Leftist Extremists Want Feds in Control of Private Property During Pandemic

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Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota has introduced a bill co-sponsored by the other members of the far-left freshman “squad” that would severely restrict personal property rights.

The Rent and Mortgage Cancellation Act, introduced April 17, would cancel all rent and mortgage payments for the remainder of the coronavirus pandemic.

“The bill would constitute a full payment forgiveness, with no accumulation of debt for renters or homeowners and no negative impact on their credit rating or rental history,” according to a news release distributed by Omar’s office. . .

For one, it would force landlords to give up their right to annually adjust their rental rate to compensate for increases in property taxes, insurance or other variable costs. . .

It essentially seeks to shift ownership of rental properties from private hands to the government, forcing landlords to give tenants a 10% equity stake in their property. (Read more from “Leftist Extremists Want Feds in Control of Private Property During Pandemic” HERE)

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Antibody Tests Are Proving That Continuing Lockdown Is Senseless

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We are going to lose 40% of our national GDP this quarter, incur trillions in debt, lose our freedoms and privacy, and shed tens of millions of jobs – including of health care workers – due to the shutdown and panic porn peddled by the political class. But for what? For a virus that had already been spreading for months and has a case fatality rate well below 1%. We will be left with nothing from the lockdowns other than a virus that will be kept alive for longer and kill more people.

We no longer need to guess how pervasive the virus has been and therefore how low the fatality rate is. There are numerous serology tests being done throughout the country and the world that demonstrate the entire premise for the lockdown is counterproductive.

Miami-Dade County has now completed two rounds of random sampling for antibodies, and both surveys found a 0.18% fatality rate. The study sampled 32 municipal statistical areas in this county of 2.75 million people and found that between 4.4% and 7.9% of the population contained the antibodies. Extrapolating the survey results to the entire county’s population would mean that between 123,000 and 221,000 residents have already gotten the virus and that the fatality rate is therefore between 0.13% and 0.23%, for a median of 0.18%.

While many Florida counties are overwhelmingly populated by elderly residents, Miami-Dade is just a little above the national median age of the country, so it’s a good sample of the macro fatality rate when averaging out all age groups nationwide.

Most notably, the serology test found that “more than half had NO symptoms in the seven to fourteen days prior to screening.” That is a result similar to that of other countries, such as Iceland.

In other words, this thing was quietly spreading long before the lockdown, rendering the entire purpose of the lockdown moot.

Many other antibody studies have concluded there is a similarly low fatality rate. Antibody sampling in Santa Clara and Los Angeles counties netted similar results – between 0.12% and 0.20%. The fatality rate in Chelsea, Massachusetts, based on an extrapolation of a sampling there, would be around 0.16 percent. That is identical to the results of a recent antibody test in Denmark, which demonstrates a degree of consistency throughout the world. One serology test in Germany showed a slightly higher but still low fatality rate of 0.37%. And Germany has a higher percentage of seniors relative to its general population than the United States.

However, the more this virus runs its course and the more antibody testing takes place, it’s likely that the denominator of total cases will be much larger, further driving down the fatality rate. According to Reuters, a recent tally of 3,277 inmates in state prison systems in Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia who had tested positive for the virus showed that 96 percent of them were asymptomatic. This is likely a relatively young population of predominantly males in their 20s and 30s.

If these surveys and tests showing wide asymptomatic spreading are representative of other places in the country and across the globe, it means that likely as many people have had SARS-CoV-2 as have the flu in a typical year. This has two important public policy implications: 1) The fatality rate is a fraction of what was suggested by the models that were used to justify the shutdown; and 2) This disease has spread so far and wide that implementing lockdowns and mass surveillance/contact tracing at this stage are like spitting into a sea.

Release the healthy; better protect the elderly and vulnerable

What is the punch line? If you are not elderly or chronically ill, you are less likely to die from coronavirus than most other things. Not only is the fatality rate of the virus overall only slightly higher than that of the flu, but it’s mainly targeting vulnerable populations. Over half the SARS-CoV-2 deaths in Massachusetts and Maine were in long-term care facilities, and the median age of death was 82. Nearly three-quarters of those in Minnesota were in long-term care facilities. That number is 75% in Rhode Island, 61% in Pennsylvania, and 43% in Connecticut.

New York and New Jersey appear to be the only states where the percentage is lower, but even in those hot spots, it was mainly those with chronic illnesses who died. A new paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association by the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research found that 94% of fatalities in the New York City area had at least one chronic illness and 88% percent had at least two. The comprehensive study analyzed data from about 5,700 coronavirus patients admitted to New York City and metro-area hospitals between March 1 and April 4, of whom 553 passed away.

