How Many Lies Are They Going to Get Away With?

A social distancing sign is displayed on the floor in a store in New York on Jan. 20, 2021. Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times

Commentary

The brazenness of the deceit we are witnessing every single day at this point is not only mind-boggling; it is dangerous.

The emergence of yet another variant of the COVID-19 virus is raising the specter of masks, social distancing, and lockdowns again. Apparently, we are supposed to forget what has only recently been officially admitted: that masks do not prevent the spread of the disease, and that lockdowns did serious damage to the economy and to children’s education without any offsetting benefit.

The Biden administration is pushing for yet another shot. So we are also supposed to forget that COVID vaccines don’t, in fact, prevent contraction or transmission, despite officials assuring the public for months that they did, and that many experts are concerned that the mRNA shots actually lower immunities. And we must ignore the fact that all viruses mutate and become weaker over time. And the anomalous requirement of a constant barrage of shots. And the explosion in cases of myocarditis and pericarditis in young people, not to mention seeing scores of perfectly healthy young adults keel over from cardiac arrest.

The story that COVID-19 originated in a market in Wuhan was not true. Nor was the official statement that gain-of-function research was not taking place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology; it was, and our people were funding it, including an organization headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who told Congress he was not.

Statements that the drugs ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine could not be used to treat COVID-19 were also untrue.

Where are the consequences for those responsible for these false statements and the incalculable harm caused by them?

The public health deceit is dwarfed by that taking place in the political realm generally.

Politics is a veritable petri dish for breeding lies, but this has been taking to shockingly dangerous levels when it comes to former President Donald Trump.

The claim that Trump “colluded” with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election was a lie. Hillary Clinton’s campaign paid for “information” that the FBI knew from the get-go was false. The FBI then lied to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court to get illegal warrants to spy on the Trump campaign and later, his administration.

These specious accusations spawned the two-plus yearlong Mueller investigation into Trump’s campaign activities that cost taxpayers more than $30 million and found nothing. The report released this spring by Special Counsel John Durham concluded that the FBI had no evidentiary justification even to start its “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation of Trump, that it was a political hatchet job launched by Clinton, and that the FBI’s treatment of Clinton (accused of mishandling classified information) and Trump was “markedly different.”

Hobbling and smearing the Trump administration wasn’t enough. So Democrats decided to impeach Trump for a phone call he made to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In that call, Trump asked about an earlier decision to fire Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who had been investigating corruption in the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, where then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter had a cushy job paying him tens of thousands of dollars a month.

Democrats called Trump’s phone call “abuse of power.” But mounting evidence suggests that Hunter Biden was influence peddling (not just in Ukraine), and that his father did threaten to withhold money from Ukraine unless they stopped the Burisma investigation.

Where are the consequences for that abuse of power?

When Hunter Biden’s laptop—with all its sordid content—came into the public eye just before the November 2020 election, social media and former intelligence officials claimed it was “Russian disinformation” and censored the content. That was a lie—and one that likely had an impact on the election.

Where are the consequences?

The claim that Jan. 6, 2021, was an “insurrection” is one of the biggest lies with the most serious repercussions. For example, when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) asked FBI Assistant Director Jill Sanborn whether federal agents instigated or contributed to violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, Sanborn refused to confirm or deny it—not once, but multiple times. The media reported that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was killed by the crowd on Jan. 6. He was not; he had a stroke and died of natural causes, one day later. Former Capitol Police Chief Steve Sund told Tucker Carlson in a recent interview that his requests for National Guard protection were denied, both in advance of Jan. 6 and even when the crowds were converging on the Capitol. Why? Was all of this to create the narrative of an “insurrection”—one that would later be used to impeach Trump an unprecedented second time?

Now they’re indicting Trump for questioning the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, and for hiring lawyers to make his arguments. (They’re also indicting his lawyers.) It’s inscrutable that Trump’s objections to election results are criminal offenses, but Al Gore’s in 2000, Hillary Clinton’s in 2016, and Stacey Abrams’ in 2018 weren’t. In fact, Washington Times reporter Susan Ferrechio wrote last week that Democrats “have attempted to block every Republican presidential winner since 2000.”

Trump is being charged with conspiracy to do something that not only isn’t illegal, it’s constitutionally protected speech. The partisans behind these sham charges know full well that they will never get convictions that withstand appeals. Their real goal is to cripple Trump and deceive the public into believing that Trump is guilty of conduct that disqualifies him from public office.

This is manipulation and deceit with terribly grave consequences. Those justifying, celebrating or even just tolerating all these lies because they damage people with different political viewpoints seem not to realize a sobering fact: If there are no consequences for those who corrupt our institutions with deceit, then there will be consequences for our country and our society.

And they will not be pleasant.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.