Matt Taibbi
speaker
209 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Matt Taibbi’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Well, with Fauci specifically, the one thing that comes to mind immediately is perjury. Yes. Because he's been accused of that essentially already by the House committee. Lying under oath to the Congress. Lying under oath to the Congress.
in particular saying that we have never funded gain of research, that we weren't doing it during this time period, even as there are other people in the government like the deputy director of the NIH saying, yes, we were, or Ralph Baric, who was one of the scientists that
unc saying yes absolutely that was a gain of function uh so there's a little bit of a problem there now he later amended the statement uh and said that he was speaking in a specific way under a specific definition but there's exposure there but that's that's not really the issue with fauci the issue i believe that
The issue is, really, it's about the whole rat's nest of gain of function. How much did the authorities know about what was going on at the Wuhan Institute? Did they have human sources at the Wuhan Institute? Was there advanced warning that this was coming? Were they suppressing investigations into the possibility of a lab leak because of the connections to U.S.
research, all that stuff is in play. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that's going on that you want to know.
Right. And that's one of the things that raised a red flag for some of the people who were looking. At the COVID phenomenon, just look at the surface characteristics of the disease. It's highly transmissible. It's not terribly symptomatic. Everybody's going to get it. Not everybody's going to be harmed by it. It's...
What they designed, what you would do if you were designing a disease to carry a vaccine, for instance.
What are they doing? What was their relation to the Wuhan Institute also? I mean, I think those are all important questions, both the bioweapons and the relation to the pandemic. But the thing is about these pardons, they're a mistake. If you want to know what's happening, they just made it a lot easier for us to find out. Wow.
Because now, once the pardon's delivered, the person can't plead the fifth. If they're brought before a grand jury, they can't take the fifth anymore. If they're brought before a congressional committee, they can't evoke their right against self-incrimination. So they have to say something.
And this is what's so interesting, because I've been talking to criminal defense attorneys, people who are former Senate investigators, some current Senate investigators, and And they all kind of said the same thing. It's so illogical to give somebody a pardon if you're trying to cover up things that the only reason you would really do it is if there's very serious crimes involved, right?
So that's a red flag for us. When we see somebody getting a pardon, we think... Well, why would they do that unless there's something really bad there, right? So either it's a mistake where they just stupidly made it easier for everybody to investigate or there's something we don't know about that is interesting.
It's not only morally incriminating, it's legally incriminating, as the Department of Justice itself said in a memo, I think, on one of the J6 cases, it said, this does not unring the bell of conviction if you get a pardon going forward. So you're making an admission if you accept a pardon. So, yeah, I wouldn't accept one if I were totally innocent. Of course.
Yeah, and also I wouldn't accept one if I had something to hide because now, you know, if I'm dragged before a congressional committee or especially a grand jury investigation, now I can't tap out and say, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm going to take the fifth on that. That's fascinating. Right? So the whole thing is really illogical. I think it was more meant to be a symbolic gesture.
And this is really, I think, speaks to the thinking of the Biden administration about so many things, right? They were so driven by optics with Trump that they did a lot of things that were incredibly stupid. So they want to portray him as vengeful and out to get people. And the pardons are a good way to do that.
I mean, if you're aiming for that audience, but it had the negative effect of opening all these investigations up, it seems to me.
So I asked a lot of people, why did they do this? Like, what's the point? And one of the theories was that, that this is messaging. Yes. That they were trying to create a headline. And there were lots of headlines instantaneously. If you saw them, they all basically said the same thing. Like, you know, to ward off future vindictive retaliatory acts by the Trump administration, you know.
Biden issues pardons. It's always after the comma, right? That's one theory. The other theory is that in the last days of a presidential administration, it gets pretty chaotic in the White House and people who want things and they will come in and there'll be a hurried frenzy to put stuff on paper. And that's why there are unprecedented things in these pardons. For instance, the J6 pardons,
This has never happened before where you give a pardon to a category of unnamed people, right? It says to the members of the committee, to the Capitol Police officers who testified, to the staff, but it doesn't delineate the names of the people who are pardoned. So now, if you want to invoke your pardon, you actually have to go over a test to prove that you're actually part of that category.
That I testified before the committee. Does that mean that the committee called you? That you talked to a staffer once? Or does that mean you actually sat in front of the hall and testified? It's very weird. And the only explanation that I could come up with from people is that they were in a hurry. They didn't have all the names.
Right?
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