Investigative journalist Jimmy Tobias (from The Intercept) chats to Russell about winning his lawsuit against the NIH for a freedom of information request to try and work out the origins of the pandemic.http://www.jimmytobias.com/https://theintercept.com/2023/01/19/covid-origin-nih-emails/ For a bit more from us join our Stay Free Community here https://russellbrand.locals.com/Come to my festival COMMUNITY - https://www.russellbrand.com/community-2023/NEW MERCH! https://stuff.russellbrand.com/
If you're watching this live on YouTube right now, know that we will be with you.
We won't be you, you're you.
I mean, unless there is a limitless consciousness expressing itself through us as individual nodes, that we're part of a giant network.
I don't know how consciousness works.
In fact, nobody does.
What I do know for sure is that Joe Biden is a damn good dad.
And a very good boss.
Ron Klain, departing Chief of Staff, knows that too.
In a lacrimose announcement, he praises Biden's abilities as a father.
We're going to be looking at that in a moment.
Hunter Biden laptop revelations are abound.
Lost in euphemistic language.
Join us for the first 10 minutes while we're having a bit of a laugh here on YouTube, but once we click over onto Rumble, the home of free speech, that's what they're calling it, and certainly that's the reason we're there, so we can talk about the machinations of centralised power, the consent and consensus of the mainstream media in conveying narratives only that keep you, me, all of us in the dark, the inability for counter-narratives to simultaneously exist and be discussed Sensibly in an adult and empirical way in a climate where centralized corporate interests abide and govern.
We're going to be talking about the Wuhan lab leak with a fantastic guest, Jimmy Tobias from The Intercept, talking about all sorts of stuff which couldn't be conveyed on YouTube because as you know, YouTube's policy is set by the WHO.
The WHO is funded, number two funders, Let me know in the chat.
Let me know in the comments.
If you know who the second biggest funder of the WHO is, let me know.
In unrelated news, in our item, here's the news.
No, here's the effing news.
We're talking about Bill Gates, not from a conspiratorial perspective, actually, not about his previous and past relationships.
Those things are fascinating and interesting, but we're going to just track his investment throughout the pandemic.
This guy has got Nancy Pelosi-like investments.
Not Nancy Pelosi, Paul Pelosi.
Why do I keep thinking that Nancy Pelosi and Paul Pelosi talk about the investments?
It's not how it works.
They lay there in grim cadaverous silence in that bed, glancing up, making sure that the house is secured.
No one's on their way in!
Before we get into that though, there's a time for sentiment.
While you may not be able to afford energy, while you may be quaking under the weight of unpayable energy bills, true emotion is reserved for the expression of the changing of the guard within the White House.
One plutocrat leaves, another plutocrat comes.
Let's have a look at Rob Klain's departure speech.
I learned everything I know about how to be a good father from Joe Biden.
He is the best father I know and the best role model I know.
And along the way, he's taught me a thing or two about politics and policy as well.
He's learned everything I know about how to be a good father.
Yeah, he's a great guy.
It's incredible to see that amount of sentimentality and humanity.
It's a common thing, you'll notice that when people in political office leave.
It's like the thread that connects them to the matrix is cut and they have this sort of Gawping, yawning epiphany.
He is just a man who wants to learn how to be a father from dear Joe Biden, who's track record in that area.
Hey, you don't start questioning people's ability to parent, do you?
Even if it's potentially an agent of the state.
You probably want to question his business practices, you might say.
Question their business practices.
Certainly, Ron Klain.
Or the way that they keep files in garages.
Oh, get your files, get them in the silken wet, sopping garage.
Ron Klain, whatever you think about him, I think he's sort of lobbied on behalf of mortgage
companies and I don't think there's been any massive crashes
around mortgages, subprime mortgages in the last 20 years that led to the rise of extremism and poverty.
You're putting that all on wrong claim, are you?
Oh God, I'm so sorry that your house was foreclosed.
I should have lobbied on behalf of all.
Sorry about Lehman Brothers.
Sorry about the rise of different identities.
Joe Biden has talked me to be the best corn pop boxer that money can buy.
Have a look, though, at the geese.
If you think, oh, I don't want this cowardly lion sobbing sod as the chief of staff in the White House, look at who they've gone from one extreme to the other.
Check out once more Jeff Zients.
