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Ron DeSantis Asks Biden to Allow Djokovic to Play at the Miami Open

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3 weeks ago

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Waleed Zein/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has written to President Joe Biden to ask him to end the “absurd” ban on tennis number one Novak Djokovic from entering the United States to play at the Miami Open due to his vaccination status.

Anger As Djokovic Withdraws From US Open; STILL BANNED From Entering U.S. Due To Vaccination Status

Here is the letter in full.

March 7th 2023

The Honorable Joseph R. Biden
President of the United States
The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Northwest Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Biden:

It has been reported that Novak Djokovic has formally applied and been denied permission from your administration to enter the United States so that he may compete at the upcoming Miami Open tennis tournament. This denial is unfair, unscientific and unacceptable. I urge you to reconsider. It’s time to put pandemic politics aside and give the American people what they want — let him play.

While Mr. Djokovic is surely a supreme competitive threat to his fellow tennis professionals, his presence in our country poses no meaningful health or public safety risk. I note that since the onset of COVID-19, Mr. Djokovic has visited the United States at least twice – including once during your presidency – without any apparent health incident. It is also not clear to me why, even by the terms of your own proclamation, Mr. Djokovic could not legally enter this country via boat. Please confirm no later than Friday March 10th 2023 that this method of travel into Florida would be permissible.

Furthermore, even as you enacted the Proclamation on air travel that remains in force to this day, your administration pointedly allowed thousands of unvaccinated migrants to enter our country through the southern border. In sum, the current ‘travel ban’ as applied to Mr. Djokovic and presumably millions of other potential unvaccinated foreign visitors seems completely ungrounded in logic, common sense, or any genuine concern for the health and welfare of the American people.

Affectionately known as ‘Tennis’s Fifth Grand Slam’, the Miami Open is the second most popular tennis event in the United States and routinely attracts hundreds of thousands of fans as well as premier tennis professionals from around the world. Novak Djokovic, as you surely know, is the most accomplished tennis player in history and the reigning top-ranked player in his sport. As a result of his illustrious career and philanthropic efforts, he has a strong following of loyal fans in the United States. There can be no question that his inclusion in the Miami Open would be a tremendous boon both for this treasured tournament and the tennis community at large.

The only thing keeping Mr. Djokovic from participating in this tournament is your administration’s continued enforcement of a misguided, unscientific, and out-of-date COVID-19 vaccination requirement for foreign guests seeking to visit our great country. American tennis legend John McEnroe recently termed this restriction “absurd”. He was quite right to say so.

We are now three years since the onset of COVID-19, and we have learned many valuable – and often painful – lessons during that time. For one thing, it is now clear that the COVID-19 vaccines are not as effective as initially advertised. A new study in the Lancet has found that natural immunity is at least as effective as the Covid vaccines. (“Our analysis of the available data suggests that the level of protection afforded by previous infection is at least as high, if not higher than that provided by two-dose vaccination using high-quality mRNA vaccines.”) Furthermore, data also suggest that exposure to COVID-19 is now significantly less likely to result in hospitalisation or fatality. Finally, not only is the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine now in question, but recent scientific studies have identified serious potential health risks from the vaccine. Florida’s Surgeon General has issued guidance recommending against the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines for males ages 18-39 years old – precisely the cohort of Mr. Djokovic.

Here in Florida, we took a leadership role in rejecting vaccination mandates. Since November 2021, it has been illegal for businesses to require their patrons to be vaccinated against COVID-19. I am proud of these efforts, which unquestionably promoted personal liberty and economic growth without exposing our citizens to any substantiated harm. Although it has taken some time, most of the rest of the world has now come to recognise COVID-19 vaccination requirements as obsolete. At present, it appears that the United States is one of only a handful of countries that requires foreign visitors to have received a COVID-19 vaccination. Indeed, in an interview on September 18th 2022, you personally declared that “the pandemic is over”, and your administration has already communicated to Congress that the COVID-19 emergency will formally end on May 11th. The time has come to give up the fiction that Covid vaccines remain a necessary tool to promote public health.

