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Monday, February 28, 2022

4 New Things We Just Learned About The Special Counsel Investigation

 When will the corrupt media begin reporting on this biggest political scandal of the last century?


Since Friday, several developments have exposed more of the behind-the-scenes details of the special counsel investigation into Spygate, including the public release of the deposition of Tech Executive-1, Rodney Joffe. Joffe’s deposition, coupled with other details previously known, reveals several significant facts while highlighting the many questions that remain unanswered.

Here’s what we learned and what investigative trails require further probing.

1. Rodney Joffe Pled the Fifth Twice

Earlier this month, the Russian-connected Alfa Bank filed a motion in a Florida state court seeking an extension of time to serve the numerous “John Doe” defendants it had sued there in June 2020. Alfa Bank had sued “John Doe, et al.” as stand-ins for the defendants it claimed were responsible for executing “a highly sophisticated cyberattacking scheme to fabricate apparent communications between [Alfa Bank] and the Trump Organization” in the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election.

After filing suit, Alfa Bank began discovery in an attempt to learn the identity of the individuals responsible for what the large, privately owned Russian bank alleged was the creation of a fake computer trail connecting it to the Trump Organization. Among others Alfa Bank sought information from was Joffe, the man identified as Tech Executive-1 in Special Counsel John Durham’s indictment against former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann.

Joffe’s attempts to quash Alfa Bank’s subpoena failed. On February 11, 2022, the tech executive alleged by Durham to have exploited sensitive data from an executive branch office of the federal government to mine for derogatory information on Trump sat for his deposition. On Friday, an internet sleuth discovered the public filing of Joffe’s deposition, which revealed that Joffe had finally been deposed by Alfa Bank.

In addition to revealing that Joffe’s deposition had taken place, the transcript from the deposition established that Durham had asked to interview Joffe more than a year earlier, but Joffe refused to speak with Durham’s team. After Joffe refused to submit to a voluntary interview, the special counsel’s office subpoenaed him to testify before a grand jury.

Joffe told Alfa Bank lawyers that he refused to answer questions before the grand jury, exercising his Fifth Amendment rights. The former Neustar tech executive likewise asserted his Fifth Amendment rights in response to a subpoena for documents served by the special counsel’s office.

2. Joffe Seeks to Jump into the Sussmann Criminal Case

Friday also saw Joffe’s attorneys, Steven Tyrrell and Eileen Citron, file notices of appearances for Joffe as a proposed “intervenor” in the special counsel’s criminal case against Sussmann. Joffe could seek to intervene in the case to challenge a subpoena, to seek a protective order—maybe because of purported attorney-client communications Joffe had with Sussmann or to prevent Durham from discussing his alleged role in public filings—or to otherwise protect a legal right or interest.

We should know more shortly, when Joffe’s attorney files the related motion to intervene. That motion is likely to come within the next week or so, given that on Friday, the court in United States v. Sussmann scheduled a hearing for March 7, 2022, to address potential conflicts of interests between Sussmann and his current attorneys, and Joffe is likely interested in ensuring Durham’s team does not further implicate him in the matter.

3. Joffe’s Seemingly Contradictory Testimony About Ops-Trust

The transcript of Joffe’s deposition testimony discovered on Friday consisted mainly of the former tech executive refusing to answer questions because of the special counsel’s pending investigation, with Joffe responding to Alfa Bank’s inquiries by pleading the Fifth. However, several times Joffe responded to questions about specific individuals by saying he had not heard of the person or organization.

One such exchange proved intriguing and seemingly contradictory to an email obtained pursuant to a Right-to-Know request served on Georgia Tech, the university where two of the researchers who allegedly mined data for Joffe worked.

“Just a few questions more,” Alfa Bank’s attorney began, before asking, “Mr. Joffe, are you a member of the so-called Union of Concerned Nerds as described by L. Jean Camp?” “Basically, she’s used it as a description to describe a group of computer researchers who search for malware and other malicious content and actors on the internet,” the attorney for the Russian bank continued.

Joffe responded that he “can’t remember having heard that term,” before adding: “And I don’t belong to any organization.” However, when asked whether he was “a member of a group of individuals who sought to investigate potential foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election” or compiled supposed evidence of the Alfa Bank server connecting to the Trump campaign, Joffe pled the Fifth.