His name rhymes with science and he's yearning for a winter of death.
Have you unvaccinated?
You're looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm.
You go!
He seems like a cheery chap who, of course, has made a $440 million fortune, by coincidence, from the health industry, from questionable health care firms.
Might be the reason why the hospitals are overwhelmed.
Could have something to do with the fraud that's being committed.
Don't be so ridiculous.
He's bloody unvaccinated.
Sure.
Unvaccinated, laying around in hospital beds with their adverse events and myocarditis.
I'm talking about the unvaccinated.
I know, I know.
You've been very clear.
Just to clarify, while we're still on YouTube, in other news, have a look at the headline that announces that Hunter Biden's laptop Has Hunter Biden's legal team went on the offensive Wednesday, demanding state and federal investigations into the dissemination of his personal material purportedly to be from his laptop.
So this is a case like he's already said, he's always said, Oh, it might be my laptop.
I don't know.
It might be, but it does sound a bit like it is when they're talking about dissemination of his personal material.
The dissemination of his personal material is what's got him into this jam.
Keep that personal material!
Stop disseminating!
Leave it in there, for God's sake!
Actually, Hunter Biden, as a fellow recovering addict, has nothing but my support and love.
I'm more interested in the allusions towards corruption from the big guy, none of which are proven at this stage.
Although one person who's not holding back on their perspective is everyone's favourite former president.
Here he is.
We have a president whose son's lapped up from hell, gets taken over, and exposes massive corruption like nobody's ever seen before.
Do you think the father—do you ever hear this?
Do you think the father was upset?
Actually, that's purely comedic.
I'm speaking now just as a stand-up comedian that his practice here is like in creating a scenario where he normalizes it and domesticize it.
Do you think the father gets upset?
He's inviting us in.
Sent it up somewhat beautifully.
This is no longer an analysis, obviously, of Trump's political views, opposition.
Loads of you love him as a populist, and surely equally as many of you question Donald Trump as a public figure.
But here, let's just look at him as an orator.
Dad, I left my laptop in a repair shop.
Forgot to pick it up, and this repair guy went a little crazy when he saw what was on it.
What's on it, son?
Every crime that you've ever committed.
Such a great out.
Yeah.
So brilliant.
And his little voice for Hunter Biden as well.
The guy went a little bit crazy.
It's pretty good, isn't it?
Yeah.
I once watched a clip where, when it was Clinton-Hillary versus Trump, they sort of asked them, and it was actually sort of heartwarming a bit, to say a nice thing about one another.
Oh yeah.
They challenged them.
Can you say one nice thing?
And he said she don't quit.
And he said his kids love him.
Wow.
His children love him.
Don't you want to see a little bit of humanity?
When you're caught up in the spectacle of contemporary politics, even though it is very theatrical and at points emotional, what it feels to me most of all is spiritually bereft.
The hypocrisy and corruption, to me, point to a lack of real values.
That's why it's so alienating for me and so encouraging when you speak to someone like Christian Smalls, the emergent Amazon union leader, who is talking about politics from the perspective of a
felt experience, someone that's working at a factory in a zero contract job and has become a union
leader. We need a different type of politics, that's what I would say, and I reckon whether you
like Trump or don't like him, the efficacy of his rhetoric is an indication that what we're
missing is the emotional timbre, the ability of human beings to connect one another in an
increasingly atomised world built on data, biometrics, control, surveillance, digital ID, total lack
of trust, total breakdown.
What do you think?
Let me know in the chat, let me know in the comments.
I think you're right about the humanity, and I think you're right about what you said about Ron Klain before, is that breakdown is like a moment that happens to politicians when they usually lose elections or quit their jobs, and it's that pent-up Essentially, having to lie about a system that is extremely broken, and even in the lie of saying, you know, I've left you in good hands with the next Chief of Staff, he knows that the next Chief of Staff has made 440 million dollars off fraudulent healthcare companies.
Just one last lie, then on to my crying!
Then I'm out, then I'm getting on my boat!
With mortgage lobbying money and presumably some sort of state salary paid for by your tax dollars.
And in a way, these are not indictments of any individuals.
But when you have a system built on the kind of values that it is, you recognize that the individual character is less and less relevant.
That's something that was made clear to me by Yanis Varoufakis when he was talking about the EU after his party, Syriza, briefly looked like they could bring about radical social change in Greece.
