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March 13, 2022 - Epoch Times
21:04
Final Federal Vaccine Mandate BLOCKED Nationwide; Tony Podesta Paid $1M to Lobby for China Firm
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Good evening.
Three days ago, a federal judge issued this injunction right here against the vaccine mandate on federal employees, meaning that the mandate as of this moment is officially blocked across the entire nation.
Meanwhile, according to these federal disclosure documents right here, over the past half a year, meaning over the past six months, Mr.
Tony Podesta, Who is the brother of John Podesta, he has earned $1 million for his work in lobbying the Biden White House on behalf of Huawei.
And Huawei is the Chinese tech company which is deemed to be such a national security risk that the Trump administration hit them with sanctions and even barred them from being used in any critical U.S. infrastructure.
And yet, they now have a voice in the White House.
Let's go through it all together.
This is your daily Facts Matter update, and I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times.
And now let's begin today's discussion by talking about the vaccine mandates.
And to start with, it's worth noting that while places like England, Ireland, and even the Czech Republic are beginning to open up, move on, and dismantle their COVID mandates, well, right here in America, the federal government is fighting tooth and nail to maintain the many mandates that they have put in place.
Now, Some people have actually been messaging me and expressing their confusion regarding the federal vaccine mandates here in America.
Some people say that they're confused because they thought that something was blocked, but then later they realized it was not blocked or vice versa.
And so, in order to set the stage for you on what's actually happening right now, let me give you a brief outline on where we're at today with the four vaccine mandates that are being pushed by the federal government.
Which, for your reference, are the OSHA mandate on large companies, the HHS vaccine mandate for healthcare workers, the military vaccine mandate on service members, as well as the vaccine mandate on federal employees and federal contractors.
So then firstly, in regards to the OSHA mandate, about a week and a half ago, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an injunction against it, and it sent the case back to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Meaning that while the case is still being litigated, the federal government cannot impose these vaccine requirements on companies with over 100 employees.
And so effectively, the OSHA mandate is currently blocked and still being litigated in court.
Secondly, in regards to the HHS mandate on healthcare workers, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to block it, and instead it just sent it back to the circuit court for further litigation.
Meaning that while this mandate is still being debated in the court of law, the federal government Can compel healthcare workers to get the shot if they happen to work for an organization that accepts either Medicare or Medicaid funding, which is frankly most of them.
So the HHS mandate is not blocked, but it is still being currently litigated.
Then thirdly, you have the vaccine mandate in the U.S. military.
And generally, this mandate has been put into effect, and at this moment, the overwhelming majority, north of 90% of the service members across all the branches, have gotten the shot.
And really, the only serious legal pushback that the military mandate is currently receiving comes from service members who are suing the government because their religious objections are not being recognized.
Now, those lawsuits are currently making their way through the system, and there have been some developments in this particular regard, such as a federal judge who recently issued a temporary injunction on behalf of several dozen U.S. Navy SEALs who are suing the federal government to get their religious objections to the vaccine validated.
However, that particular injunction, it only applies to those specific U.S. Navy SEALs.
And so by and large, the military vaccine mandate is in full effect on all branches that directly report to the Pentagon.
And so there are a few caveats, for instance, the U.S. Coast Guard, as well as several National Guard units throughout several different states.
But generally, we can say that the military mandate is in full effect.
And so then lastly, we have the vaccine mandate on federal employees.
And exactly three days ago, meaning last Friday, a federal judge ruled that the Biden administration does not have the authority to impose such a mandate, and therefore, he blocked it from going into effect across the entire country.
Now, specifically, the judge in question here is named Judge Jeff Brown, and he was appointed as district judge for the Southern District of Texas by President Trump back in 2019.
And in terms of why he decided to block the vaccine mandate on federal employees, well, he issued this 20-page ruling right here, which explains his reasoning.
And the thrust of it has to do with the idea that according to federal law, the U.S. president, and here's what it says in here, quote, may prescribe regulations for the conduct of employees in the executive branch.
And so the argument that the U.S. government was making was that the act of becoming vaccinated was a type of conduct that, according to the law, the U.S. president could regulate.
However, Judge Brown disagreed with that interpretation of the law, and he said that conduct that the president can regulate has to be workplace conduct.
Here's specifically what the judge wrote as a part of his ruling.
Quote, So, is submitting to a COVID-19 vaccine, particularly when required as a condition of one's employment, workplace conduct?
The answer to this question became a lot clearer after the Supreme Court's ruling earlier this month.