In posing these questions, Alfa Bank sought to connect Joffe to the reports of the supposed secret communication channel between it and the Trump administration and specifically to Slate’s reporting from October 31, 2016, headlined: “Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?”

Author Franklin Foer opened the article by highlighting “a small, tightly knit community of computer scientists . . . some at cybersecurity firms, some in academia, some with close ties to three-letter federal agencies,” who claimed to have discovered the Alfa Bank-Trump server connections. Foer then quoted Indiana University computer scientist L. Jean Camp’s “wry formulation” of the group: “We’re the Union of Concerned Nerds.”

Apparently, Joffe was not in on Camp’s joke, even if he was in on the research, as Durham’s indictment of Sussmann suggests.

But what about Joffe’s second claim that “I don’t belong to any organization?” As I reported last week, a random email included in a trove of documents provided by Georgia Tech in response to a Right-to-Know Request showed Joffe forwarding an email sent to cw-general@ops-trust.net to university researcher Manos Antonakakis. That Joffe had received the ops-trust.net email and then forwarded it to Antonakakis proves important because Ops-Trust matches many of the details included in the Slate article (and later two New Yorker articles) discussing the researchers behind the Alfa Bank claims.

For instance, “Ops-Trust is a self-described ‘highly vetted community of security professionals,” which includes, among other experts, DNS administrators, DNS registrars, and law enforcement officials. Membership in Ops-Trust is extremely limited, with new candidates accepted only if nominated and vouched for by their peers.

Unfortunately, Alfa Bank’s attorney did not quiz Joffe on Ops-Trust, but his denial of belonging to any organization raises several questions. What was his connection to Ops-Trust? Did Joffe use that connection to obtain non-public information to mine for data to destroy Trump? Is he no longer connected to Ops-Trust, and is that why he claimed not to be a member of any organization?

Requests last week to Joffe’s attorney and other individuals connected to Ops-Trust seeking information concerning Joffe’s continued involvement with Ops-Trust went unanswered. A request to Camp on whether she was a member of Ops-Trust in 2016 and whether she knew Joffe or the Georgia Tech researchers through that organization also went unanswered.

4. It’s Not Just the FBI and CIA We’re Talking About Here

In the special counsel’s criminal case against Sussmann, Durham’s team revealed that Sussmann had provided the “evidence” of the Alfa Bank-Trump covert communication channel to the FBI on September 19, 2016 and shared an updated version of the Alfa Bank allegations with the CIA on February 9, 2017. According to the special counsel’s office, Sussmann also provided the CIA data that purported to show traffic at Trump-related locations connecting to the “internet protocol” or “IP addresses” of a supposedly rare Russian mobile phone provider.

The questioning of Joffe by Alfa Bank’s attorney now suggests Sussmann may have also provided that same data to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

It has been known for some time that after Americans elected Trump, Democrats regrouped and continued to push the Russia collusion hoax, including the Alfa Bank angle. The New Yorker, in a 2018 article rehashing the Alfa Bank claims and referring to Joffe with the pseudonym “Max,” wrote that after Trump’s inauguration two Democrat senators “had reviewed the data assembled by Max’s group.”

One of the “Democratic senators approached a former Senate staffer named Daniel Jones and asked him to give the data a closer look,” The New Yorker article continued. Jones then spent a year researching the Alfa Bank allegations and writing a report for the Senate.

According to The New Yorker’s coverage, then, the senators had the data and provided it to Jones. Jones confirmed that sequence when a former Sen. Dianne Feinstein staffer and founder of the left-wing The Democracy Integrity Project sued Alfa Bank seeking to keep confidential his deposition testimony and documents provided to the Russian bank.

In his complaint, Jones stated in court filings that in early-to-mid 2017, the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee asked him to research the alleged connections between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization. Specifically, the Senate committee “requested that Mr. Jones evaluate information it had received about DNS look-ups between Alfa Bank servers and Trump Organization servers.”

Significantly, Jones stated that the Senate Committee informed him “that the source of the DNS records had a history of providing accurate information, a lengthy history of reliably assisting the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities and was an individual or entity with sensitive contracts with the U.S. government.” Jones added that he met with a representative for the source of the DNS records at the committee’s request.

While Jones does not identify that source or the source’s representative with whom he met, in Joffe’s deposition, Alfa Bank lawyers stated that Jones had testified he had “liaised with Mr. Joffe on various issues related to the server allegations.” The “sensitive contracts” language from Jones’ filing also seems eerily like Durham’s charge that Joffe had exploited internet data, including some accessed under sensitive government contracts.