Then they met with the EU and it's like, you ain't doing nothing.
You're paying them banks back Baby, this is after the 2008 crisis caused by all those subprime mortgages, of course, by coincidence there.
And he said that even the most senior figures within the EU could only act in accordance with their role.
So the system itself limits any potential for radicalism or change, or in another way, any possibility of democracy.
You know that you would like to see money taken out of politics.
You know that you'd like to see lobbying ended.
You know that you want Congress people that don't own stocks and shares in the companies that they regulate.
You know you want meaningful democracy where your vote influences the actions and expenditure in your community.
You know that you want to have a spiritual connection to your country, to your community, to yourself.
That what you don't want to see is an increase in centralised power.
We've got a fantastic story coming up for you.
Will it be later this week or will it be next week, do you reckon?
I'm talking about Ukraine. Not only are they testing weapons in Ukraine, but
they're looking at pushing CBDC, centralised banking digital currencies. But beyond
that, it seems that in its post-war state, which people are already referring to in the
reconstruction, you've seen Zelensky talking about BlackRock and JP Morgan. They're going to be
piloting, this is according to our latest data, and you can look this up for yourselves,
digital surveillance, biometric technology, CBDC.
So the Ukraine, after everything, is going to be a kind of piloting ground for all sorts of globalist techniques.
Now, at the moment, we make no claim that there are centralized cadre of powerful individuals orchestrating all of this.
But certainly the technology and infrastructure is being introduced to a degree that if ever there were such a cadre, we'd be in serious trouble.
And I know some of you think that the cadre is already there.
I think they've talked about Ukraine becoming 100% digital.
100% digital?
And that's literally from the Ukrainian government.
That seems hard, to be 100% digital.
percentage, there's got to be a bit of it that's just some people trying to recover
from a terrible prolonged proxy war. That's got to be at least part of it. Listen, we
can't stay on YouTube forever because there's so many things we want to talk about that
are subjects of censorship. That's simply the reality. We are using this to bring about
dialogue and rhetoric that will unify people from across the political and cultural spectrum.
A humble aim for a humble man. So that's what we're doing here. We're talking to Jimmy Tobias.
He's got he's dug deep into Wuhan and the Fauci emails.
Doesn't look good. Doesn't look good. Like crazy stuff on there.
So you're going to want to click over and watch us on Rumble for that.
But now to put a little smile on your face before we leave YouTube.
A heartwarming story about prisoners who perhaps are imprisoned simply for the crime of being poor and addicted.
You know, that's a significant number of prisoners are going to have to give up their organs in order to get early freedom.
Oh Biden, he's been like, he's taught me how to be a father!
Okay, that's all well and good.
You're not operating in a country where prisoners are going to have to swap their kidneys for a day out in a park.
Oh yeah, that's happening.
We're doing that.
Firstly... Biden said I think one of his pledges when he came in was he was going to cut the prison population in half and I'm almost fairly sure that it's gone up.
What we're going to do is cut them down the middle.
You misunderstood.
We're going to cut them down the middle.
We're going to eviscerate them.
We're going to take out their precious, valuable livers.
I know there's only one.
And we're going to swap them for a lovely day out at Six Flags.
You know how you used to have two kidneys?
Yeah, I loved those guys.
They helped me with dialysis.
And how about...
One kidney, six flags.
What about SeaWorld, baby?
Not all of those whales are monsters.
Some of them had a good upbringing.
In Massachusetts, Democrats have a bold new proposal for prisoners.
Go on, donate your organs or bone marrow and get as little as a couple of months off your sentence.
I don't know, isn't that already a Twilight Zone episode where you sort of go to Oh my God, ever since I've had this new heart, I'm experiencing terrible fluctuations.
I'm afraid we accidentally darn gave you a murderer's heart.
He's obviously not getting a couple of months off his sentence for murdering.
I mean, literally heartless murderer.
How did they come up with it?
What kind of brainstorming session?
I'm sure there's other stuff going on at the moment.
What do you mean?
The brainstorming session?
The brainstorming session for this.
Where are we?
We're in the Democrats.
We are.
The annual conference of some sort.
We've got to come up with some novel ideas to get... Well, firstly, what it indicates is that cumin orchids are a commodity now.
