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Oregon Senators Sue to Investigate Federal COVID Response

CDC director Rochelle Walensky is one of a number of officials named in a Grand Jury Petition over matters related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo taken  in Wilmington, Del., in  Dec. 2020. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

With a ruling expected on Sept. 12, three plaintiffs continue pressing for a Special Federal Grand Jury Investigation into how federal agencies handled the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 64-page Grand Jury Petition specifically names as defendants CDC director Rochelle Walensky, Health and Human Services secretary Xavier Becerra, National Vital Statistics system director Brian Moyer, former HHS secretary Alex Azar, and former CDC director Robert Redfield.

“Our goal is to prove criminal data fraud so that these agencies are thoroughly investigated and held to account,” plaintiff Dr Henry Ealy III told The Epoch Times.

Filed on March 7, 2022, by Ealy—along with Oregon state senators Kim Thatcher and Dennis Linthicum, both Republicans—the petition alleges that the CDC hyperinflated COVID-19 numbers by as much as 94 percent by changing how deaths were reported during the pandemic.

Plaintiffs claim that on March 24, 2020, the CDC violated at least three federal laws when it changed death certificate reporting exclusively for COVID, ensuring that high-risk Americans (over 65, with multiple pre-existing conditions) who died would be counted as COVID deaths rather than having their pre-existing condition correctly listed as the cause of death.

“When they changed the reporting, they broke the law,” Ealy claimed. “Before making such a change, they are required to notify the Federal Register for public comment and Executive Branch oversight.”

“We allege that CDC violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), and Information Quality Act (IQA) in doing so,” he explained.

On March 26, 2020, plaintiffs claim that HHS began to “coerce hospital and medical professional compliance by financially incentivizing COVID diagnosis in excess of normal reimbursement for similar infectious disease.”

“These deliberate acts led to the misappropriation of over $3.5 trillion of American taxpayer funds and widespread devastation for countless individuals and families across our great nation,” the petition states.

On April 6, 2020, it adds that Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) published case definitions for COVID that enabled a doctor to diagnose a patient with COVID based upon a single cough.

“The CSTE is a non-profit organization, heavily financed by the pharmaceutical industry, with no governmental authority,” the petition explains. “The CDC director, Robert Redfield supplied four ‘subject matter experts’ from the CDC to help develop case definitions.”

The CDC officially adopted these case definitions on April 14, 2020, without notifying the Federal Register, according to the plaintiffs. This is another violation of the APA, PRA, and IQA.

“You don’t get to play games with this stuff,” said Linthicum in an online forum hosted by Stand for Health Freedom. “It’s a violation of the law.”

Additionally, plaintiffs claim that defendants Walensky and Becerra “covered up failures of the experimental COVID inoculations” by terminating all publication of “vaccine breakthrough” on Oct. 30, 2021.

“In place of real numbers of confirmed ‘vaccine breakthrough’ cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, defendants Walensky and Becerra have promoted a new fraudulent metric termed ‘vaccine efficacy’ that groups partially vaccinated individuals with unvaccinated individuals and refers to the group collectively and misleadingly as ‘unvaccinated,’ which again constitutes data fraud,” the petition says.

After filing two Motions to Postpone, the defendants filed a Motion to Dismiss on Aug. 28, claiming that plaintiffs do not have legal standing in this matter, among other assertions.

“We finally have a response,” said Ealy. “Now we have an opportunity to demonstrate to the court the significant public interest in seeing this through.”

To do so, plaintiffs are working to gather 1 million signatures on the Stand For Health Freedom website by Sept. 12.