Mr. Djokovic is an extraordinary tennis player who should have every right to compete in this year’s Miami Open, which will commence on March 20th. I respectfully ask you to grant his requested exemption so that he may delight and inspire tennis fans in Florida and around the Nation.

Sincerely,

Ron DeSantis
Governor

This post was originally published at The Daily Sceptic

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‘Go, Go, Go! Help Them Up! Push Them Up’: New Leaked J6 Footage ‘Shows DC Metro Cop Encouraging People to Go Towards The Capitol’

Published

19 hours ago

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26 March, 2023

Chris Menahan | Information Liberation

Screenshot

Newly leaked footage from January 6th shows undercover DC Metropolitan Police officers pushing protesters to move towards the US Capitol and helping them climb the scaffolding outside the Capitol building. 

The full video was leaked Saturday on Rumble by an anonymous account named OverwatchJ6:

From The Epoch Times, “Prosecutor Admits DC Police Officers Acted as Provocateurs at US Capitol on Jan. 6”:

A federal prosecutor admitted in court papers that three D.C. Metropolitan Police Department undercover officers acted as provocateurs at the northwest steps of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The admission came in a March 24 filing before U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras that seeks to keep video footage shot by the officers under court seal.

Prosecutors accused the case defendant—William Pope of Topeka, Kansas—of an “illegitimate” attempt to unmask the video as part of his alleged strategy to try the case in the news media. Pope filed a motion to remove the court seal on Feb. 21.

“The defendant is not entitled to ‘undesignate’ these videos to share them with unlimited third parties,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Moran. “His desire to try his case in the media rather than in a court of law is illegitimate, and the government has met its burden to show the necessity of the protective order.”

The feds worked together with the media to smear everyone involved in this protest for two years straight and bias the already biased DC juries against them but their victims are not allowed to share this footage to defend themselves?

The fact these cases are even being tried in DC is an absolute disgrace. J6 protesters are blatantly being denied their right to a fair trial on top of being held indefinitely in pre-trial detention and tortured in prison.

Videos long hidden under court seal have become a major topic, especially with prosecutors disclosing in a number of high-profile Jan. 6 cases the involvement of multiple FBI informants.

Pope is seeking to lift the court seal on the undercover video as part of his drive to obtain full access to video evidence held by the government. Pope is representing himself in the criminal case being prosecuted against him. At a hearing on March 3, Judge Contreras seemed sympathetic to Pope’s motion to unmask the videos.

“The officer clearly incited that area, and we still don’t have video from all other undercover MPD,” Pope told The Epoch Times. “And as the numerous informants in the Proud Boys trial demonstrates, we are only just beginning to scratch the surface on FBI involvement.”

[…] “This video clearly evidences undercover law enforcement officers urging the crowds to advance up the stairs and scaffolding towards the Capitol on January 6,” Pope wrote in an earlier case filing. “The government may claim that incidents like this did not happen, but the facts show they did.”

Prosecutor Moran acknowledges such in a motion filed on March 24.

“The specific footage, GoPro video recorded by an MPD police officer who was stationed at the Capitol in an evidence-gathering capacity, captures the officer shouting words to the effect of, “Go! Go! Go!” Moran wrote.

“At other times in these videos, the officer and the two other plainclothes officers with him appear to join the crowd around them in various chants, including “drain the swamp,” “U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”, and “Whose house? Our house!”

Moran also argued against unsealing large amounts of closed-circuit television (CCTV) security video, which she said could put officers at risk.

“There are very specific and highly worrisome risks associated with the specific videos the defendant seeks to share en masse,” she wrote.

“Given the highly volatile nature of the discourse surrounding these cases, releasing the identities of the officers depicted in these videos—officers the defendant now claims to have instigated the entire attack on the U.S. Capitol—would surely put the lives of those officers at risk.”

Pope told The Epoch Times that he never made such a claim. He has not yet filed a response to the government’s memorandum.

Another video Pope discovered in his research shows Officer 2 and Officer 3 walking behind the late Ashli Babbitt on the northwest steps. About an hour later, Babbitt was shot at the entry of the Speaker’s Lobby by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd. She died a half-hour later.

