to county commissioners that “nobody had to be sued” for v-safe data to be made public, the record shows that it took multiple FOIA requests and two lawsuits to force the CDC’s hand. Fifteen months from the initial FOIA request and twenty-one months after the vaccine rollout, a court order required the CDC to provide the v-safe data on or before September 30, 2022.
When forced to comply with the court order, the CDC said the v-safe files would be released to ICAN, but claimed they lacked the ability to post the information on their own website. After a year of maneuvering to hide this data, the agency disingenuously wrote that they had planned to post the data on their website, but had “not yet completed the technical and administrative processes required to post data.”
V-safe files were sent to ICAN just one month ago, at 6 pm on September 30. What the CDC claimed they lacked in “technical and administrative” proficiency to do for 21 months, ICAN’s modest staff accomplished over a weekend. On October 3, three days after the grassroots nonprofit obtained five digital files comprised of initial data from more than ten million users, ICAN launched a user-friendly web dashboard allowing the international science community and other members of the public to view the data themselves and perform interactive searches on that data.
ICAN, not the CDC, is responsible for making this information accessible, nearly all of it (86% as shown above) reported to v-safe in the first six months of the rollout. The multi-billion dollar public agency charged with safeguarding our health instead used its formidable resources to block release of v-safe reports.
What did the CDC not want us to see?
Unsurprisingly, signals of damage from these shots — which public health officials like local mouthpiece Dr. Allison Berry continue to deny — are alarming. The percentage of adverse health impacts following Covid vaccination reported to v-safe over 21 months is more than ten times the 2.79% seen in the December 18, 2020 snapshot, on day five of the rollout.
Of the 10 million+ individual users who participated in v-safe after their shots:
71.3 million symptoms were entered, an average of 7 symptoms per user
6.4 million adverse health impacts were reported
33% (3.35 million) were unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, and/or required care from a doctor or other health professional
7.7% (782,913) had a health event so severe it required medical attention, emergency room intervention, and/or hospitalization, most of those events requiring multiple visits
Contrary to Berry’s lies, the CDC not only had to be sued for access to this critical data, they spent more than a year fighting to prevent its release. Had this data seen daylight, as fanfare leading up to the rollout had promised (“this information helps CDC monitor the safety of Covid-19 vaccines in near real time“), Emergency Use Authorization of the shots could never have remained justified.
V-safe data is still not available on the CDC’s website. It can only be accessed through ICAN’s interactive dashboard.
This is not the end of the story.
While incriminating enough on their own, the five files a court order forced the CDC to release one month ago were incomplete. ICAN discovered through further litigation that an important category of the reports was not included in the files they received. The agency continues to stonewall on disclosing all v-safe records. More lawsuits are pending.
The v-safe app provides simple checkboxes for symptoms experienced following vaccination, like the local and systemic reactions shown in the CDC’s first month Safety Update (12/14/20 – 1/13/21) — headaches, chills, joint pains and other symptoms that are said to be proof the shot is “working”.
The app also includes check-the-box fields for users to report if they required medical attention, emergency room intervention, and/or hospitalizations following the shots, as revealed on ICAN’s dashboard.
V-safe does not provide checkboxes for “Adverse Events of Special Interest,” issues the CDC knew from early trials were much more serious concerns. These “Prespecified Medical Conditions” are shown in the v-safe protocol attachment below, but omitted from the app.
The sometimes deadly medical issues we have been seeing in unprecedented numbers — like acute myocardial infarctions (heart attacks), anaphylaxis, seizures, Guillain-Barre syndrome (paralysis), strokes, pregnancy problems and myocarditis/pericarditis — were known to be caused by the mRNA injections when v-safe was developed. But the CDC avoided delineating them on the app.
Instead, the only way to capture reports of those issues was in “open fields” — empty boxes where users could type in additional details. Anything other than check-the-box local and systemic reactions which generally did not result in medical intervention had to be reported by the user as supplementary information.
Despite the extra effort it took, of the ten million registered users in the v-safe database, over six million open field entries were submitted. These open field reports were not included in the data the CDC turned over to ICAN and are yet to be revealed. The further lawsuits in progress expect to obtain that information.
Berry’s tangled web of disinformation
The CDC designed the v-safe app to make it easy to report symptoms people were told to expect from the shots, but obscure the devastating outcomes that would undermine the public’s confidence in their Safe and Effective narrative. This obfuscation has supported their lie about the incidence of severe adverse events, and provided cover for health officers like Berry to parrot that disinformation:
“Severe side effects from these vaccines are incredibly incredibly rare,” she told the Board of Health during her v-safe review, “on the order of less than 10 per million doses delivered.”
After falsely assuring the BOH that v-safe data has always been publicly available, and lying that no one had to sue to get it, Berry lamented that “unfortunately, anti-vaccine groups have now gotten access to those datasets and are now using them and twisting the numbers in them to spread misinformation about the vaccines to suggest or argue that they are less safe than they actually are.”
In her erratic, loquacious web of disinformation — yes, there was a lawsuit / no, no one had to sue — she insists that there wasn’t a lack of transparency, just that the data had fallen into the wrong hands. She provides no proof that numbers were “twisted”, just blithely makes unsubstantiated pronouncements that anti-vaxxers are spreading misinformation.
Anyone can now review and analyze the CDC data for themselves through ICAN’s online portal.
And Berry’s claim that severe side effects are less than ten per million — incredibly incredibly rare — is belied by 7.7% of v-safe users reporting they required medical attention, emergency room intervention, and/or hospitalization after their shots. That translates to 77,000 — not 10 — per million serious adverse reactions following the experimental injections.
It is the CDC and spin doctor Berry doing the number twisting. And with six million open field v-safe data entries still to come — information that shot recipients had to be motivated to report in their own words — our glib, dismissive health officer has a whole lotta twisting ahead to maintain her crumbling disinformation narrative.
Summer is over. The rains have begun. I am back at my desk.
While we were enjoying the fine weather, our federal and state governments have continued with their plans to protect us from Covid. Let’s play a little good news/bad news and find out what they have been up to.
Good News! On August 31st the FDA authorized the new, fast-tracked, Covid boosters by Pfizer, Moderna and BioNTech for adults and children. The fast tracking was determined to be necessary to get ahead of the constantly mutating virus because past efforts took too long to produce effective substances.
Bad News! It was only tested on mice. Eight mice.
Good News/Bad News? They only needed to test it on mice because much of the data used to develop these fast-tracked shots came from the previous mRNA vaccines that the pharmaceutical companies, and our government, have told us — come on everybody, let’s say it together and make Allison Berry happy — are “safe and effective”.
Spoiler alert: this is sarcasm, but it is factual. I have paraphrased this information in effort to speak the truth plainly. If you think I am making this up, feel free to fact check by reading through the FDA document yourself.
We continue.
Good News for Pharma/Bad News for Parents
In what looks a lot like an end run around the many massive state-level protests against adding the Covid shot to the vaccines required for children to attend school, parents found the following in their news feeds on Thursday, October 20th.
Today, CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended updates to the 2023 childhood and adult immunization schedules, which includes incorporating additional information for approved or authorized COVID-19 vaccines. CDC only makes recommendations for use of vaccines, while school-entry vaccination requirements are determined by state or local jurisdictions.
How long before Washington State’s Board of Health reverses their decision from April 13th of this year, and makes the Covid shot mandatory to attend public school, stating that they “are just following CDC recommendations”?
