The latest attempt by independent media (it’s a foregone conclusion that corporate state media will never ask these questions) to uncover exactly under what conditions the NIH was passed money under the table by the pharmaceutical industry to approve and promulgate COVID-19 vaccines, as well as its arrangements for similar future kickbacks, went about as well as all of the previous efforts, which is not well at all.
Related: FDA Concedes COVID Shots Trigger Baby Seizures, Re-Recommends Them Anyway
Via The Epoch Times (emphasis added):
The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is refusing to release additional information about an agreement it reached over a COVID-19 vaccine that has earned it at least $400 million.
The NIH declined to provide any materials in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Epoch Times.
“The NIH withholds the entirety of the records as they are protected from release,” Gorka Garcia-Malene, an NIH officer, told The Epoch Times in a letter.
She cited an exemption outlined in the act that allows government agencies to partially or fully withhold information.
“In this case, exemption 3 incorporates 35 U.S.C. 209 (f), which reads in relevant part, ‘No Federal agency shall grant any license under a patent or patent application on a federally owned invention unless the person requesting the license has supplied the agency with a plan for development or marketing of the invention, except that any such plan shall be treated by the Federal agency as commercial and financial information obtained from a person and privileged and confidential and not subject to disclosure under section 552 of title 5,’” Ms. Garcia-Malene wrote.
“Exemption 4 protects from disclosure trade secrets and commercial or financial information that is privileged and confidential,” she added.
In February 2023, Moderna announced that it had paid $400 million to the NIH and would make additional payments in the future as part of a licensing agreement for spike proteins used in the company’s COVID-19 vaccine. The Epoch Times obtained a copy of the contract, which confirmed the payment but redacted details of the future payments.
The Epoch Times then lodged a new request, seeking more details about the future payments, which are said to be based on how many COVID-19 vaccines are sold.
Apparently, bribery of government regulators is simply a “trade secret.”
It’s almost a moot point by now, as it appears the subset of the American public and media that are pursuing COVID truth mostly end up screaming at walls, but imagine the abject criminality of abusing public office to receive bribes from the industry you are supposed to be regulating to push through dangerous “medication” that has likely killed thousands if not millions of Americans, and then refusing to disclose any of said activities by hiding behind bureaucratic red tape.
This is the kind of stuff that revolutions are made of. The Founding Fathers would never have tolerated this officious malfeasance; indeed, arguably, they rebelled against the Crown over far less severe transgressions.
Of course, this wall of secrecy melodrama has been going on for many years at this point. Dr. Anthony Fauci, former unindicted head of NIAID, and Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel have infamously sparred with Sen. Rand Paul — seemingly one of the only senators from either party interested in the answers to these questions — on the transparent and glaring conflict of interest at play.
Where are our so-called leaders?
If these people and institutions are allowed to get away with these crimes — and so far they have, thanks in no small part to the fecklessness and duplicity and cowardice of political leadership despite a powerful thirst among a huge swathe of the electorate for justice — what’s the limit on abuse of power? What’s the disincentive not to do it all over again with the next pandemic, which we are promised is on its way?