Now, certainly there are still a lot of people in the country with chronic illness who are at risk. They need to be protected. But the way to protect them is by younger and healthier people going out to burn out the virus. “Quarantining” younger and healthier people who are least at risk of serious illness or death will ensure the virus continues to make comebacks after the summer and kills even more people. Tragically, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, while pushing lockdowns on everyone, actually compromised local nursing homes by forcing them to accept coronavirus patients straight from the hospital.

Moreover, this lockdown is weakening the immune systems of even healthy people by keeping them so isolated. As Dr. Dan Erickson warned in his lecture that has now gone viral, there will actually be more illnesses over time as people go out because their immune systems have been artificially weakened.

“When we all come out of shelter-in-place with a lower immune system and start trading viruses and bacteria, what do you think is going to happen? Disease is going to spike,” warned Erickson, whose urgent care clinics tested over half of the positive cases in Kern County, California. “And then you’ve got disease spike among a hospital system with furloughed doctors and nurses. This is not the combination you want to set up for a healthy society.”

Obviously, if this virus had a high death rate among the broad population, then you wouldn’t want to build up your immune system while increasing the chance of catching the virus. But we now see in most places the death rate is likely well below 1% among younger people. We take greater risks with our health every day.

The bottom line is that early on, when we knew little about the virus and were all spooked by what seemed to be going on in Italy, some degree of a shutdown made sense. But now that the data is in, there is no justification for a lockdown – other than for those who want to secure a long-standing progressive agenda that predated this virus. (For more from the author of “Antibody Tests Are Proving That Continuing Lockdown Is Senseless” please click HERE)

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Giuliani: ‘Fauci Gave $3.7 Million to Wuhan Laboratory’ in 2014; More Evidence of Chinese Cover-up; NPR Kissing Up to China – Again

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By Breitbart. Sunday on New York AM 970 radio’s “The Cats Roundtable,” Rudy Giuliani, personal legal counsel for President Donald Trump, accused the President Barack Obama administration in 2014 of funding the Wuhan laboratory in which the coronavirus is believed to have originated. . .

“You could say [China’s experimenting] … was for the purpose of weaponizing it,” Giuliani told host John Catsimatidis. “Back in 2014, the Obama administration prohibited the U.S. from giving money to any laboratory, including in the U.S., that was fooling around with these viruses. Prohibited! Despite that, Dr. Fauci gave $3.7 million to the Wuhan laboratory. And then even after the State Department issued reports about how unsafe that laboratory was, and how suspicious they were in the way they were developing a virus that could be transmitted to humans, we never pulled that money. So, something here is going on, John. I don’t want to make any accusations. But there was more knowledge about what was going on in China with our scientific people then they disclosed to us when this first came out. I mean, just think of it, if this laboratory turns out to be the place where the virus came from — we paid for it. We paid for the damn virus that’s killing us.” (Read more from “Giuliani: ‘Fauci Gave $3.7 Million to Wuhan Laboratory’ in 2014” HERE)

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Is Bat coronavirus 4991 a smoking gun in China’s COVID-19 cover-up?

By Dr. Lawrence Sellin. There is no doubt that COVID-19 is a novel coronavirus, but from where did it originate?

No one knows. There have been hints. Yet, now, for some reason, some of those hints have disappeared from the debate.

In the February 3, 2020 article in the prestigious journal Nature, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, led by Zheng-Li Shi, claimed that the coronavirus RaTG13, isolated from bats in Yunnan Province, China, showed a 96.2% sequence identity with COVID-19 and, therefore, “RaTG13 is the closest relative” of COVID-19 and forms a distinct lineage from other coronaviruses.

A month later on March 17, 2020, in now the most widely-cited article both by scientists and the media, “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” published by Nature Medicine, the authors supported the conclusion that RaTG13 is CoVid-19’s closest relative, which “jumped” from animals to humans in the Wuhan Seafood Market.

But is that conclusion warranted?

In an article that appeared on February 6, 2020, scientists at the State Key Laboratory of Virology, Modern Virology Research Center, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University wrote that the partial RdRp gene sequence of bat coronavirus strain BtCoV/4991 (GenBank KP876546) had a 98.7% nucleotide identity with COVID-19.

On March 16, 2020 and maybe earlier, it was noted that BtCoV/4991’s short sequence was a 100% match for the same short sequence in RaTG13 and was also a 100% match for SNU01, the viral isolate from the first COVID-19 patient in South Korea.

The obvious question then as now remains, are RaTG13 and BtCoV/4991 the same coronavirus? If true, it could reveal a cover-up by China as to the true origin of COVID-19.