If you don’t think this could happen, I point you to the continued medical tyranny of Jay Inslee as demonstrated in Directive of Governor 22-13.1 dated August 5, 2022. The Governor’s emergency powers were supposed to end on October 31; not true if you are a current or future state employee.
Here is the heart of the directive (bold emphasis mine):
To address this continuing threat and ensure the health of our workforce, I am directing a permanent COVID-19 vaccination condition of employment requirement for state executive and small cabinet agencies as follows:
New Employees. As a condition of employment, all new employees of state agencies must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, as recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Current Exempt Employees. All current exempt employees must be fully vaccinated.
As defined by Directive 22-13.1, an employee is “up to date” with their COVID-19 vaccination when they have received all doses in the primary series and all boosters recommended for them by the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
Just in case loyalty to Jay Inslee isn’t enough to assure compliance, the directive also authorizes the state Office of Financial Management to incentivize state employees to remain fully vaccinated.
On September 21 the Seattle Times revealed that a tentative deal between the governor and the Washington Federation of State Employees Union includes a $1000 bonus for each state employee receiving a Covid-19 booster shot. The cost of this bonus to state taxpayers has been estimated at close to $41 million.
Back at the federal level, why was this CDC approval necessary?
Was it because the federal government was concerned for our children’s health?
Or could it be that once the Covid shots are recommended for the list of official childhood vaccines by the CDC, there is no longer any legal liability for these corporations?
Direct from the Health Resources and Services Administration’s covered vaccines webpage:
The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) covers most vaccines routinely given in the U.S.
For a vaccine to be covered, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) must recommend the category of vaccine for routine administration to children or pregnant women.
The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), a federal government managed, no-fault alternative to the traditional tort system providing compensation to people found to be injured by certain vaccines.
The funding for this program comes from an excise tax on all vaccines administered across the country.
The latest information I could find that attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of this program was from a 2014 General Accountability Office report that calculated an average time to adjudicate claims at 3.5 years. Imagine how well the program is working now with the VAERS report listing 1,442,261 adverse effects just for Covid shots?
Could there also be a profit motive involved in being approved to the childhood vaccine list, a guaranteed income stream created for these pharmaceutical companies from now until well into the future?
In what has to be pure coincidence, only hours after the CDC recommendation, Pfizer management, on a call with holders of Pfizer stock, announced a 400% increase in the price of their Covid booster. They had been charging our government $30 a dose. Now that private insurance will be paying, Pfizer will be requiring $110 to $130.
Let’s end with some good news.
On Friday, October 21, the day after the CDC recommendation, the Informed Consent Action Network, ICAN, announced they will fund a legal challenge to any state that mandates the Covid-19 vaccine to attend school. That same day the governors of several states — and just in case you are planning a move, let me list them here: Florida, Virginia, Wyoming, Utah, Oklahoma, Iowa, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, South Dakota, Montana, South Carolina, Ohio, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho — announced that regardless of recent CDC recommendations, they will not be mandating Covid-19 vaccines for school attendance.
Now is not time to sit back. Chris Reykdal, Washington State’s Superintendent of Public Instruction has been clear in his statements that he wants to mandate the Covid-19 vaccine for school attendance. He has been clear that this will be a statewide decision and no district can opt out.
Keep talking to your political representatives, find them here. Keep making phone calls (360-236-4110) and sending emails to the State Board of Health. Make it clear that the October 20th CDC recommendation changes nothing. If there is even the slightest doubt in their mind that this shot might not be safe and effective for our kids, then they have a moral obligation to keep the Covid-19 vaccine off the list of Washington State’s requirements for attending school.
— UPDATE —
This promotion was sent to PTSD parents after 10pm on Thursday, Oct. 27th. This is how desperate they are. Back in the day, our parents taught us to never take candy from strangers…
Jefferson County will be alone in its own private State of Emergency if commissioners approve its 13th temporary Covid-19 response policy emergency declaration at their October 24 board meeting. Meanwhile, Washington State and all its other counties (including neighbor Clallam) will have discarded their emergency declarations as of October 31.
County residents have been under the grip of multiple overlapping federal, state, county, and city emergency rules since both Jeffco and Port Townsend declared a State of Emergency on March 16, 2020, joining the February 29 state and March 13 federal declarations.
These unprecedented emergency lockdowns were originally sold by former Jeffco Health Officer Tom Locke and others as short-term measures to “flatten the curve” so it “does not overwhelm medical services,” which White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Deborah Birx recently admitted was an evidence-free deception to “make these palatable” while “I was trying to figure out how to extend it” since “I didn’t have the numbers in front of me yet to make the case for extending it longer, but I had two weeks to get them.”
A careful peer-reviewed cost/benefit analysis found the emergency “lockdowns have had, at best, a marginal effect on the number of Covid-19 deaths. … The costs were at least thirty-five times higher than the benefits. The reasonable conservative case is that the cost/benefit ratio is around 141 … Lockdowns are not just an inefficient policy, they must rank as one of the greatest peacetime policy disasters of all time.”
So the goal posts for lockdowns and emergency declarations kept moving as each old justification became discredited, eventually landing on little more than public health case-detection funding imperatives, perpetuation of Emergency Use Authorizations for the mRNA spike protein injections, and convenient ramping up for any future actual emergencies.
Public Comment About Extending Jeffco’s Emergency
That brings us to the County Commissioners’ October 17 meeting, whose agenda centered on discussion and potential action “In the Matter of Adopting a 13th Temporary County Policy Based on Emergency Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic”, about which I expressed the following Public Comment:
I saw that Jefferson County may be keeping its emergency orders even after the other counties and the state lifts them on October 31, and personally I would really urge you not to do that. For one thing, that would be putting you out there special doing this unlike the other diligence from the other counties.
I understand that according to our health officer, “Jefferson doesn’t have the level of population immunity that others do, because it did such a good job controlling the virus before.” And there may be cases now and there may be cases in the future, but I’m not quite sure that constitutes an emergency.
If things happen during the winter, then maybe at that point one could consider calling it an emergency. Part of it is, I really would like us to normalize.
Forgive me for putting it this way, but for your electoral prospects, a lot of information has been coming out that makes the wisdom of these lockdowns look suspicious. To the extent you’re standing out there as the only county doing this thing, that allows you to be saddled with this label of being the “Lockdown Commissioners” or having done it above and beyond what other counties have done. Whereas if you’re just following the same actions as everybody else, at least you’re acting in a more safe way about all of this.
Another thing… a lot of stuff has been coming out in the news, like the European Parliament hearing Pfizer say they hadn’t done any testing on transmission for their vaccine, which was obviously part of the original narrative about it.
You’ve got countries around the world — Denmark, Norway, Australia — abandoning a lot of these recommendations for kids to have this vaccine, so things are changing and the narrative is shifting insofar as what the appropriate guidance should be.
So you could almost say that this is becoming the emerging guidance.
Commissioner Responses to Emergency Comment
Commissioner Kate Dean responded:
One of things I’m most pleased about as we move into this endemic phase, we can start to heal some of the things that have cursed our country and communities. I think we knew all along this was a grand experiment; none of us had ever been through anything like this, and we’re all doing our best. I think it will be years before we understand what was effective and what was the right choice.I feel some hope that the things which have divided us for the last few years, that we can at least all say: we tried, we’re doing our best, we did well in this community. I don’t have regrets, but I’ll say we learned every step of the way.