Alfa Bank’s questioning of Joffe also seems to suggest a similar theory: “Were you aware that Mr. Sussmann provided documents including white papers and data files to Congress?” Alfa Bank’s counsel asked, clarifying that she meant not just the actual senators or representatives but also their staff. And “did you direct Mr. Sussmann to provide such documents to Congress?” the Russian bank attorney continued.

While Joffe refused to answer the questions, again pleading the fifth, Joffe admitted in his deposition that he knew Kirk McConnell. McConnell worked as a staffer for Sen. Jack Reed and in that role McConnell served as a contact for Jones related to the Alfa Bank research.

If Sussmann had provided the Alfa Bank data to the two Democrat senators on behalf of Joffe, as appears possible from these details, that would represent the fourth time Sussmann had served as an intermediary for Joffe with federal officials: In addition to the FBI and CIA, we know from Durham’s filings that Sussmann also provided the DOJ’s inspector general information purporting to show that Joffe “had observed that a specific OIG employee’s computer was ‘seen publicly’ in ‘Internet traffic’ and was connecting to a Virtual Private Network in a foreign country.”

While at this point there is no evidence that Joffe’s tip to the DOJ’s inspector general connects to the other efforts undertaken by Joffe and his lawyer to push a Trump-Russia conspiracy theory within the Deep State, questions remain that are only heightened by the possibility that the Joffe-Sussmann team also fed senators on the Armed Services Committee their “intel.”

How exactly did Joffe “see” this internet connection? Did he exploit any government or private data? Was he specifically watching computer traffic at the DOJ? Where else was he monitoring internet connections? And why?

Of course, the more global question remains as well: When will the corrupt media begin reporting on the biggest political scandal of the last century?

https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/28/4-new-things-we-just-learned-about-the-special-counsel-investigation/


https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/28/the-americans-who-voted-for-joe-biden-owe-the-rest-of-us-an-apology/


https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/28/how-pandemic-era-stimulus-screwed-americans-while-boosting-the-rich/


https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/24/ukraine-is-one-more-problem-biden-tells-americans-to-bear/


MUST-SEE VIDEO: SNL shows the Democrats are running from COVID

 For more than two years, we've been told that The Science mandates that we wear masks, keep six feet away from other people, get multiple shots, muzzle our children, and "shut down" our economy, all in the name of "defeating" a virus.  These demands remained unchanged even as the actual science showed that the masks were useless, the distancing was meaningless, the shots were dangerous and barely effective, the children were developmentally damaged, and the poor economy was destroying lives.  Now, though, thanks to Democrats being destroyed in the polls, they're racing away from their prior mandates.  Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than a Saturday Night Live skit this past weekend.

What's been grabbing headlines is the fact that Joe Biden's numbers are dropping fast.  In the most recent ABC News/WaPo poll, only 37% of Americans approve of Biden, including this terrifying number: only 30% of independents approve of his job:

Bad as that is, we're still saddled with Biden for another three long, long years — unless you want Kamala instead.

However, the poll has even worse news for the Democrat party as a whole, something that will matter a great deal for the November midterms:

Republicans hold a massive seven-point advantage in the generic ballot, but when the poll is weighted for those who are more likely to vote this November, that lead stretches to an eye-watering 13 points. 

One should never underestimate Republicans' ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, but we'd be stupid not to find those numbers heartening.

Democrats, however, are not heartened.  They are terrified.  Naturally, they won't abandon their green dreams and allow Biden to unleash our energy sector, weakening tyrants around the world and reducing inflation (a decision that should belong to Congress, not the executive office).  However, with their base getting restive about masks (and some of the more humane ones even being troubled by firing people for not getting vaccinated), Democrats have made a decision: they will abandon COVID now and hope that voters are in a "forgive and forget" mood come November.


Image: SNL: saying taboo things about COVID.  YouTube screen grab.

There are a lot of signs that The Science, as opposed to actual science, has changed.  Pelosi has just authorized the end of mandatory masking in Congress (although you can bet Biden will walk into Congress wearing a mask when he gives the State of the Union address).  Democrat states across America are dropping mask mandates for adults.  In a bow to the all-powerful teachers' unions, though, most states tried to force children to continue wearing masks, although children do not infect adults, are only mildly sick with COVID, and are suffering badly from masking (all things known since early 2020).  This has not been a successful policy.  On Sunday, New York governor Kathy Hochul finally dropped the mask mandate for kids, and New York City mayor Eric Adams dropped indoor dining, fitness, and entertainment. 