The Supreme Court has expressly held that a COVID-19 vaccine mandate is not an employment regulation.
And that means the president was without statutory authority to issue the federal law.
And as you can imagine, the plaintiffs in this lawsuit, who were the Feds for Medical Freedom, which is a grassroots coalition of several different groups which are fighting against the vaccine mandates, they were thrilled with the judge's decision.
Here's in fact what they said in the statement.
Today's decision by Judge Brown is a victory for the thousands of men and women who want to serve their government without sacrificing their individual rights.
The 6,000 plus members of Feds for Medical Freedom want nothing more than to continue their service to this country without being subjected to unconstitutional mandates.
For the time being, the court's ruling grants them that wish, but the fight is far from over.
We will continue to pursue every lawful avenue available to ensure our members' rights are respected and their service is honored appropriately.
And so now, with this injunction fully in place, what this means is that the last, meaning the fourth federal government mandate, is now blocked while still being actively litigated in court.
And so that generally is the current state of the federal government's vaccine mandates.
However, as you are very likely aware, that does not cover all of the myriad of mandates that Americans face.
Because depending on where you live in the country, meaning which state, which county, which city, well, you could be subject to all different types of mandates.
And just as an example of all the very types of mandates that you can actually see, well, just yesterday, the governor of Connecticut announced that if you would like to visit someone in a nursing home within the state, well, you have to show either proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test.
Here's specifically what Ned Lamont, who is the governor of Connecticut, he's a Democrat, and here is a statement that he released shortly after signing an executive order.
We know that some of the people who are most vulnerable to the impacts of COVID-19 include those who live in nursing homes, which is why we need to be doing everything we can to protect them from the virus.
This is one more precaution we can implement at these facilities to keep them safe.
And so now, if you would like to visit your family member in a Connecticut nursing home, you have to show either proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test.
Now, of course, very likely this measure was taken in order to protect the seniors from COVID. However, the irony of this approach is that it doesn't take into account the fact that people who have already been vaccinated can still test positive for the virus, especially with the spreading of the Omicron variant, which has shown itself to be very elusive.
In fact, this situation over in Connecticut, it reminded me of a tweet from Dr.
Aaron Kiriati.
He was the director of medical ethics who was fired from the University of California.
We discussed his story a few episodes ago.
And here's what he wrote recently on Twitter in regards to a...
Sort of similar situation.
My friend's cousin went to a Kings game.
There were three lines to get in.
Vaccinated, rapid test, proof of negative test.
He was vaccinated, but figured he'd get a rapid test just to see.
Tested positive.
Got out of that line into the vaccinated line, showed his passport, went in.
And now, given the new rules that are in place in Connecticut, you can have a similar situation play out in nursing homes as well.
Regardless, if you'd like to read more about all the federal vaccine mandates across the country, including the mandate on federal employees, which was just blocked, or if you'd like to read more about this new rule over in Connecticut, I'll throw the links to several articles into the description box below this video for you to check out, and all I ask in return is that you take a super quick moment to smash, smash, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
And now, before we move on over and discuss how Tony Podesta was paid a million dollars to lobby the White House on behalf of Huawei, I would like to take a super quick moment and introduce our sponsor for today's episode, and I'll do so from the sound booth.
That's right, Roman.
The sponsor of today's episode is an awesome company called AMAC. That's A-M-A-C. And it stands for the Association of Mature American Citizens.
Now, what I learned earlier today, though, is that you don't actually need to be a mature American citizen yourself in order to join AMAC, because even though they're an organization that's geared towards people who are 50 years of age and above, you can actually join at any age as long as you're an American-loving patriot.
And so what they say is that as our fundamental freedoms here in this country are being threatened by politicians who don't even necessarily know how to balance their own checking accounts, And as there is a concerted effort to censor conservatives by this woke ideology, one thing that you can do to fight back is to join the two million people who are already members of AMAC. And by joining, you'll have access to three main benefits.
The first benefit is the money-saving benefit because by joining, you'll have access to discounts on things like vitamins, restaurants, retail shops throughout the entire country.
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So AMAC, thank you so much for sponsoring this episode.
Now Roman in the studio, back to you.
And now let's move on over and talk a bit about foreign lobbying.
And to start with, this man here is named Tony Podesta.
Now, you might recognize him as being a longtime Democratic power broker.
And then furthermore, Tony Podesta's brother, Mr.
John Podesta, he served as the White House Chief of Staff to Bill Clinton and the chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign back in 2016.
