‘I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science—not politics or cronyism—has to lead the way…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The attorneys who helped coordinate a politically motivated rape hoax that divided the nation are now representing a demoted government scientist who claims he was a whistleblower about hydroxychloroquine.
Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, had been leading the Department of Health and Human Service‘s attempted development of a coronavirus vaccine, reported the Washington Examiner.
Even though that made him a prime target in the widely-panned bureaucratic response to the pandemic crisis, Bright insisted that he was punished for attempting to block hydroxychloroquine from being used to treat the coronavirus.
President Donald Trump was an early advocate of the prospective treatment after mounting anecdotal evidence from COVID patients pointed to its potentially life-saving effects.
Noting there was little downside to the drug—already on the market for treating maladies like malaria and lupus—Trump urged the Food and Drug Administration to streamline its approval for the new coronavirus and to make it readily available.
However, anti-Trump resistance activists such as Bright quickly pounced with a sustained attack, deriding the treatment as dangerous and unproven.
“Rushing blindly towards unproven drugs can be disastrous and result in countless more deaths,” Bright said in a statement released by his attorneys. “Science, in service to the health and safety of the American people, must always trump politics.”
Another Partisan Smear
In the wake of his removal as BARDA director, Bright was reassigned to a different position with the National Institutes of Health, but he nonetheless claimed “retaliation” was the motive and demanded an inspector general’s probe under whistleblower-protection laws.
“I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the COVID-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit,” Bright said.
“I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science—not politics or cronyism—has to lead the way,” he added.
Sadly, Bright’s condemnation of politically motivated attacks was belied by his choice to retain Katz, Marshall & Banks for legal representation.
The firm notoriously represented Christine Blasey Ford, whose uncorroborated rape claims threatened to derail the 2018 confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Lead attorneys Debra Katz and Lisa Banks—who represented Blasey Ford ostensibly for free—maintain deep ties to partisan Democrats like Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
Feinstein, in turn, was embroiled in a recent insider-trading scandal for dumping millions of dollars worth of stock after a Senate briefing on the coronavirus in January.
Moreover, she has strong financial and personal links to China, which has been accused of covering up information surrounding the origin and scope of the coronavirus.
The activist attorneys have also hosted Democratic fundraisers; and Katz, who subsequently admitted that Blasey Ford’s actions were based on opposition to Kavanaugh’s abortion stance, has publicly celebrated the baseless smearing of his name.
“Elections have consequences, but he will always have an asterisk next to his name,” Katz said at an April 2019 feminist conference.
A Familiar Playbook
Similar to the coordinated left-wing attack on Kavanaugh and House Democrats’ recent Ukraine conspiracy to impeach Trump under the auspices of an orchestrated whistleblower complaint, Bright’s attack failed to pass the smell test for many political analysts.
American Greatness noted that the new claims seemed to be relying on the same playbook of misdirection that partisan activists have deployed in the past.
The claims, once again, offered a thin veneer to conceal the true motives of undermining Trump by drawing out the ongoing health crisis with maximum pain and suffering in the prelude to the November presidential election.
“Now the resistance media and Democrats are rooting against a possible treatment for the virus because they want our country to stay shut down, sick and panicked and also because the President has repeatedly said he is hopeful that this drug might work to save people,” said American Greatness.
“Ask yourself how deranged it is to hope for the failure of a life-saving treatment ONLY BECAUSE the president has indicated his optimism,” it continued. “It’s sick. These people are sick.”
Already, several sources had begun poking holes in Bright’s claims, noting that he had advocated for HHS’s acquisition of the drug previously and that his dismissal had, in fact, been a year in the making, according to Politico.
Oh, so it didn’t just start over hydroxycholoroquine. https://t.co/okbF8jJ4GM pic.twitter.com/cLMWbBx26M
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) April 22, 2020
Trump urged the media to apply more skepticism and restraint in its coverage than it had in some of the previous partisan smear campaigns, maintaining that he had no part in the personnel decision involving Bright.
“I never heard of him,” Trump said. “The guy says he was pushed out of a job—maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. You’d have to hear the other side.”