The only “risk” involved in releasing this footage and more from J6 is the police and feds being caught helping provocateur the event. 

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Tucker Carlson need to get on with it already and release the 40,000 hours of footage they have to the public. 

This post was originally published at Information Liberation

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Shocking Video Shows Chocolate Factory Explosion In Pennsylvania

Published

19 hours ago

on

26 March, 2023

Zero Hedge

Twitter screenshot

Update: 

An explosion at a chocolate factory in Pennsylvania on Friday resulted in the tragic loss of five lives, with six individuals still unaccounted for.

*   *   * 

On Friday evening, a devastating explosion rocked a chocolate factory in Pennsylvania, tragically leaving two people dead, nine unaccounted for, and eight others injured.

West Reading Borough Police Department Chief Wayne Holben confirmed to Fox News the blast occurred at the R.M. Palmer Co. chocolate factory in West Reading, about 60 miles northwest of Philadelphia, around 1700 ET. 

Shocking footage of the explosion emerged on social media. 

“The explosion was so big that it moved that building four feet forward,” Mayor Samantha Kaag told reporters. She said, “It wasn’t a great scene to come into. It was pretty scary.” 

Kaag said she felt the explosion at her home, four or five blocks from the factory.

“I didn’t hear a boom,” she said. “I just felt it shake my house.”

Law enforcement officials stated that the cause of the explosion is currently under investigation. This incident adds to the increasing number of food processing plants throughout the US experiencing fires or, in this instance, devastating explosions.

This post was originally published at Zero Hedge

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Proud Boys Sedition Trial Suspended AGAIN After Feds Admit Defense Witness Was An FBI Informant

Published

3 days ago

on

24 March, 2023

Information Liberation

Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post via Getty Images

The Proud Boys sedition trial was suspended for a second time on Wednesday after the feds admitted in court that a witness intimately involved in the Proud Boys defense team was secretly an FBI informant.

From The Epoch Times, “Did FBI Informant Spy on Proud Boys Defendants and Their Jan. 6 Trial Attorneys?”:

Defense attorneys in the Proud Boys seditious-conspiracy trial in Washington D.C. learned late March 22 that one of their own defense witnesses who was about to testify had worked as an FBI informant for at least 22 months.

They asked for an emergency hearing before U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly and filed a motion to compel the U.S. Department of Justice to disclose if the witness has been spying on the defense team.

Judge Kelly suspended the trial until March 24 and converted March 23 from a day of testimony into a motions hearing.

Zachary Rehl, one of five Proud Boys defendants, filed a motion on behalf of his co-defendants seeking a court order to compel prosecutors to disclose any recordings or reports made by confidential human sources (CHS)—informants—about the defendants and their attorneys.

Defense attorney Carmen Hernandez said the information given to the defense team on March 22 raises “serious and substantiated allegations of governmental misconduct surrounding the surreptitious invasion and interference of the defense team by the government through a confidential human source, at the government’s behest.”

Judge Kelly ordered prosecutors to file a response to the motion by 1 p.m. EDT on March 23. A hearing on the matter will begin at 3 p.m.

The trial began Dec. 19, 2022, in U.S. District Court. Prosecutors wrapped up their case on March 17.

Defense Witness was Prosecution Informant

After the close of testimony on March 22, prosecutors disclosed that a witness on the defense list who was due in court on March 23 had worked as an FBI informant from April 2021 through to at least January 2023.

“During this period of time, the CHS [informant] has been in contact via telephone, text messaging, and other electronic means, with one or more of the counsel for the defense and at least one defendant,” the motion said.

“The CHS also participated in prayer meetings with members of one or more of the defendants’ families. The CHS also engaged in discussions with one of the defendant’s family members about replacing one of the defense counsel.”

Judge Kelly should have thrown the case out rather than suspend it. 

The evidence is now overwhelming that the feds are hiding exculpatory evidence from the defense and denying the Proud Boys their right to a fair trial. 

This post was originally published at Information Liberation

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