Our conversation last week will be continued this afternoon regarding the emergency order. I have some concern about continuing it, mostly because I feel there’s a bit of a “crying wolf” situation: If we continue it, we perpetuate the sense of emergency, and then, where there actually is an emergency, it’s harder to rally folks to respond as such.
But I trust very much that the staff who are dealing with the administrative end of this think there’s a lot of benefit in keeping it in place to revisit in a few more months, in part because it’s hard to get stuff going again, so if we were to rescind it, then getting it back in place if we have a surge just takes capacity, when Public Health and the Department of Emergency Management have less capacity.
So I’m going along with staff’s recommendation. We’ll have more discussion about it today, but I anticipate we’ll go ahead with keeping it in place.
But I share your concern; I worry it’s a little disingenuous myself. But it’s a tool for administrative purposes, and we’re not doing any sort of lockdown. Obviously we’re all here today, and we’re glad to have the public back!
Commissioner Greg Brotherton responded:
I’m on the screen here today because covid is still with us. I’m on day 6 of my second positive test. While it was a very mild case, we still as a county have to deal with the reality that there is a lot of transmission, I assume over 400 per 100,000 in our community.
And some of the levers that emergency order for us are really critical to come up with extra pay for staff so we can maintain services, and also take care of them so they can stay home when they’re sick.
I’m also feel like it it’s a little bit disingenuous, and we’ll have a robust conversation I’m sure at 1:30, but I’m also like Commissioner Dean inclined to take the staff recommendation and just keep it on a little while longer, not as a lockdown, but to make sure we still have those levers available as we continue to deal with it, as I can attest with firsthand experience.
Commissioner Heidi Eisenhour responded:
I’m still evading covid, full stop, thankfully! … I was saying last week, we put all this stuff in place, so what happens if we rip the Band-Aid off now, with the potential cases happening in Europe, that Dr. Berry has been talking about, and how we’ve tended to follow the trend with our cases going up after cases in Europe in the past.
Personally, I know more people with covid right now than I ever have. And so, I don’t feel it’s time to stop having the precautions in place that we do, especially how the things we put in place affect the team here in the county for human resources issues. So It’s something we are going to have more of a conversation about this afternoon.
Health Officer on Emergency and Everyday Powers
Following Health Officer Allison Berry’s community update, Commissioner Brotherton asked her:
Where does the requirement to wear masks in health situations come from, could you remind me?
Berry answered:
It’s currently a mandate from the state. So there is an order from the Secretary of Health, and the Secretary of Health’s orders extend past the declaration of emergency.
That’s probably worth digging into a little bit. So health officers and secretaries of health always have the ability and authority and obligation to control infectious diseases regardless of states of emergency. Governors only have that authority when a declaration of emergency is in place.
So after October 31, the Governor doesn’t have the ability to issue orders around the pandemic, but health officers still do. We always have had that authority, we will continue to do so. Secretaries of health do too.
Many folks didn’t know we existed before the pandemic, but we have always been here! So if there was, for instance, a measles outbreak, we would issue health orders around that.
And so, as long as we’re still seeing high rates of covid transmission, we’re likely to see health orders related to that, but they’re more targeted now than they used to be, because we’re in a different phase of the pandemic.
And that one most critical space is health care. We need people to be able to see their doctors, and not get covid from that interaction. And so that’s where we are still requiring masking. Longterm care facilities also fall under that space, because people can’t choose whether or not they need to live there. And it’s really important to protect them in that space.
Brotherton followed up about the emergency resolution:
We’re going to be considering our 13th emergency resolution about covid this afternoon, and I’m wondering if you had a chance to look at it, whether you weigh in favor of keeping our emergency resolution or adding a 13th?
We’ve talked a little and had public comment today about it being disingenuous to call it an emergency as we move into an endemic phase. And it does seem a little strange, at the same time, there’s still a lot of important levers that it opens up to us to use. As I can attest, covid is still very high in our community.
Berry answered:
Yeah, it’s certainly a challenge to figure out how to move in a seamless way into this endemic phase and not lose all the gains that we’ve made as a community. And I think that’s where these kinds of emergency declarations come in.
The biggest thing that the local emergency declaration makes available is the ability to rapidly fund certain situations or make certain control efforts available.
But again, the emergency declaration doesn’t actually have a lot of bearing over whether or not, for instance, I can issue a health order.
And I think that’s where sometimes people end up having strong feelings about the emergency declaration is that thought that we would no longer have public health authority. And it actually has no bearing on that.
What it does is allow us to fund covid test, or potentially move forward something like the Department of Emergency Management responding to a covid outbreak. So it allows us a little more flexibility in responding to things.
I think it was appropriate, for instance, the federal goverment did just announce that they extended their emergency declaration so that we can continue to use some of the tools we need to fight covid through the fall.
It’s a complex decision whether or not to maintain it. But I think it’s useful to have those tools available and only use them when we need them, but it’s good to have that option.
Public Comment After Emergency Wordsmithing
Commissioners returned in the afternoon to wordsmith their potential 13th emergency declaration together with public health staff. That draft would then be taken to the closed County Covid Coordination meeting on October 21 for further work. Afterwards I gave another Public Comment:
I really appreciate you all wanting to honor staff, and if you stop these orders now, you’d have to ramp up and all — I grok that.
But what are the pluses and minuses here? I heard from the health officer that the big advantage was that the emergency declaration would allow getting funds, for example, to pay for additional covid testing and management.
I feel like a lot of this is sort of redundant stuff that is already being covered elsewhere. So there’s funds for more testing?
Why exactly is Jefferson County in a special condition compared to other counties, if we’re the only county that’s going to be doing this? I also heard that it was because we have more cases.
We also had one death recently, which I think was somebody in her 80s with lots of comorbidities who had been vaccinated and boosted but not fully. That’s also a situation in which who’s to say she died from the covid or died from all these other conditions.
So the main thing is the cases. Is this really an emergency any more? I do feel we’re in the endemic stage and not the pandemic stage.
I do feel like it’s disingenuous, as I’ve heard from others to try to be applying emergency things for something that is really just a casedemic here.
It’s not lots of deaths. It’s not the hospitals being overburdened. It’s just lots of cases.
And part of the reasons for all these cases is all the testing. So in a sense, if you had more funds from having this emergency order, then you could have more testing which could possibly provide more cases and make things seem to be more like an emergency.
So I’m concerned that we’re in this walking-on-eggshells mode, where — oh my gosh! — we just had a case, now we’ve got to shut down the whole workplace or have everybody be masking, changing, doing things in different ways.
In a way, I personally feel like it would be better to step back, not have it so easy that we’re just continuing the state of emergency.
Why not just basically say, like every other county is doing, say: Okay, it’s really not an emergency any more.
It’s a matter of concern that we need to be watching; it’s not an emergency. If it is an emergency in the future, then we can at that point make a decision and ramp up.
And then that’d be due diligence rather than it being this eggshelly thing, where on the turn of a dime, we’ll be back in this mode and you’ll never be able to feel you can normalize.
One other thing I’ll toss out: Jefferson County is different in one other way: I saw that there’s 22.6% bivalent boostering, which is more than twice the 10.2% in all the other counties in this state.
Who’s to say, I mean we have a correlation here, not a causation necessarily, between the boostering and the additional cases in this town. We’ve also been told by our health officer we don’t have the same level of population immunity as everyone else. So who knows?