Do you think it was a wrong claim?
Do you think that's why he's leaving?
I'm donating my tear ducts to a murderer!
Run!
I think, I don't know what generates those kind of reprehensible notions, but when human life itself becomes a commodity, when everything is information, when you are little more than data points, when they are working on technology that will mean that you can be nudged and manipulated into behaviours that are favourable to the interests of the state, then all bets are off.
Why not sell a person's kidneys?
Why investigate whether or not the penal system is working?
Why investigate the judiciary meaningfully?
Why not make the whole process AI?
As is already happening in the Ukraine, all of this stuff is underwritten by facts and by great reporting.
Later we're talking to Jimmy Tobias about those Wuhan Fauci emails.
Do you think we better come off of YouTube?
Can do.
We better get off YouTube because we're about to do this amazing presentation on Bill Gates.
Not that story.
On the other story about Bill Gates investing in BioNTech, selling his BioNTech shares.
This is all stuff that can be tracked.
His donations, not investment scale, donations to the World Health Organization.
Don't invest in the World Health Organization.
That's about health.
How would you be invested? I mean, what would it achieve?
Where could you ever make a profit? Exactly. How could you ever make a profit
by giving the World Health Organization a bunch of money?
I mean, all right, a little while later, they did try to globally mandate a product that Bill Gates
had also invested in. Oh, I see what you're doing. You're taking one fact from there and a fact from
there and putting them together. You conspiracy theorists, you are all the same, aren't you?
Why don't you just sit down like an obedient little prisoner of the state and devour your mainstream media soup, fill your mind with numb non-entity mishap rubbish, sit still and be quiet, or you could watch this.
Stay free with Russell Brand.
See it first on Rumble.
Some fantastic comments from you lot.
Thank you so much for your support.
Thanks for continuing to watch our show.
We go from one controversial, potentially conspiratorial story underwritten with hard facts, to another story where facts are continually denied and thrown shade upon in order, I think, to control particular narratives or, more specifically, counter-narratives.
Even... There's one person linking these two stories as well.
There's one guy, one little guy, who stands astride these tales like a colossus.
It's Bill Gates.
But now to bring us this story in new and vivid light is Jimmy Tobias, an investigative journalist, like me, from The Nation and Intercept.
Jimmy famously won a lawsuit against the NIH, revealing secret emails between Fauci and other scientists discussing the Wuhan lab leak theory.
Jimmy, thanks for joining us, mate.
Thanks for having me on.
Jimmy, real early on, prior to the public discourse being, in my opinion, heavily directed towards the natural origin theory, there were emails exchanged between Fauci, that dude from the WHO called FARA, Yeah, him.
And representatives of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a charity by the way, they were exchanging emails about potential origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
Tell me, what were your objectives when writing your recent article, mate?
Yeah, well, you know, I sued the NIH to obtain these records and, you know, they were pretty eye-opening, newsworthy, I thought.
And in writing this article, we were really just trying to lay them out in the context in which they were written so people could see what some of the most important and influential people who were, you know, directing the pandemic response were saying about the origins of the virus in the very early days of the outbreak.
What conclusions have you drawn or what in particular did you find interesting?
What in particular do you think was at odds with the broadly conveyed public message?
Well, I mean, the documents show that Dr. Fauci in early 2020 was alerted to concerns, you know, among some of the world's top virologists that the virus looked potentially engineered.
And what followed was a series of confidential calls and emails between Dr. Fauci, NIH Director Francis Collins, Patrick Vallance, who is the chief science advisor to the UK government, and a group of other prominent scientists, discussing the virus's origins.
And early on, some of the scientists on these calls and emails really couldn't figure out how this virus was produced in nature, given some of its unusual features.
I mean, they were stunned by it.
They thought it may have come from a lab.
Other people on these calls and emails disagreed and thought it looked like it came from nature.
These deliberations went on for more than a week, pretty early in the discussions.
They sort of discarded the idea that it was engineered and instead focused on an idea that it was sort of, um, accidentally created and released from a lab, um, via this, this type of laboratory process called serial, um, yes, serial passage experiments.
And so during this time, they also started writing up drafts So these conversations started on January 31st.
proximal origin paper, one of the best read papers in science history. Um, and that paper
ultimately found that, that the, the virus came from nature.