Both bat coronaviruses RaTG13 and BtCoV/4991 were isolated from bats in Yunnan Province, China in July 2013. There GenBank accession designations are MN996532 and KP876546, respectively.

BtCoV/4991 was partially sequenced in 2016, but its full sequence has never been published. Oddly, although isolated in 2013, the sequence of RaTG13 was not submitted until January 27, 2020.

It is also strange that with all the information publicly available, the most widely cited article by many scientists and media, “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” never mentions BtCoV/4991.

And how did a coronavirus, whether it be RaTG13 or BtCoV/4991, isolated from bats in Yunnan Province, nearly 1,000 miles away, end up in the Wuhan Seafood Market, if that was indeed the source of the outbreak?

Or, more likely, was it the result of a leak from a Wuhan laboratory, where experiments were being conducted on a variety of bat coronaviruses?

In addition, no one has explained the origin of COVID-19’s furin polybasic cleavage site, which exists in none of the yet identified close coronavirus relatives and may be partially responsible for its enhanced transmissibility in humans.

Furthermore, as an April 22, 2020 comment states:

“If they [the Chinese] obfuscated the origin of this virus, how can we be sure the RaTG13 genome is accurate and not manipulated? In this context, we would need independent third-party access to the original specimen to extract the genetics.”

Indeed. The science coming out of China seems to raise more questions than it answers.

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel, who previously worked at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and conducted basic and clinical research in the pharmaceutical industry. His email address is [email protected].

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NPR Tries to Convince Americans that the Chicom Virus Didn’t Come From a Wuhan Laboratory

By NPR. Virus researchers say there is virtually no chance that the new coronavirus was released as result of a laboratory accident in China or anywhere else.

The assessment, made by more than half-a-dozen scientists familiar with lab accidents and how research on coronaviruses is conducted, casts doubt on recent claims that a mistake may have unleashed the coronavirus on the world. . .

But after corresponding with 10 leading scientists who collect samples of viruses from animals in the wild, study virus genomes and understand how lab accidents can happen, NPR found that an accidental release would have required a remarkable series of coincidences and deviations from well-established experimental protocols.

“All of the evidence points to this not being a laboratory accident,” says Jonna Mazet, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Davis and director of a global project to watch for emerging viruses called PREDICT. (Read more from “Virus Researchers Cast Doubt on Theory of Coronavirus Lab Accident” HERE)

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Frontline Doctors Say to Reopen U.S.; These Are the 6 New Possible Symptoms of the Coronavirus the CDC Added to Its List

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By The Blaze. Two doctors, who have administered more than 5,000 coronavirus tests, say that coronavirus is similar to the seasonal flu, the quarantine is not helping with building coronavirus immunity, and they are confident that reopening is safe.

The two frontline physicians, Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi, are the owners of Accelerated Urgent Care in Bakersfield, California. The doctors are presenting medical advice about the coronavirus that is far different than what health officials have been saying over the past weeks. . .

“Do we need to still shelter in place? Our answer is emphatically no,” Erickson said. “Do we need businesses to be shut down? Emphatically no. Do we need to test them and get them back to work? Absolutely.”

Accelerated Urgent Care has tested 5,213 patients within the county, which makes up half of all testing done in Kern County. “Now that we have the facts, it’s time to get back to work,” Erickson said. . .

“If you study the numbers in 2017 and 2018, we had 50 to 60 million with the flu,” Erickson said. “And we had a similar death rate in the deaths the United States were 43,545—similar to the flu of 2017-2018. We always have between 37,000 and 60,000 deaths in the United States, every single year. No pandemic talk. No shelter-in-place. No shutting down businesses.” (Read more from “Frontline Doctors Say to Reopen U.S.” HERE)

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These Are the 6 New Possible Symptoms of the Coronavirus the CDC Added to Its List

By USA Today. Chills, repeated shaking with chills, muscle pain, headache, sore throat and a loss of taste or smell.

Those are the six new symptoms the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautioned could be signs of the coronavirus.

The additions come as health experts’ understanding of the confounding disease evolves. The CDC previously listed fever, cough and shortness of breath as symptoms.

Shortness of breath was tweaked to “shortness of breath or difficulty breathing” by the CDC.

Coronavirus patients can experience a diversity of issues – from mild symptoms to severe illness. These symptoms generally appear 2-14 days after exposure to the virus. Patients may be most infectious in the days before they began showing symptoms, studies show. (Read more from “These Are the 6 New Possible Symptoms of the Coronavirus the CDC Added to Its List” HERE)

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Muslim Call to Prayer Will Be Blasted Over This Major U.S. City During Ramadan (VIDEO)

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The Muslim call to prayer will blast over loudspeakers in a Minneapolis neighborhood five times per day during the month of Ramadan.