But let’s take a step back and wait and see.
Commmissioner Dean responded:
I also came at this from the pluses and minuses, and like you heard me say earlier, I was afraid of the “crying wolf” scenario.
But what I couldn’t get to are what the negatives were. There are some positives that are potential positives, like not having to go through this whole process again.
Should we decide that we are in a state of emergency in a couple of months as we see numbers rise potentially, or if there are funding opportunities that we want to be eligible for, or just need to be able to respond in a true emergency fashion — you see that it takes us a long time!
Our process is very deliberative and includes a lot of people. On Friday, our staff will be meeting again. And so that’s where I felt like the negatives just aren’t there.
I appreciate that we’ve softened the language and really tried to not overstate things in this version, so I’m still happy to move it ahead at staff’s recommendation.
Commmissioner Brotherton responded:
I think you may be getting hung up on the word “emergency” like I did as well. And I think this is really just about the preservation of the temporary standards that we have.
I’m supportive of taking this to staff and seeing if everyone agrees, if we can get a consensus from the county coordination meeting this Friday.
I don’t see (as Kate said) any negatives from this. It just allows us to keep paid covid leave, which is critical for some of our staff. I’m in favor of moving this forward to county coordination.
Commmissioner Eisenhour responded:
I know covid has hampered all the departments, and now we’re needing to reduce the hours that the transfer station’s open because of capacity issues. It’s not tied to this policy, but it’s tied to people being sick and our county family.
I think taking away tools for managers to provide our team with what they need when they need it – it doesn’t feel like the time for that right now.
But the line of questioning that I had at the beginning of this session, where I was trying to unpack whether there was another place where we could take care of these policy matters … what I heard was that there’s not. So that further shores up my support for us continuing this conversation.
On October 19, Ben Montalbano asked County Commisioner (District 3) candidate Marcia Kelbon this question:
If you were the County Commissioner now would you vote to extend the Emergency Authorization Act, now before the board? Many of us voters are not sure about you stand on community imposed mandates.
Candidate Kelbon’s response:
I do not see a need or defensible justification for a continued state of emergency. There are continued county employee protections that best be addressed by permanent employee policies.
To elaborate, I am surprised that this is even being considered at this point and that the three commissioners have expressed support for an extension.
I highlight county employee protections such as extended sick leave because that is the reason they most discussed, but they acknowledge that this could be addressed through their employee manual.
The other reason stated often is that it is a lot of work to put an emergency measure back in place if there is a surge. Work avoidance is not a reason to limit liberties.
The deputy prosecuting attorney also noted that the current emergency ruling avoids the need for competitive bidding for OlyCap – indefensible.
If there is a surge, people can choose to mask and/or boost if they choose. We need to be out of a police state and get on with life, with individuals and businesses making their own health decisions.
This quarantine law provides narrow emergency detention powers to health officers for up to 10 days over infected persons posing serious and imminent risk, but only after a long series of provisions and recourses have been exhausted — none of which in any way applied to or authorized Health Officer Berry’s open-ended discriminatory regulation over restaurant/bar business practices, requiring them to demand HIPAA-protected private health information from their patrons.
Our counties’ restaurant vaccine mandate was a pure example of illegal emergency power overreach and the dangers of governance not by laws but by lawless “emergency” orders. Anything goes in an emergency — which is not a good thing.
Emergency declarations risk replacing everything good about our government — laws, rights, and due process — with lawless orders by unaccountable executives and unelected health czars.
They are meant for genuine short-term physical emergencies like earthquakes, and if used to replace normal government indefinitely under the pretext of long-term conditions like flus and climate change, such perpetual emergency takeovers are indistinguishable from totalitarian coups.
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“In the end it’s very simple:
Emergency powers are just another name for lawlessness. You can be a nation of rights and laws, or a nation of emergency. You cannot do both.”
– el gato malo
Greg Brotherton as county commissioner has steered millions of dollars to an organization he heads as its chairman. That organization is OlyCap. Brotherton has violated state laws prohibiting such conflicts of interest because he has voted for and actively lobbied the other commissioners to approve the unprecedented large grants and contracts to OlyCap, according to a formal complaint pending with the State Auditor. Rosemary Shurman, a licensed attorney living in Port Ludlow, filed that complaint. Because the State Auditor says they won’t be able to address the complaint until next year, we are publishing Shurman’s explanation of why she alleges that Greg Brotherton has broken state law.
— The Editors
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In an apparent conflict of interest, Jefferson County Commissioner Greg Brotherton has used his elected position to promote spending millions of dollars of county funds to benefit a nonprofit organization that he chairs. Contrary to State law, Brotherton has advocated for and voted to approve funding to Olympic Community Action Program (OlyCap) of over $3.5 million in the form of grant monies and real properties held by the County.
Most of this largesse has been in the form of grants and service contracts. Close to a million dollars was in real estate, including the sale of a county property for a tenth of its assessed value.
Brotherton began his term as County Commissioner in 2019. He is up for re-election this fall and is being challenged by Marcia Kelbon. I decided to explore the legal issues surrounding an alleged ethical violation by Brotherton based upon his dual roles as a County Commissioner and Chair of OlyCap’s Board of Directors. For full disclosure, I support Kelbon based upon her reasonable and practical responses to multiple issues facing our county.
From my reading of the law, I conclude that Brotherton’s actions violate ethics laws. A complaint has therefore been filed with the Washington State Auditor to address this issue. The WA State Auditor’s Office has indicated that they will be considering this issue next year during its regular audit process. The Assistant Director of Local Audits indicated that they lack the resources to conduct an audit at this time.
Contrary to the opinions of Brotherton’s supporters, the complaint is not simply “politicking.” It is a legal issue that deserves an opinion from an unbiased decision maker.
Mr. Brotherton is a Jefferson County Commissioner (a municipal officer) and is a member of the board of directors of a nonprofit – OlyCap. Brotherton has repeatedly advocated for passage of certain funding and land divestment resolutions, at County Commissioner meetings and in his capacity as a County Commissioner. He has showered OlyCap with millions of dollars and acres of land at below market value. Brotherton’s advocacy for resolutions which provide direct financial benefit to OlyCap is the type of “influence” contemplated by the legislature, which elevates what is otherwise a “remote interest,” to that which is prohibited under the Revised Code of Washington (RCW) 42.23.
Jefferson County awarded a total of $2,709,163.70 in grant agreements and service contracts to OlyCap from 2019 through the first quarter of 2022, during which period Brotherton served as both a County Commissioner and as Chair of the Board of OlyCap. (See Exhibits A-E, documents received from Jefferson County in response to a public records request.)
In addition, in September 2019, Jefferson County sold to OlyCap a parcel of land (at 7th and Hendricks streets, Port Townsend) which was assessed at $362,280 for $36,200 — 10% of its market value and a discount of at least $326,080. In 2021, Jefferson County purchased another parcel of land (on Mill Road, Port Townsend) for a price of $602,000, which has been dedicated exclusively for use by OlyCap. In August 2022 the County signed a 42 year lease with OlyCap for this property for rent of ten dollars ($10.00).