Um, so these, these conversations started on January 31st by February 8th, one of the
scientists involved, um, Christian Anderson of scripts described the focus of the group's work
as an effort to quote, disprove any type of lab theory. But even after all this debate,
they still couldn't come down You know, they couldn't say it was a lab origin.
They couldn't say it was a natural origin.
I mean, they weren't ready to publish.
And then somehow between February 8th and early March, they overcame this uncertainty and published this proximal origin paper that came down very, very strongly on a natural origin site.
Documents don't really show how they overcame their uncertainty, how they went from, you know, this looks engineered, this looks like it could have been an accidental lab leak, to, you know, the proximal origin conclusion, which was they said they don't believe any type of, you know, lab-based scenario is plausible.
So that's sort of, in sum, what these documents show, this conversation, this very heated, anxious, confidential conversation in January and February 2020.
One of the participants in those conversations was Peter Daszak from the EcoHealth Alliance, who was involved in NIH-funded research in the Wuhan lab at that time.
Obviously, there's no evidence to suggest that there's any corollary between those pieces of information, but given the natural origin theories preeminent and the lack of public contemplation, at least for the potential of a lab leak.
It does seem that that's the very essence of a narrativised approach to data that could have perhaps been more equivocally presented.
And it's difficult not to deduce that the reason that the information wasn't presented in a more balanced manner is because they would prefer that, broadly speaking, the public favoured Natural origin because of the lack of obvious culpability from the people in the field of pharmacological research.
Does that seem like a reasonable set of assumptions, mate?
Well, actually, Peter Daszak was not a participant in these conversations, but, you know, I think when I wrote this article, I interviewed a variety of, you know, prominent experts and scientists.
Some of them said, you know, this is just science at work.
They had a conclusion, they collected data, they published this paper once they came to a conclusion, you know.
Other people see it very differently.
They see in these conversations a real effort to downplay any kind of lab theory, to downplay their deep concerns at the beginning.
And one of the people I interviewed who has that perspective was like, why?
Why did they do that?
And these documents I got don't really show exactly how they overcame their conclusions.
They're not a full view of what went on here.
And so I think they're definitely You know, more questions that need to be asked, whether that's from Congress, who's now investigating this issue, or other scientists.
But, you know, the documents certainly raise the kind of questions that you're bringing up, like how did they get from A to B, especially given some of the unusual features of the virus that they were so deeply concerned about early on in these conversations.
Additionally, it was obviously very difficult for you to gain access to this material.
Similarly, that suggests that there is a kind of clandestine hue to this data.
At very least, it seems to suggest that there ought be more transparency, but in spite of my error there in suggesting that Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance were involved in that particular email chain, there's some Evidence I understand of, if not collusion, communication between the NIH EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
That, along with the amplification of the natural origin theory, when there isn't, as I understand it, Conclusive evidence that that is the case, even on the basis of these emails, suggests that there is, at very least, a preference for, and even in the jump between, a conversation that is multifaceted and multivalent to a unilateral and global response.
I suppose, like, you know, when I'm trying to look at this from the most, what do I want
to say, compassionate perspective, I think what it is, is they were deeply concerned
about this pandemic. And they knew that there would have to be a unified response due to
the nature of the pandemic. And they couldn't deal with the complication and confusion and
the potential hit that their credibility would take if people were simultaneously digesting
the idea that this was somehow involved human ineptitude.
And we got a timeline, man, for the stuff that went on in Wuhan. I'm sure you're well
familiar with that. Installing air conditioning units, ripping them out again, all sorts
of weird stuff going on. I suppose, mate, because, you know, I gosh, I hope it's not just cynicism
and reductivism.
I feel that I have a tendency at least to direct people towards a condemnatory outlook of the players in establishing this narrative.
And I guess it seems to me that you're much more kind of, I don't know, balanced and like, you know, like you don't leap to those kinds of conclusions, huh?
Well, you know, I'm interested in the documents.
I'm interested in what else is out there.
I think there definitely should be a continuing investigation among scientists and representatives of the public into what went on, you know, here and in relation to the origin.
I don't think, you know, I don't think there's dispositive evidence on one side or the other.
And so, you know, just yesterday, the Congress launched an investigation to this question.
