Florida’s 22nd Statewide Grand Jury, convened by Governor Ron DeSantis to investigate COVID-19 shot manufacturing, recently published its final report revealing widespread deceptive practices between the FDA, Pfizer, and Moderna to hide deaths and other serious side effects of the COVID shots from the public.
While the grand jury’s criminal investigation heavily criticized shot manufacturers and FDA regulators for “cutting corners” and working “hand-in-glove” to speedily deliver these shots to market, the grand jury levied no indictments and specifically concluded nothing “illegal” occurred in the COVID-19 shot process. However, the investigators did find “a pattern of deceptive and obfuscatory behavior” on the part of Pfizer, Moderna and government regulators that they said “should probably not be legal.”
“Hiding the details, methodology and results of scores of safety investigations from public view does not build public confidence; it undermines it,” wrote the grand jury. “The FDA would not speak to us directly, so we are not sure what their excuse would be for not holding Pfizer and Moderna’s feet to the fire. Frankly, we are not sure any answer would satisfy us at this point, nor should it satisfy anyone else.”
As a result, the grand jury made many recommendations, some of which included:
- Conduct new clinical trials for the Pfizer and Moderna shots to establish reliable clinical data.
- The FDA should reinstate a ban on “direct-to-consumer” advertising of therapeutics.
- The federal government should adopt a framework that impedes the “revolving door” of private-sector employees and lobbyists moving in and out of regulatory agencies.
- Drug companies should be required to publicly disclose adverse side effects and safety problems.
- Drug sponsors who do not comply with data transparency requirements should lose federal legal immunity.
Throughout each company’s clinical trials, follow-up safety data analysis, and advertising campaigns, the grand jury stated that a “lack of tension” from an oversight standpoint between federal regulators and the “for-profit pharmaceutical industry” set conditions for both sides to do things that should be illegal.
The report explained that Operation Warp Speed set the stage for unethical conduct by offering drug companies two potential revenue streams, which consisted of upfront development money to formulate and test COVID shots followed by “lucrative guaranteed contracts” to mass produce them. The investigators said these financial incentives set up a “derby” for the manufacturers to get their injections quickly through the clinical trial process to get to an Emergency-Use Authorization (EUA) and licensure “finish line” and reap the benefits of those contracts.
One of the many compromises the grand jury found in this accelerated process involved abnormal clinical trial protocols that allowed for delays in reporting findings and even year-long obfuscations of serious adverse side effects, such as deaths. According to the report, at least a dozen people in Pfizer’s and Moderna’s clinical trials developed Vaccine-Related Myocarditis and Pericarditis (VRMP). These companies said that VRMP cases are “generally mild” and “tend to resolve on their own with no long-term effects.” Yet, with millions of administered doses by August 2022, there were 283 reported VRMP deaths from Pfizer’s shot and 65 deaths from Moderna’s shot. The grand jury revealed the dozen VRMP cases during the trials had “only come to light” in February 2024, and even then the information was “buried deep” in a tabled report appendix absent of any amplifying information. When subpoenaed, both Pfizer and Moderna declined to give the grand jury any more information regarding deaths attributed to VRMP after August 2022, which the investigators believed there to be more.
This dangerous VRMP safety issue even prompted the FDA back in 2021 to mandate specific long-range studies on the matter. To date, both Pfizer and Moderna have either not completed or even initiated such studies. In addition, Pfizer and Moderna have routinely missed deadlines regarding clinical testing on pediatric and pregnancy groups where their data is not yet publicly available.
Regarding booster shots, the manufacturers either delayed publishing or simply didn’t publish any journal articles detailing VRMP events or other serious side effects from their trial groups, which in a way kept the FDA endorsing the booster shots. The grand jury believes that both Pfizer and Moderna “took advantage” of the years of lag time in the scientific journal publishing process to avoid reporting serious adverse events. But when other experienced and respected scientists dissented against the safety and efficacy narratives of the shots, they “saw their careers turned upside down” for not accepting “the science.” Rather, the report stated, “experts with opinions matching those of the regulators filled the gaps with contrived research and ill-conceived study designs, propagandizing citizens into believing things about the SARS- CoV-2 virus and the COVID-19 vaccines that simply were not true.”
Only with “subpoena power” is the public able to get a clear picture of the side effects related to the shots, the report stated.
The grand jury also illustrated the advertising opposition that dissenting viewpoints faced with Pfizer’s massive $10 billion spent on marketing between 2020-2023. The U.S. is only one of two countries in the world that allows drug companies to advertise their products directly to consumers. The FDA requires drug sponsors to disclose their ingredients and side effects associated with their products. However, these requirements apply to ads that promote specific vaccines, but not ads promoting vaccination in general. The report noted that “unbranded” advertising that did not mention a drug by name could still promote shots in EUA status only if they were advertising “just the act of getting vaccinated.” The report stated the “conceit” of these ads allow drug companies to avoid disclosing risks while promoting the potential benefits of their products with little to no regulatory oversight.
“It is frustrating to this Grand Jury, as it should be frustrating to everyone who reads this report, to know that these sponsors have taken in billions of taxpayer dollars for creating and selling their vaccines; they cannot be sued if something goes wrong with them; they have access to critical information about deaths related to a side effect of their products; and the public does not have access to that information,” wrote the grand jury. “Somehow, withholding this valuable safety information is not a crime. It certainly should be.”
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “This final report from the grand jury shows that the U.S. drug approval and licensing system needs a wholesale overhaul. A pandemic emergency is no excuse to compromise ethical standards and hide deaths from the public. The FDA sacrificed the regulatory will to keep the ‘for-profit’ pharmaceutical industry in check and people lost lives. This should have been illegal. There needs to be friction between regulatory agencies and drug companies so this never happens again. For all their taxpayer dollars, Americans deserve federal watchdogs not federal lapdogs of Big Pharma.”