The following table summarizes the total contributions by Jefferson County to OlyCap through March 2022:
The amounts awarded to OlyCap from 2019 through the first quarter of 2022 reflect a steady increase from the historic level of payment by Jefferson County to OlyCap. In 2018, for example, $552,808.94 was awarded to OlyCap. Brotherton has routinely voted, as part of a three-member board of county commissioners, in favor of the award of service contracts and grant agreements to OlyCap. It appears that Brotherton has not recused himself from any OlyCap funding votes.
Influencing Officials to Award Contracts to OlyCap
In violation of RCWs, Brotherton routinely Influences or attempts to Influence other County Commissioners to award contracts to the organization he chairs. Below are some examples during 2022 of his efforts to influence the other two commissioners in connection with approving grant agreements or service contracts to OlyCap:
January 3, 2022 – Workshop between the Jefferson County Commissioners and OlyCap concerning additional funding for the “Caswell Brown” tent shelter being run by OlyCap
“Commissioner Greg Brotherton requested the special workshop around funding for Caswell-Brown Village. He advocated for spending $500,000 more of American Rescue Plan Act funding toward Phase 2, which would provide sewer infrastructure to the site. Phase 3 would see the installation of showers and a kitchen area.
‘There is a groundswell of funding for housing and affordable housing right now,’ Brotherton said. ‘I think we should be willing to spend up to another $500,000 to get the infrastructure squared away… Finishing the first permanent emergency shelter is something that I think we should commit to.'”
March 28, 2022 – Meeting of the Jefferson County Commissioners (Brotherton’s comments are shown in italics and obvious typographical transcript errors have been corrected. Time stamp 1:50:59)
Commissioner Eisenhour: “So now we’re gonna have a workshop on the Caswell Brown Village and this was an item that Commissioner Brotherton brought to the agenda.”
GB: “You know, I think we’ve all been waiting with baited breath for kind of a budget for what? Phase 2-A and 2-B look like for this kind of audacious and large program, which is critically needed. And I’ll just remind folks of where we were before we started this, which was an unmanaged encampment which was still costing us quite a bit of money at the Jefferson County fairgrounds and the um, that the impacts have been dramatic, both in the quality of life of the, of the residents who really have no other place to go as well as for the surrounding neighborhood and the fairgrounds and this is, I’m still proud of. This is a, as a visionary project which, which steps up and takes responsibility for a problem that doesn’t necessarily fall on our shoulders, but that is part of our community and so does fall on your shoulders. Thank you.
April 4, 2022 – Meeting of the Jefferson County Commissioners. (Brotherton’s comments are shown in italics and obvious typographical transcript errors have been corrected. Time stamp 1:56:49)
GB: “So can I just restate the ask to understand kind of where we are. The way that I see it, the million dollars that we committed so far is eaten. And we have operations to consider which are right around 30K a month, $875K, say a million dollars to get to the end of the year, and into the RFP process and for recording fees, and housing fund board funds for operations and potentially other funding mechanisms for ongoing operations. And I really like the possibility of a sale to recoup funds to help supplement this. I think we’ve got some other funding mechanisms that are, you know, that could do part of it, you know, I think this would be a really good candidate for 1590 funds, we still have no process yet and its, and we of course committed to a collaborative process with our housing fund board on figuring out that process. But you know projects like this and the Evans Vista work force housing project and habitat’s project, we’ve got some big projects in front of us, that look like. I mean I feel like we could really move the needle on some of these projects with those funds. So that’s just my personal and I have not talked about that with the housing fund board or anything. And as I say, that is a collaborative decision, we might have the final pen on paper but the whole idea is that we make those in partnership with our city and citizen representatives. But, to me, moving this project forward again, is really critical, a $500K lifeline right now to get this going and talking about what we want with the property, I’d be willing to certainly carve out those additional parcels and maybe even the Larry Scott trail piece that has more potential for future development down the line and then selling what’s left for Phase 2A and Phase 3 at the very least to OlyCap would be kind of my starting point for consideration.”
The meeting continued. Following deliberation, in which both other County Commissioners expressed concerns over this additional spending, Greg Brotherton moved for and the Commissioners approved the award of the additional $500K funding to OlyCap.
April 25, 2022 – Meeting of the Jefferson County Commissioners in which Brotherton argued for use of ARPA funding to further support the Caswell-Brown shelter operated by OlyCap in the face of concerns by the other commissioners. (Obvious typographical transcription errors have been corrected and Brotherton’s comments are in italics. Time stamp 4:53:24)
GB: “We could use that 262 would make a big dent on Caswell Brown.”
County Administrator: “Well, right. I mean when Heidi and I were monkeying with this sheet, I put 18 in there for Mill Road and then we went To -37000 down below. And then Heidi consulted with Kate. Okay. They take out that 300 because we haven’t committed it yet. So that’s the only reason we have the 262 at the bottom.”
Commissioner Eisenhour: “Yeah, this is what’s committed.”
GB: “Well, I mean we don’t have something else to use it will have that money and we need it, it would start the project again. If we could get this…”
Commissioner Dean: “We could also take um, you know, commit a chunk of capital funds to the Hadlock sewer instead of ARPA.”
GB: “Oh right Mhm. I mean if we could get you know, 400 that would turn everything on again. They just finished Phase 2-A.”
Commissioner Eisenhour: “So when is it gonna stop though? I mean we’ve spent, well if we do that we’ll have spent two million of our funds on it and then it was that enough.”
GB: “That’s enough to get Phase 2-A. And they’re looking for housing trust fund and other funds.”
Commissioner Eisenhour: “So that would be other sources of funding that get mobilized for it.”
GB: “Or for any future development. That’s what yeah, that’s what OlyCap has presented to us and that’s the plan. So yeah, that would be the end of the infrastructure investment from us. There’s operations, they think they can get some funds for operations and shift stuff around but if they’re not moving to permanent supportive housing for years, which is what I think will happen. It’s I don’t I’m not sure if this operation funds are actually realistic. Um So but you know, we have other revenue streams, you know, our normal Um you know, recording fees and everything that we have RFPs for already. So they’ll look for it but you know, 400 would finish Phase 2-A. Mhm. Yeah and capital funds could be used for the sewer. Right, that’s not a problem. What do you guys think about that?”
Commissioner Eisenhour: “I don’t know, I would love to see us putting more money into other segments of housing.”
August 26, 2022 – Commissioner Brotherton made a motion to approve the 42 year term lease with Olycap for $10 a year. The motion was approved. (Time stamp 09:20:02 & Agenda pg.2) Although the county retains the deed for the property, the appearance of impropriety remains, in light of the overwhelming favoritism shown to this organization by an elected official who sits on their board.
Revised Code of Washington – Code of Ethics Laws Prohibit Influencing Officials
The Jefferson County Civil Deputy Prosecutor’s analysis of RCW 42.23.030 and conclusion that Commissioner Brotherton’s conflict of interest is nonexistent — merely because he does not directly receive monetary compensation from OlyCap — completely ignores both the stated purpose of Chapter 42.23 and RCW 42.23.040.
The purpose of Chapter 42.23 is to “prohibit certain instances and areas of conflict,” particularly with respect to “the transaction of business” by elected officials, such as Brotherton. However, the statute also permits certain conflicts of interest which are “deemed to be only remote” (RCW 42.23.010).
RCW 42.23.030 prohibits municipal officers from being “directly or indirectly” “beneficially interested” in a contract. RCW 42.23.040 defines scenarios when a conflict of interest is “remote” and thus the municipal “officer is not interested in a contract within the meaning of RCW 42.23.030.” The scenario where a municipal officer holds a position as a “non-salaried officer of a nonprofit corporation” is explicitly labeled a “remote interest.”