He's the one whose emails were leaked to the public.
So why exactly am I bringing them up now?
Well, according to recent federal disclosures, I have them right here in my hand, over the past half a year, Mr.
Tony Podesta has earned $1 million for his work in lobbying the Biden White House on behalf of Huawei, which is a blacklisted Chinese tech giant.
Let me just repeat that.
Tony Podesta has earned $1 million just in the past six months alone for his work in lobbying the American federal government on behalf of a Chinese tech giant.
Specifically, a Chinese tech giant that was deemed to be such a national security risk that the Trump administration hit them with sanctions and even barred them from being used in any critical U.S. infrastructure.
Now, in terms of why Huawei is such a security risk, we here at the Epoch Times, we actually published a full 24-page report detailing all the issues.
But the short of it is that our reporting discovered that Huawei is essentially something like a tool that the Chinese Communist Party can use for global espionage.
And the American federal government seems to agree with that notion.
In fact, as I mentioned just a moment ago, back in the year 2019, the Trump administration, they slapped Huawei with a series of sanctions.
They stopped them from using US technology and software.
They shut them out of being part of any kind of critical US infrastructure.
And essentially, they destroyed their chances of building America's 5G networks.
Those sanctions, by the way, they partly led to Huawei losing about 30% of their revenue by the year 2021.
Now, those sanctions weren't the only reason for that shortfall, but they were a major factor.
And it's also worth noting that these types of actions against Huawei are actually bipartisan.
In fact, Joe Biden, he signed into law a new piece of legislation that was passed almost unanimously through both chambers of Congress.
And that new piece of legislation, it restricts Huawei even further by banning it from receiving new equipment licenses from U.S. regulators.
And so, being marred by all these problems, starting in July of last year, Huawei began to fight back.
And according to federal disclosure statements, they ramped up their lobbying efforts to a new high, and they hired about half a dozen lobbyists to push their agenda within Washington, D.C. Which brings us right back to Mr.
Tony Podesta.
And so, why exactly did Huawei give Tony Podesta $1 million over the past six months?
Or to be more precise, the question should be, what exactly did Tony Podesta do in order to earn this money?
And here's where things get a little bit murky.
Because we here at the Epoch Times, we of course reached out to both Mr.
Podesta as well as to Huawei themselves, but neither of them got back to us with a comment.
However, there is something to be gleamed here from these federal disclosure paperwork.
You can see them up on your screen for yourself.
What you're looking at is the lobbying report that Mr.
Podesta legally had to fill out due to the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995.
And under item number 16, titled Specific Lobbying Issues, Mr.
Podesta wrote that he lobbied for, quote, And then in terms of who exactly he was lobbying, well, according to the answer for question number 17, he was lobbying the, quote, White House office.
Okay, now we are actually getting somewhere.
Because according to these documents, Tony Podesta was paid $1 million to spend six months lobbying the executive office of the White House on behalf of Huawei's, quote, telecommunication services and impacted trade issues.
Okay.
And so then naturally, the next big question that arises, you can say the next million-dollar question, is what exactly did Tony Podesta achieve?
What did he deliver to Huawei in exchange for this $1 million payment?
And well, the answer, to be honest with you, is not altogether clear.
Because besides these documents right here, these lobbying forms, which by the way, you'll be able to find them all in the description box below.
Besides these forms, we don't actually know what meetings he had.
We don't know who he was actually able to get in front of.
We don't know what kind of deals he was able to strike.
Nothing is public record.
However, there is a way that we can take a look at what was happening by taking a look at some of the positive developments from the perspective of Huawei that have happened over the past six months.
For instance, back in September of 2021, the Justice Department reached an agreement with Huawei's chief financial officer, who was a woman who was arrested and detained for the last three years, and they allowed her to return to China.
Furthermore, this woman got a very, very sweet deal because under the agreement that she reached with the Justice Department, the U.S. government agreed to put her prosecution on hold until December of 2022, until December of this year, and they're also willing to drop her case altogether if she complies with certain specified conditions.
Now, when I first read this, because I've been following this case quite a bit over the last three years, I was rather shocked because...
The Justice Department has doggedly been pursuing this woman over the past three years.
Now, the woman in question, by the way, her name is Meng Wenzhou.
It's a rather hard name to pronounce.
But not only is she the chief financial officer of Huawei, but she is also the daughter of Huawei's CEO. So she's the chief financial officer.
She's the daughter of the founder and the CEO of Huawei.
So you can say that she is essentially part of the ruling family of the business.