It was very, I thought it was very sober.
and and balance sort of sort of investigation but they're looking at these questions and no one i don't think anyone um you know has conclusive evidence but but you know one of the things that stands out for me from these emails is these some of the the things they saw in the virus um in his genome genome. You know, several of the scientists early on were
puzzled by the presence in the virus's genome of a furin cleavage site, which is a feature
that has not been found in other SARS related coronaviruses. And this plays a role, this furin
cleavage site plays a role, an important role in helping the virus infect human airways.
And these guys, some of these guys were just so bothered by its presence. You know, one
guy was like, I just don't see how this, you know, I can't figure out how this happens in
nature.
It's stunning.
And I don't see in these documents how they, you know, they started with this deep concern about this fear and cleavage.
You don't really see how they overcame that before they published the Proxima Origin paper.
And that paper, you have to understand, is like, it was extremely influential.
It's been accessed millions of times online.
It was cited by Dr. Fauci.
From the White House podium, you know, Dr. Collins wrote a blog post about it, you know, it was all over the news.
And that paper was very, you know, it came down very strongly on the natural origin side of this debate, and it emerged from these discussions.
So there's just a question, I think.
If any of these folks have been willing to talk to me, and none of them were, that's what I would ask them.
Like, how did you grapple with this?
How did you overcome it?
Because it's really not clear, and I think that outstanding question is one of the things that leads people to ask, like, what was going on here, you know?
And as for the records themselves, yeah, I mean, it took a year-long lawsuit to get these documents, more than a year, and They were heavily so, I mean, a lot of people were trying to get them.
Congress tried to get them.
NIH let them read the documents and take notes, but they couldn't keep full copies.
So it wasn't until, you know, NIH kind of caved to our lawsuit that these were really released fully and publicly.
And I do think, you know, that lack of transparency is concerning, and you see that in a lot of government agencies, but On a matter that's so important to the public, the fact that they dragged their feet like this is definitely cause for concern.
And I've heard that from people in Congress and elsewhere.
Yeah, a lack of transparency, dragging their feet and unwillingness to reveal the information.
Ongoing censorship of any counter narrative, particularly in the early days of the pandemic.
Anybody talking about the potential of a lab leak theory was at risk of being censored and kicked off social media platforms.
It happened again and again.
And as you point out, Jimmy, the sudden tangential A leap from genuine what you say sound like sort of professional curiosity and wow how has this occurred this ability to attack the airwaves we've never seen that nature to no no that's uh that's definitely uh natural origin a sudden truncating of inquiry occurred in conjunction with global censorship and a heavy redacting and control of these emails which you have tenaciously acquired and
I suppose we're from different disciplines and backgrounds, and I suppose collectively we have an obligation to lean into our particular skill sets.
Yours seems to be the unbiased analysis of various data, and mine is the emotional, incendiary rousing of suspicion.
Gareth, what do you want to bring to this conversation?
Yeah, maybe a balance between the two.
No, I just think it's really interesting what Jimmy's saying, that there are extremely prominent scientists that can't explain what they want us to think.
So this idea at the time that there's simply no way that it could have been leaked from a lab, that it's a natural origin, and yet there are prominent scientists.
And it didn't seem at the time like those views were, you know, allowed to be discussed.
And it kind of seems like something that's happened a lot over the last few years in terms of experts in their fields being marginalised and, you know, as we're told, kind of are conspiracy theorists.
But I think expertise not being allowed to kind of be present and spoken about doesn't seem like a great idea.
Does it, Jimmy?
Yeah well I'll say you know one of the one of the scientists I spoke to for this story who is a computational virologist at a university around Philadelphia and you know he's sort of agnostic on the lab leak or natural origin question you know he said looking at these documents it started out as this fairly careful discussion where they're airing out these anomalies and and you know they say multiple times we don't have the data to resolve where this thing came from but at some point you know he says He thought that, you know, there was such strong pressure that they went from, let's just wait for more data to let's publish something, you know, that has a very strong opinion favoring one explanation over the other without acquiring your data.
So I'm paraphrasing him and his question is why?
Why did that happen?
And, you know, if I, if these folks had talked to me, I would have asked them some of these questions, you know.
You know, neutrally, I just want to hear what they have to say about how they got from A to B on this very, very important paper.
And, you know, there are other things going on too.
You know, I mentioned in the article that before these calls and conversations really kicked off, Dr. Fauci went to his deputy to find out what kind of funding arrangements the NIH had established with institutions in China.