This type of remote interest is considered a conflict of interest, but it is one sanctioned by the legislature when the conflict is disclosed because it qualifies as only a “remote” conflict. However, RCW 42.23.040 also reverses the “remote interest” distinction where the municipal “officer influences or attempts to influence any other officer of the municipality.” Under this scenario, the municipal officer is considered “interested… within the meaning of RCW 42.23.030.”
RCW 42.23.040 can be read as follows:
“A municipal officer is… interested in a contract, within the meaning of RCW 42.23.030, if the officer has only a remote interest in the contract… [and] the officer influences or attempts to influence any other officer of the municipality of which he or she is an officer to enter into the contract.”
Under RCW 42.23.040, the legislature classified this specific scenario: a municipal officer also holding a position as a non-salaried officer of a nonprofit corporation, who exerts influence or attempts to exert influence over other municipal officers when making a decision related to a business transaction involving the same nonprofit, as a prohibited conflict of interest “within the meaning of 42.23.030.”
That is the exact scenario which took place in the examples above.
Jefferson County conveniently ignored RCW 42.23.040 when concluding there is no conflict under RCW 42.23.030, even though .040 expressly addresses an ethics violation for a County Commissioner who is a “nonsalaried officer of a nonprofit corporation.” Furthermore, the argument that there is no ethical violation because there are more than 50 nonprofit organizations that have Jefferson County Commissioner board members and no one has ever been challenged, is illogical.
A practice that has not received judicial review does not mean that the practice is lawful. Nor does the County’s citation to a 1996 Court of Appeals decision resolve the legal issues when the decision does not even address RCW 42.23.040 and its provision which specifically addresses Brotherton’s position as a “nonsalaried officer of a nonprofit corporation.”
Mr. Brotherton advocates for financial awards to OlyCap, as well as votes for such awards, contrary to RCW 42.23. Even the Municipal Research and Services Center of Washington (MRSC) states:
Moreover, if the County is so confident in its legal position with respect to Brotherton’s ethical dilemma, why hasn’t it requested an opinion from the Washington State Attorney General? The Jefferson County prosecutor is one of the few government officials who can make such a request. Private citizens cannot make a request.
In addition to the law which prohibits Brotherton’s conflict of interest, there is an appearance of fairness issue. Deciding to donate almost four million dollars to a nonprofit (primarily for homeless shelters and housing) and then serving as the chair of the nonprofit’s board of directors has the appearance of impropriety.
No one is criticizing the nonprofit. But you would think that Brotherton would follow the MRSC advice and refrain from participating in County decisions that give money to the nonprofit that he is significantly involved with. Brotherton is taking an unnecessary risk. RCW 42.23.050 states that a contract made in violation of the ethics laws “is void” and could be “grounds for forfeiture of his… office.”
Why not take the high road and just refrain from participating in those decisions? The citizens of Jefferson County deserve that.
“This is not over,” Julie Jaman told the Port Townsend City Council on October 3, 2022.
At that meeting Katie Daviscourt, a reporter with Rebel News, confronted Mayor David Faber with his own words about having sex with dead chickens and a dog, and declaring that, “As mayor, I am legally required to be a pervert and deviant.” Faber has yet to explain using his title as mayor in connection with such statements.
Women’s rights advocate Amy E. Sousa addressed council about sexism and the misogynist lies of transgender ideology. She promised she would be back to seek council’s support for a declaration like the one it issued to “especially” recognize people who have declared themselves a man though born a woman, and vice versa. The forthcoming declaration, Sousa said, would call upon council to stand up for women and girls. Will Port Townsend City Council lift up women and girls as much as it has wrapped its arms around people who say they are transgender?
Earlier that day Daviscourt had attempted to deliver to the YMCA more than ten thousand signatures on a petition circulated by Rebel News to “Let Julie Swim.” But the Y and Mountain View Pool were again closed. Was another day of locked doors and dimmed lights due to lack of staffing or to duck Daviscourt?
The Mountain View Pool has been closed quite a bit since August 2 when we published the first story on how Jaman — an 80-year old woman who had been using the pool for much of her life — was banned for stating her objection to a man in the women’s showers. Jaman encountered “Clementine” Adams in a woman’s swimsuit when she was naked. She states she saw him watching little girls in states of undress. Jaman has also said he was leering at the little girls. She told him to get out and repeated herself to the Y’s pool manager who had entered the room. Unknown to Jaman at the time, this man was a Y employee who in March of this year decided he would henceforth be a woman. He acknowledges he is biologically still quite male and “interested in women.”
Adams, we learned from his interview on a Stitcher podcast, never returned to work. Thus Jaman accomplished her objective of getting him out of the women’s showers. The Y has since been advertising an opening for an “Aquatics Program Lead,” the title of the person who banned Jaman on the spot, as she stood naked and wet from her shower. As we reported, both the male employee in the woman’s bathing suit and the aquatics manager failed to safeguard children in accordance with basic YMCA policy and the common sense of anyone with the slightest concern about the dignity, privacy and safety of women and children.
Adams gave his only public statement in that Stitcher podcast that we wrote about on September 10. His admissions hurt himself and his former employer. Public officials for their part (the pool is public property, owned by the school district and leased to the city) have chosen to hide behind a bland and inaccurate statement drafted by City Manager John Mauro. That statement repeats the smear that Jaman had a history of misbehavior that justified her permanent banishment — allegations never explained or supported by the plentiful documents we were once assured existed. Two months after publicly spreading accusations that Jaman had a history of misconduct, the Y still has not told even Jaman, let alone her attorneys or the media, what horrible things she allegedly did that justified barring an elderly woman from using a public pool to keep up her health and fitness.
The Mayor distinguished himself by excreting infantile and sick comments on Twitter that have made Port Townsend a national embarrassment. His glib and cruel dismissal of the concerns of rape victims prompted the women’s press conference on August 15 that turned into an ugly mob scene more fitting of Portland and Seattle than the “welcoming” laid-back Victorian seaport and arts community of Port Townsend. His comment the day after older women were knocked to the ground outside City Hall — that the previous evening’s confrontation had been “beautiful” — only further fanned flames, leading to the September 3 rally by members of the Proud Boys and Washington Three Percenters who cast themselves as champions of women and free speech.
There was at least one gun among the mob on August 15 assaulting women’s rights advocates. According to law enforcement sources, there were plenty of guns on both sides at the September 3 rally. An overwhelming law enforcement presence, including a police spotter on City Hall’s roof and the Washington Highway Patrol Rapid Deployment Team at the ready, kept things quiet and even comical. At one point, a burly Three Percenter danced with willowy counter-protestors to The Village People’s iconic “YMCA.” A more recent version of that tune, adapted specifically to the Julie Jaman/YMCA controversy, was released this summer by comedian Mr. Menno. Called “Y Chromosome.” It’s cringey and wickedly funny.
It has been an interesting past couple of months, and as Jaman promised, it’s not over.
On October 6, Daviscourt returned to the Mountain View Pool with a camera crew, Sousa and Jaman. Daviscourt was attempting again to deliver more than 10,000 signatures on the petition calling for the Y to “Let Julie Swim.” As of this writing the signatures on that petition now exceed 11,000.