And she was doing back deals with Iran.
So Iran is, of course, sanctioned by the U.S. And Huawei, through her, was doing business with Iran.
And so America put out an arrest warrant for her when she was flying through Canada.
The Canadian authorities, they arrested her.
They put her in detainment.
And then it caused this big international uproar.
China retaliated against Canada by arresting two Canadian citizens who were in China.
The whole thing was a big mess.
However, over the past three years, the Department of Justice has doggedly pursued her.
They wanted her extradition to America.
They were pursuing her.
They were pretty much exhausting all their channels.
And so, when back in September, they not only released her, saying she can go back to China, but also delayed her trial to December, and also said that they will drop the case altogether if she complies with certain specified conditions, well, you just wonder what was happening behind the scenes, which led to such a favorable condition for her.
Then, besides that case, back in October, documents which were released by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, they revealed the fact that companies which supply Huawei were approved to receive billions of dollars worth of licenses for U.S. technologies shipments.
Specifically, according to the documents that they received, the companies, they were approved to receive about 301 licenses, which totaled $103 billion in order to sell goods to two blacklisted companies, with one of those companies being Huawei.
Now, you might say, well, so what?
They're going to sell parts to these companies.
You can sell parts to companies.
And it's true.
However, according to Mr.
Michael McCall, who is the ranking member on this committee, he's a Republican from Texas, he said that these types of licenses, if they actually materialize into real shipments, they could end up being used by the Chinese military.
Because, of course, when you're a big business in China, it's all really the same.
The Chinese Communist Party and the big businesses in China, they're so intertwined that if you send something to a big business in China, You should assume it's going to be used, or at least has the potential to be used for military purposes.
But he said that American technologies could be responsible for China's reported test of a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile.
Here's what he said, quote, This decision by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, meaning the decision to release these documents, reflects our bipartisan support for conducting oversight over our export control system.
This data provides concrete statistics to a public policy issue that, until now, has been based solely on rhetoric and anecdotes.
The recent reports regarding China's hypersonic program that has likely been supported by US technology is another frightening wake-up call for why there must be more transparency and stricter enforcement when it comes to export controls.
And so, meaning that even though Huawei was on the entity list, even though they were not allowed to take part in critical US infrastructure, even though we put sanctions on them, well, third-party companies, they were still acquiring licenses to the tune of $103 billion to send technology over to Huawei.
And at least, luckily, we're able to learn about it because they released this data.
And so these are some of the positive developments that Huawei has experienced over the past six months.
Now, of course, I'm not saying that these positive developments are definitely due to the result of the lobbying that Tony Podesta was doing or the other five lobbyists that they were retaining doing in Washington, D.C. But, naturally enough, you can assume that having a friendly voice right there in the executive office of the White House certainly did not hurt.
Now, of course, we here at the Epoch Times, we did reach out to Mr.
Tony Podesta.
We also reached out to Huawei on comments regarding these issues, but neither of them got back to us for some reason or other.
Who knows why.
Regardless, though, when they do get back to us, well, I'll let you know right away.
Until then, let's head back to the studio.
If you'd like to read more about these lobbying efforts, as well as about the threat that Huawei poses to America more generally, I'll throw the links to several articles into the description box below this video for you to check out.
And I'll ask in return is that you take a super quick moment to smash, smash, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
And by the way, speaking of Chinese spying, if you'd like to learn more about some potential spies, Chinese spies, right across the border in Canada, well, check out an awesome episode of Crossroads where Josh digs exactly into that topic.
Here's a trailer.
Still a bit in the dark.
We're still trying to figure out exactly what the heck is going on here with this.
Assembling in a group like that and conducting physical training exercise on an island got successful by boat and by seaplane only.
Very opulent lifestyle.
I don't know how they get their money.
I'm assuming that it's through the book sales and through their conferences.
On one side, we see images of people wearing Chinese military uniforms, PLA uniforms, holding firearms, doing trainings of different types.
On the other side, you see this like high-end luxury lifestyle and some really weird imagery as well.
What would this be like if this was in the United States?
This is in Washington state, you know, just south of us.
It would certainly grab the attention of the public and agencies, etc.
If you want to check out that awesome episode, as well as all the other phenomenal content over on Epic TV, I'll throw a link to it.
It'll be right there at the very top of the description box.
Hope you click on it.
Hope you check it out.
Hope you subscribe.
And I hope that you join us on this journey of exploring this beautiful, beautiful world through honest journalism that is based in truth and tradition.
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And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times.
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