According to Al Jazeera, the prayer call will be broadcasted during Ramadan, Islam’s holy month, which runs from April 23 to May 23[:]

The simple, short call – known as the adhan – marked an historical moment for Minneapolis and major cities across the United States, community members said. While the adhan is commonly broadcast throughout the Middle East, North Africa and other places, for many Muslims in the US, it is only heard inside mosques or community centres.

“There’s definitely a lot of excitement,” said Imam Abdisalam Adam, who is on the board of the Dar al-Hijrah mosque, from where the adhan will be broadcast. “Some people see it as historic,” Adam told Al Jazeera. “To the point … that they’re not doing it, able to see it in their lifetime.”

(Read more from “Muslim Call to Prayer Will Be Blasted Over This Major U.S. City During Ramadan” HERE)

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California Governor Ordered by Supreme Court to Defend $75 Million Giveaway to Illegals

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Californians struggling to make ends meet during extended coronavirus shutdowns were not amused when their governor, Gavin Newsom, announced the creation of a public-private partnership to give away $125 million ($500/person) in pandemic relief grants to illegal immigrants who are ineligible to receive unemployment benefits or federal stimulus checks (because they are not here legally, duh).

Newsom further explained that of the $125 million in funding, $75 million would come from taxpayer funds (without explaining any legislative process appropriating such funds) and that “a group of charities” had promised to chip in $50 million. . .

There’s only one problem. California’s Constitution forbids appropriating funds “to any corporation, association, asylum, hospital, or any other institution not under the exclusive management and control of the State as a state institution.” Newsom had attempted this method of distribution since, under state and federal law, unemployment benefits cannot be extended to illegal aliens either without caring that it was prohibited under California’s constitution, or believing that no one would care enough to challenge it.

He was wrong. On April 22 Ricardo Benitez, a legal immigrant from El Salvador, and Jessica Martinez, a Californian of Mexican/American descent, “filed an emergency petition to the California Supreme Court requesting the Court immediately stay Governor Newsom’s appropriation of $75 million to unnamed regional non-profits so they can, in turn, provide $500 checks to unemployed undocumented immigrants.” Benitez and Martinez are both Republican candidates for the California State Assembly and are represented by The Center for American Liberty in conjunction with Harmeet Dhillon and Mark Meuser of the Dhillon Law Firm.

(Read more from “California Governor Ordered by Supreme Court to Defend $75 Million Giveaway to Illegals” HERE)

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Supreme Court Orders U.S. City to Explain Its Confiscation of Legal Guns

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The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered officials in San Jose, California, to explain why they confiscated the legally owned guns of Lori Rodriguez. . .

The case was brought by the Second Amendment Foundation on behalf of the woman. . .

“We’re encouraged by this development in the case,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “If the city thought they could just ignore this case and make it go away, they’re wrong.” . . .

“Her firearms were seized seven years ago after her husband was taken to a hospital on a mental health issue,” the foundation said. “At the time, a San Jose police officer advised Rodriguez he had authority to seize all firearms in the residence, including those belonging solely to her, which were all locked in a California-approved safe. The guns were taken without a warrant, and over Rodriguez’s objection.”

Gottlieb said the inquiry is “a significant development, because it signals the Supreme Court is interested in the case.” (Read more from “Supreme Court Orders U.S. City to Explain Its Confiscation of Legal Guns” HERE)

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Warning of 2020 Presidential Election Chaos Based on Supreme Ruling; Trump Denies Biden’s Insane Claim About Delaying 2020 Election

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By WND. There will be “chaos” in the 2020 presidential election if the Supreme Court decides that states cannot require Electoral College electors to vote for the candidate their voters select, warns an analysis by two legal scholars. . .

In the two cases – Chiafalo v. Washington and Colorado Department of State v. Baca – a designated Electoral College elector chose not to vote for the candidate that earned the most popular votes in the state. The electors were replaced and were sued.

“The court, as is its wont, might decide that question by parsing how the Framers anticipated the Electoral College would operate. But there would be immediate real-world consequences of ‘unbinding’ presidential electors – consequences that could throw the 2020 presidential election into chaos,” wrote Smith and Noti. . .

But if the Supreme Court rule they are free to support the candidate of their choice, the 538 members of the Electoral would become “the most important elected officials in the nation.” . . .

“Here’s the scary part: Of the four most important federal anti-corruption laws, not one covers presidential electors,” they wrote. “Electors can accept unlimited amounts of money in connection with their official duties. And they don’t even need to tell anyone.” (Read more from “Warning of 2020 Presidential Election Chaos Based on Supreme Ruling” HERE)

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Trump Denies Biden Claim He Might Try to Delay 2020 Election: ‘Why Would I Do That?’