Daviscourt checked to make sure the pool would be open. It was, but minutes later, a sign went up banning media from entering. The doors were locked and it went dark inside. When Daviscourt knocked, a business card for the Y’s communication director along with the sexist pink and blue banner of the trans movement (remember when boy/girl stereotypes were condemned?) were slipped through the door. Minutes after that the Y called police and the women were ordered to leave and threatened with arrest if they returned. Daviscourt’s video report may be viewed here.
Enter Councilor Wennstrom
Port Townsend City Councilor Libby Wennstrom
Which brings us to Port Townsend City Councilor Libby Wennstrom. Following the August 15 mobbing of older women who were calling for respect for women’s dignity and safety, she posted on her Facebook page a call to expel all “TERFS” from Port Townsend. That acronym for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists has become a sexist term used to justify violence and threats against women who do not buy into the fiction that a man or boy — human males — can magically become a woman or girl — human females — by snapping their fingers and switching around the blue and pink in their wardrobe. Ana Wolpin covered that bit of hate-mongering from Wennstrom in her article, “City Officials Lead Hate Campaign Against Women.”
Wennstrom’s Facebook post with the tagline “Libby Urner Wennstrom updated her cover photo.”
Wennstrom removed the post once The Free Press reported on it here and at our Facebook page. Her comments, which were partially preserved by one of our readers, show an even deeper malevolence, particularly towards Sousa. Wennstrom later said she “never intended it to go public, but in retrospect as a public official she doesn’t think she should have posted it.” She only meant to share it among friends, not publicly, as if that excuses her actions. If she does not want her actions to be those of a public official, she should not have accepted elected office.
Shortly afterward, Wennstrom participated in the Stitcher podcast released September 1 that revealed much about the YMCA’s failures to safeguard children, including Adams’ bizarre, unsolicited claim that he was so blind — due to not wearing his eyeglasses, though he was on duty as a children’s caretaker — he had trouble seeing around the women’s showers.
The podcaster, a fellow named Garrison, repeatedly expressed his misogynist contempt for women. He’s a man who says he’s been taking hormones for a year, presumably testosterone suppressants. Somehow that qualifies him to judge which women are really feminists and which are “so-called feminists,” the latter identified as any woman who does not embrace transgender ideology and holds to biological truths about men and women.
The podcast also interviewed some anonymous local residents who disclosed they’ve been training themselves in “gun clubs” with members of the “queer community” and people who say they are trans. They claim they are “getting this really good organic network building throughout the community” to kick Jaman “out of their businesses on sight.” Despite all the calls for calm and the prudent discretion of other city officials (with the exception of the warped Mayor), Wennstrom chose to participate in this broadcast.
Contrary to the desires of anonymous thugs on Stitcher, Jaman has not been kicked out of any Port Townsend business. She is not having to do all her shopping and dining in Silverdale and Sequim. Instead, she has been given surprising support from local businesses. I was interviewing her when she received well-wishes from the head of one of downtown’s largest business operations. On that same day she had received several letters of support, including one envelope with a gift of cash. The only operation that has excluded Jaman is the YMCA.
Lies and Agitprop
According to Wennstrom’s podcast statements, Julie Jaman “attacked” the young man in the women’s shower area and “made a jerk of herself.” Further, the Port Townsend Free Press itself was responsible for causing the mob scenes, the Proud Boys event, the months of disruption and civic discord and PT’s bad international press. “Right wing media” piled on and Amy Sousa tried “to force her way” into the Mountain View Pool to film patrons as they were undressing, Wennstrom lied. And, Proud Boys are everywhere, also PTFP‘s fault.
Wennstrom uttered so many false, derogatory and inflammatory statements in her few minutes in the interview, it’s difficult to believe anything she said.
She is apparently greatly impressed by Port Townsend Free Press’ impact. She thinks we have the ability to ignite a global firestorm about the trampling of women’s rights in little Port Townsend. She says we got “so many” facts wrong, and in the same breath accuses us of not reporting that Adams was a YMCA employee. Hold on, councilor Wennstrom… that’s contradicted by the fourth sentence of PTFP‘s first report about the incident, which states: “The woman [Jaman] had to stand naked in the presence of the male, a YMCA employee, despite her pleas that he leave.”
In blaming — crediting? — Port Townsend Free Press for igniting the firestorm Wennstrom completely ignores the broader coverage — much of it original — from the feminist and LGB media (that’s lesbian, gay and bi-sexual, and no “T” for transgender). While PTFP wrote the first story, it was the widely-followed Reduxx that launched it nationwide. Reduxx describes itself as a publication of “pro-woman and pro-child safeguarding and commentary.”
While Adams’ name was available in the police reports (that’s how we identified the man in the woman’s bathing suit described by Jaman), Reduxx was first to publish a photo of Adams in connection with the story. They didn’t have to dig very deep. Adams has published his photo for the world to see on a GoFundMe page, where he is asking for money so he can pay for amputation of his penis and testicles and cutting of his vocal chords.
And though our photos and initial reporting were sometimes used or mentioned, coverage by Matt Osborne of LGB United (a lesbian, gay and bi-sexual platform) propelled the story even further. Post Millenial journalist Andy Ngo and Substack commentator Mattie Watkins were the first to uncover Mayor David Faber’s sordid, sick alter-ego in which he identifies himself as a “chickenfucker,” discusses sex with a dog, defends child pornography and public masturbation, and aligns himself with a YouTube character who calls for decriminalization of child pornography and lowering the age of consent so adults can have sex with children. Then Mandy Stadtmiller, a New York magazine and former Penthouse columnist, asked aloud in an article by the same title, “Why is Self-Described ‘Pervert and Deviant’ Mayor David Faber So Excited About Terrorizing an 80-Year Old Woman Who Doesn’t Want Men in Little Girls’ Changing Rooms?”
We did not write the first coverage of the mobbing and bullying of women permitted by the City of Port Townsend on August 15. Osborne beat us to it. He had his story up within hours of Julie Jaman and her daughter being escorted to their car by four Highway Patrol officers.
We did enjoy unprecedented traffic to our website, far more readers in those days than the Peninsula Daily News and The Leader regularly attract. But our big numbers pale in comparison to the readership in the hundreds of thousands of the Twitter posts and stories by Osborne, Sousa and Watkins, and the more than a million hits we understand Reduxx got on its Twitter posts.
Left Wingers Now “Extreme Right Wing”
That was all separate and independent of what Wennstrom may consider “right wing media,” unless she dumps women’s advocates, lesbians, gays and bisexuals fighting against pedophilia and the sexualizing and grooming of children into her mental “right wing” basket of deplorables. Mayor Faber apparently does, as he dismisses all those concerned about men around naked women and girls — including rape survivors — as suffering from “right wing moral panic.”
Wennstrom labelled The Port Townsend Free Press as “extreme right wing” and “the blog of one person.”
If that’s not it, maybe it’s the in-depth reporting that undermined the imposition of dictatorial decrees by the Governor and local health officer, coupled with commentary favoring liberty and personal choice? If that’s not it, maybe it’s reporting on how the YMCA banned a family from its facilities for reporting the display of child pornography. And if not that, maybe we’re “extreme right wing” because of those articles opposing turning over public parking spaces to a handful of downtown businesses, and exacerbating the already severe parking problems in our fair city’s commercial core?