And just last week, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services
released a pretty scathing report about failures of NIH oversight on some of the grants
that went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is a leading center of coronavirus research in China,
in the city where this virus first emerged.
And among the things that that report found, that inspector general report,
was that for more than a year now, NIH and the EcoHealth Alliance,
which was sort of a pass-through funding group that was doing work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology,
they've been asking the Wuhan Institute to provide them lab notes and other data
about their experiments that were going on there with federal funding.
And the lab has not been responsive.
And so, this Inspector General report, you know, suggests that NIH consider banning the Institute from any, you know, future funds for research.
But, you know, I think the fact that, you know, that Institute has been stonewalling the federal government is concerning, I think, to say.
I think it's fair to say it's very concerning.
And raises questions and has to do these documents, you know, they raise a lot of questions more than answering a particular question more than providing dispositive evidence.
I think they raise questions, and people obviously can interpret these things differently and I welcome them to do so but I think there's more work to be done to investigate some of these questions and look into them further and I think that's completely reasonable to do.
Yeah, we saw that report as well.
They missed deadlines, ignored protocols, a dog ate their homework.
Let's have a look at that timeline again, if we could, just to take us on what I call a little meander through Wuhan and some of the more anomalous facts.
May I see the timeline?
So, in autumn 2019, the Wuhan Institute of Virology had a number of outstanding maintenance projects including environmental air disinfection system and hazardous waste treatment system.
A notice of laboratory inspection was issued for September 2019.
Shortly after in 2019, still September, the WIV, the Wuhan Institute, took their public virus database offline.
Get that offline, it's about September 2019.
The Lablin announced a contract competition to renovate their air conditioning system for approximately $660 million.
Expensive is the World Cup of Air Conditioning.
The announcement was later removed from the Chinese Ministry of Finance website.
This, along with the inquiries that Fauci was making, sort of suggests that there was definite concern, both within the NIH and in the Wuhan Institute itself.
Like it's an extraordinary... That's the issue.
The issue isn't it with all of this is that when Fauci's questioned and is kind of so dogmatic about the origins of this and what it could be and what it couldn't be and I guess what a lot of people and Jimmy included are calling for is some transparency and discussion around this rather than as I say the kind of dogmatic approach to this is the only way it could have happened even though all this new evidence is coming to light.
Is Jimmy calling for transparency?
Because I see you saying Jimmy's calling for transparency.
Jimmy's done a lot of work.
Congress couldn't get their hands on them files.
Jimmy, though, he's a tenacious man.
Well, Jimmy, what was it that made you start this inquiry in the first place?
Why did you have this journalistic hunch in a profession now that's more determined by towing the line and keeping your mouth shut and being an establishment mouthpiece?
Where do you get this intrepid spirit of inquiry from?
And do you feel a bit pleased with yourself now that you've got it?
Well, yeah, I'm really pleased we got these documents and it was a long fight and I have to give credit to my FOIA attorneys who worked for me on a pro bono basis.
They're amazing.
They're based out of Chicago.
You know, I got into this.
I mostly cover wildlife and conservation issues, really.
And, you know, that's sort of what initially drew me to this topic, because, you know, obviously habitat degradation, wildlife trade issues are contributing to the rise of, you know, emergence, emerging infectious diseases around the world.
And I also do a lot of FOIA requests and kind of probe federal environmental agencies, especially.
And so in 2021, the journalist Jason Leopold is also a great FOIA reporter, obtained a really large batch of Dr. Fauci's emails, and they were heavily redacted.
And so in reading those, I saw sort of some of these conversations, but they were all, you know, behind black redactions.
And so I filed some of my own FOIA requests, sort of targeting some of the communications that were in that larger batch from Jason Leopold.
I mean, what I got back were a bunch of documents, but they were very heavily redacted.
And so we sued over the redactions and eventually NIH relented and released them, you know, last November, late last November, right before the Thanksgiving holiday.
Right before Dr. Fauci left office.
So, you know, we didn't even have a judge order them to release them.
They actually did it according to my lawyers of their own accord, but it's sort of unclear why they did it then after dragging their feet for so long about these redactions.
Extraordinary.