By Fox News. resident Trump denied on Monday an assertion by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden that he would try to delay November’s presidential election due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“I never even thought of changing the date of the election,” Trump said during a news conference in the White House Rose Garden. “Why would I do that?”

Trump dismissed the comment as “made-up propaganda.”

The president’s comments come several days after Biden claimed that Trump might work to delay the election. Biden’s words came on the heels of comments from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. disease expert, who said in an interview that he could not guarantee that it will be safe to physically vote at polls in November due to the coronavirus.

“Mark my words, I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held. That’s the only way he thinks he can possibly win,” Biden said in an online campaign event, according to a pool report. (Read more from “Trump Denies Biden Claim He Might Try to Delay 2020 Election: ‘Why Would I Do That?'” HERE)

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Bad News For Biden: A New Source Goes Public to Corroborate Sexual Assault Claim; Top Dems Silent as New Evidence Emerges

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By Business Insider. In March, when a former aide to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden accused the candidate of sexually assaulting her in 1993, two people came forward to say that the woman, Tara Reade, had told them of the incident shortly after it allegedly occurred — her brother, Collin Moulton, and a friend who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.

Now two more sources have come forward to corroborate certain details about Reade’s claims. One of them — a former neighbor of Reade’s — has told Insider for the first time, on the record, that Reade disclosed details about the alleged assault to her in the mid-1990s.

“This happened, and I know it did because I remember talking about it,” Lynda LaCasse, who lived next door to Reade in the mid-’90s, told Insider.

The other source, Lorraine Sanchez, who worked with Reade in the office of a California state senator in the mid-’90s, told Insider that she recalls Reade complaining at the time that her former boss in Washington, DC, had sexually harassed her, and that she had been fired after raising concerns. (Read more from “Bad News For Biden: A New Source Goes Public to Corroborate Sexual Assault Claim” HERE)

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Biden, Top Dems Silent as New Evidence Emerges on Sexual Assault Claim

By ABC 6. As new evidence emerges regarding the sexual assault claim against former Vice President Joe Biden by a former staffer, the pressure on the likely Democratic presidential nominee and his allies to address the explosive allegation is growing and the potential danger for his campaign is rising.

Amid a coronavirus pandemic and national economic devastation, Biden has largely avoided questions about Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegation over the last month, but new developments could ensure the subject is not going away anytime soon. The hashtag #DropOutBiden trended on Twitter over the weekend as progressive activists and supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders argued rape accusations should be disqualifying for a Democratic presidential nominee. . .

Biden has not been asked about Reade’s claims in a dozen recent interviews—a fact that Reade has said is “shocking.” His campaign has not directly addressed the latest evidence, but it has flatly denied the allegations in the past.

“Vice President Biden has dedicated his public life to changing the culture and the laws around violence against women. He authored and fought for the passage and reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act. He firmly believes that women have a right to be heard — and heard respectfully,” Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s communications director, previously said in a statement. “Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press. What is clear about this claim: it is untrue. This absolutely did not happen.”

Reade’s critics say her shifting stories, her vocal support for Sen. Bernie Sanders, and her past public praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin undermine her credibility. However, she maintains she has been treated unfairly by politicians and activists who defend sexual assault victims when it is politically convenient for them.

(Read more from “Biden, Top Dems Silent as New Evidence Emerges on Sexual Assault Claim” HERE)

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WATCH: Pentagon Formally Releases Three UFO Videos

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The Pentagon on Monday approved the release of three “unidentified aerial phenomena” videos taken over the years by U.S. Navy aviators. All three had been, shall we say, informally available on the internet, but now viewers can see them with the military’s stamp of approval. Defense Department spokesperson Sue Gough said, “After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena.”

Gough explained, “DOD is releasing the videos in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos.” . . .

The first video was captured in 2004 and leaked to the public in 2017. The New York Times reported that an F/A-18 piloted by Cmdr. David Fravor with Lt. Cmdr. Jim Slaight in the back seat was flying about 100 miles off the Pacific coast when they were hailed by the cruiser U.S.S. Princeton:

“Well, we’ve got a real-world vector for you,” the radio operator said, according to Commander Fravor. For two weeks, the operator said, the Princeton had been tracking mysterious aircraft. The objects appeared suddenly at 80,000 feet, and then hurtled toward the sea, eventually stopping at 20,000 feet and hovering. Then they either dropped out of radar range or shot straight back up.

(Read more from “Pentagon Formally Releases Three UFO Videos” HERE)

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