One last shot in the dark: were we “extreme right wing” because we were the only media reporting on the human tragedy — the drug abuse, crime and suffering — in the troubled encampment at the Fairgrounds that left one young woman dead and led to another suicide? That’s it… writing about the suffering of the homeless and how they were ignored by the city makes us “extreme right wing”!
The current editors of this publication (I started the Free Press in 2018 but handed it off more than a year ago) would laugh at being called “extreme right wing.” They have been fixtures of PT’s progressive, liberal and peace activist community for decades. And as for this being “the blog of only one person,” this site has published articles by over two dozen authors.
We haven’t surrendered our critical thinking abilities. We do our own research, believe what our eyes and ears tell us, and reach our own conclusions. We’re independent thinkers still capable of seeking objective truths. We are not helplessly, blindly “woke.” To Wennstrom, that equates with “extreme right wing.”
Proud Boys Under Every Rock
Anyone who doesn’t toe Wennstrom’s ideological line is “right wing,” and probably a Proud Boy, too (even if female). For example, Wennstrom brought up the Back the Blue rally organized by wives of local law enforcement. She had been asked if Port Townsend had seen much in the way of large-scale protests, and this was what came to her mind.
As we reported on August 31, 2020, a car and truck parade in support of law enforcement stretched over six miles from H.J. Carroll Park in Chimacum to downtown Port Townsend. I personally counted about 400 vehicles in the cavalcade. A former judge, local business owners, law enforcement families, members of the Rakers car club, and local citizens participated in showing support for law enforcement during a summer when they were under attack by the Port Townsend City Council.
Mayor Faber, then a city councilor, had wanted city police disarmed and there was serious talk of defunding and cutting the police department. Black Lives Matter of Jefferson County (now virtually defunct, along with the international, multi-million dollar scam umbrella organization) tried to humiliate our sheriff and police chief. A KPTZ travesty of a radio program subjected the sheriff to fantastical, delusional accusations from a BLM leader who, in addition to having a long history of substance abuse-related incidents — including crashing his bicycle into the Fort Worden gate and urinating himself — had just months before been arrested for trying to break into an occupied Port Townsend residence.
So the community rallied in huge numbers for the men and women of the Port Townsend Police Department and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office… about which Wennstrom deceived podcast listeners by calling it a Proud Boys event.
That Evil Amy Sousa and Inciting A Mob
Wennstrom has some grudge against Sousa. She leveled personal attacks against Sousa in Facebook comments to her now-deleted post (preserved partially by one of our readers) calling for the expulsion from Port Townsend of all women who don’t like having men in their bathrooms. She implied that Sousa was in this fight just for the money and insinuated that Sousa had caused a young child’s suicide — then disingenuously distanced herself from her own words.
In the Stitcher podcast, she said that Sousa, accompanied by a camera crew “tried to force” her way into the Y’s locker rooms while they were being used by patrons. Wennstrom admits she wasn’t there, but makes the accusation anyway, just as she spread the rumor that Jaman had “attacked” Adams.
Katie Daviscourt, the Rebel News reporter mentioned previously, did politely ask to film in the Y and left when her request was denied. Daviscourt recorded this in her report and you can see her request to film at the 2:22 mark.
That’s not the only lie Wennstrom has spread to inflame people against Sousa, Jaman and her boogey-men of the “right wing media.” In her comments accompanying her hateful “TERFS Out of Port Townsend” call to action, Wennstrom wrote:
“The narrative that’s circulating is that a ‘known pervert’ (sometimes it’s a ‘sex offender’) was masturbsting [sic] and touching/undressing little girls in the locker room. Which is a crime, and would be charged as such. But that’s not even remotely what happened.”
I’ve read almost everything published on the Jaman matter, but I have never seen any allegation anywhere that Adams was masturbating or that he was a sex offender. Jaman distanced herself from claims he had touched the little girls. It was Adams himself in his later Stitcher interview who admitted to touching at least one young girl as she was dressing/undressing.
Wennstrom condemned herself in her own comments when she wrote that “creating outrage from a false or misleading story is part of a larger political playbook.” She herself helped organize the counter-protests against Jaman at the Y and whipped up the crowd that turned into the mob that tore down suffragette flags and called women TERFs and c-nts at the same spot where previous Women’s Marches had rallied.
Indeed, This is Not Over
Conflicts between women’s rights and men invading women’s spaces are being repeated across the country. In Vermont, most of a girls’ high school basketball team was banned from their own locker room because they dared express their true feelings about having to undress in the presence of a young man who calls himself trans, and having to be with him as he undresses and showers. Lawsuits challenging men invading women’s sports are pending in many jurisdictions. A growing number of states are not tolerating the nonsense of men gaining access to women’s private, vulnerable spaces by putting on a bit of make-up for the day.
Wennstrom and other council members will be asked to issue a proclamation in support of the dignity, safety and privacy of women and girls, as Sousa will be coming back to City Council. It was Wennstrom’s suggestion to issue the proclamation declaring that the city is “especially” supportive of people who call themselves trans. Faber and council members Owen Rowe and Amy Howard have cheered on Adams’ quest for funds to cut off his penis by giving him money to pursue “gender reassignment” surgery. Where will she and the rest of city council stand when called upon to affirm by official proclamation that women’s rights are human rights?
The meme “Trans Rights are Human Rights” is on yard signs across PT, along with the slogan “Science is Real.” But it is biology that stands in the way of men magically becoming woman. As Mr. Menno’s fun parody song drives home, that persistent Y chromosome that makes men men resides in every cell, sinew, muscle, bone, nerve and speck of brain matter. It does not go away when a man puts on women’s attire and cosmetics — the truly sexist equivalent of blackface.
One last time. If you haven’t watched Mr. Menno’s message, take a few minutes. This is a very gay man speaking through his music and comedy, not someone Wennstrom can blithely deride as “extreme right wing.”
When a skeleton is unearthed, its very structure speaks “male” or “female”. Transgenderism is denial of science and biology. It is ideology pulling us back to the dark ages when logic, reason and the scientific method were suppressed in service to tribalism and religious orthodoxy. Indeed, transgenderism is best understood as tribalism and a faith system. Only by pounding it into people’s heads — by indoctrination of the impressionable or the intimidation of mobs like those Wennstrom whipped up screaming “Trans women are women” — can this lie take hold. It is the stuff of totalitarianism rooted as it is not in any immutable, verifiable, objective truth, but in a fabricated narrative imposed by various manifestations of force.
J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has become a leading opponent of the trans agenda that erases women and sexualizes and victimizes children. She has stood up to attacks far more vicious and threatening than those Wennstrom has leveled against local women. The horrors of the trans agenda now coming to light in the United Kingdom are proving her right. Rowling’s challenge to the “genderists” can be leveled with equal justification against Wennstrom and her fellow council members.
On the heels of revelations about the massive injuries inflicted on children by puberty blockers and mutilating surgeries, Rowling recently wrote in response to the exposure of pedophilia in Britain’s “establishment” trans activist lobby:
“You know, I thought things were pretty bad when you were arguing to put convicted rapists in women’s jails, when you shrugged off masked men roughing up lesbian protestors and tried to shout down de-transitioners talking about what was done to them by ideologically-captured doctors. Women, gay people and vulnerable kids have suffered real harm and you? You cheered it all on. You still prefer wilful blindness and four word mantras to considering you might have got this badly wrong. You became part of an authoritarian, misogynist, homophobic movement and you didn’t even notice. Enjoy the sense of your own righteousness while you can. It won’t last.”