Jimmy, thank you so much for joining us and thank you for your intrepid, tenacious work in revealing this important information to a wider audience and for your rather charming interest in nature and natural habitat.
You're an adorable man.
You can read more of Jimmy's work at JimmyTobias.com.
He also writes for The Intercept, among other organisations.
Jimmy, thanks for joining us, mate.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's lovely to meet you.
Take care, mate.
Thanks very much.
Redacted emails of Antony Fauci's.
I'm really worried that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is... Especially as I've received a large payment from... My friend Peter Daszak!
Dear Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, I love you and your guys.
These are the reasons.
I went on a recent holiday to a lovely... ...with a man who's first name begins with G and second name... Like my little joke?
Yep, all jokes.
All just jokes that you can make in the world when you're mucking about.
Redacted jokes for a bit of fun to pass the time.
He was very careful, wasn't he, Jimmy?
Oh, God.
Like, sometimes I like people to be a bit more... No, I know.
I know.
But that's... I guess that's as an investigative journalist, you know.
Well, I'll tell you, Scout, as an investigative...
I'll see investigative journalists.
We're a tricky breed.
Jimmy and I had an odds for many things when it comes to... Don't always see eye to eye.
I'm one of the more mavericks out there.
Yeah, of course, I was pushing them to release them emails as well, but I only sent one email.
Would you mind, Awfully, if I could have a look at them emails?
I didn't get a response.
I just left it.
Jimmy, he carried on.
Yeah, he's a persistent man.
In the end, he got that scoop.
Mark my words, gal.
I'll get the next one because I'm sending plenty of emails out to all sorts of people, demanding all sorts of stuff.
Soon it'll be along.
Hey, well, what a show it's been, has it?
Oh, it certainly has.
Enjoyed yourself?
I had a lovely time.
You joined in?
I know, it was nice.
Joined in with Jimmy?
I just thought, throw a question in there.
People might like that, and if they do, why don't you watch our show Stay Connected, where me and Gareth show you the show behind the show, where we respond to your questions and inquiries, anything you want to know about how we compile this investigative great work.
Mostly I can tell you now, it's me, I do all of the work.
But if you want a deeper look at how it's done, if you want to know how it is that sometimes we suddenly stop broadcasting in the middle of the stream, That's because of Al's fault, isn't it?
Yeah, that's Al.
Al, one of the lads who works here, he suddenly just, he's off looking out the window eating a Cornish pasta, you don't press the right button, he don't know what he's doing, the poor sod, he's staring around the place.
Just looking at wildlife, he's like Jimmy.
He's like Jimmy, he might be, oh look, a kingfisher, oh no, the stream's stopped!
The stream's gone!
I just thought I saw an otter!
Never mind otters!
Yeah.
Get the stream out there, is what I say.
So you can see how we come up with this work.
Also, we focus more on the emotional, mental health, spiritual aspects.
You know, listen, we're going to have to sort our spirits out, aren't we, Gareth?
If we're going to contend with an atrophying world full of the corrupt, governed by some of the most evil dominator cultural forces in history... Revolution.
An AI revolution.
We've got some fantastic stories coming up for you next week and some amazing guests.
And we're rounding off the week in what I would call great style with an incredible flourish.
I'll be speaking to Deepak Chopra, the spiritual teacher.
Me and him will be talking about corruption, the mindsets behind corruption, how to actually deal with living in this world right now.
We do a fantastic meditation.
You'll enjoy that.
Sign up to my locals community where you can see...
I mean, a very special meditation between Deepak and I. I call it a meditation.
What made it special?
I would say the erotic tension between Deepak and I. That raised it a couple of notches, maybe even three notches, I'd have to say.
A couple of centimetres?
Almost certainly!
Full mast!
My man!
Also, you want to join up to our Stay Connected community on Locals where you get not only an additional show, you also get the joy, the glory of being the first to see my stand-up special that's coming Up soon.
Let us know what guests you want to see in the chat because we'll bring them on to the show if possible if they're not crazy and you know some of your suggestions are crazy and I'll see you tomorrow and we can cultivate an inner light so that we can handle this together so we can find the compassion and power within us to handle the changes that are definitely going to have to be undertaken.
You heard Jimmy.
Jimmy might not be gung-ho.
Old Russ is gung-hon.
Gotta change the world baby.
Join us tomorrow not for more of the same but for more of the different.