But nothing signals that the times are changing more than a Saturday Night Live skit in which three couples are gathered for a dinner party and some of them begin to question whether the mask and vaccine mandates were ever really effective.  The various actors (or should I say "overactors"?) react badly to even mouthing or hearing a hint about these ideas, but they're nevertheless forced to agree with the facts.

It's fairly crude, heavy-handed humor, but humor isn't the point.  The point is to give their leftist audience members permission to take off their masks, ease off of shots, and stop harassing those who have never bought into these cruel and ineffective measures:

It remains to be seen whether the public will forget by November what the Democrats have done to their mental and physical health, their comfort, their jobs, and their relationships over the past two years.  I'm never an optimist, so I'm going to assume that a large part of the public will forgive and forget, which would be a damn shame.  Democrats should be punished in the voting booth for the misery they've inflicted on America.


https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/mustsee_video_snl_shows_the_democrats_are_running_from_covid.html


https://www.theblaze.com/news/joe-rogan-bill-gates-meat


https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/another_day_and_another_bad_biden_poll.html


https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/message_to_ukraine_could_we_borrow_your_president_please.html



Jen Psaki Trips Over Her Tongue When Asked Why the US Is Importing Russian Gas Today (VIDEO)

 What does Putin have on biden?  Plenty??

 

President Donald Trump made the United States the world’s largest oil producer. Trump was exporting oil and gas.

That all changed on Day 1 of the Biden administration.
Joe Biden’s first move was to foolishly shut down the Keystone Pipeline and end drilling on public lands.
The Biden regime believes it is best to import oil from countries that hate us like Venezuela, Iran and Russia.

Even today, as Russia wages war on Ukraine, the Biden regime is importing thousands of barrels of oil a day from Russia.
The Biden regime is paying for Russia’s war efforts on Ukraine.

On Monday Jen Psaki was asked about US oil imports from Russia.
She tripped over her tongue on this one.

TRENDING: T-Mobile Admits in Letter to Missouri Attorney General They Have Been Blocking Gateway Pundit Content in Text Messages -- Insists It Was a Mistake

Of course, the media hacks in the room gave her a pass. She’s a liar but she’s also a Democrat.


https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/jen-psaki-trips-tongue-asked-us-importing-russian-gas-today-video/

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/slow_joe_digs_in_against_opening_up_us_energy_production_to_checkmate_russia.html

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/its_ukraine_gaslighting_time_.html

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/sen-josh-hawley-proposes-congress-reopen-us-energy-production-full-throttle

FEC Records: Biden Campaign Had Firm at Center of Trump Scandal on Payroll

 Federal Election Commission records indicate that a technology firm at the center of a court filing last week by Special Counsel John Durham involving the 2016 presidential campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was also on the payroll of now-President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, Biden’s campaign paid Neustar Information Services almost $20,000 for accounting and compliance services, FEC records show.

The outlet adds:

According to Durham, Neustar’s chief technology officer, Rodney Joffe, accessed sensitive web traffic data that the company maintained on behalf of the White House executive office in order to collect “derogatory” information about Donald Trump.

Joffe allegedly provided the information to Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who in turn gave it to the CIA during a meeting in February 2017. Durham charged Sussmann in September with lying to the FBI about his investigation of Trump.

The Biden campaign’s payments raise questions about whether Joffe continued snooping on Trump in the most recent election. The Biden and Clinton campaigns are the only two presidential committees to have ever paid Neustar, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Biden’s campaign paid Neustar $18,819 on Sept. 29, 2020, the records show. The Clinton campaign paid the firm $3,000 in May 2015 for mobile phone services. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee paid $3,000 to Neustar in 2017. Neustar executives and staffers contributed $17,906 to Biden’s campaign, FEC records show.

The outlet reported that it is not clear if Neustar executives were aware of Joffe’s work for the Clinton campaign.

The Biden campaign revelation comes on the heels of a Feb. 11 filing by Durham implicating Joffe and Clinton’s campaign in a plot to “infiltrate” servers in Trump Tower and later the White House under then-President Trump.

Following the filing, Trump blasted Clinton and her surrogates.

“The latest pleading from Special Counsel Robert Durham provides indisputable evidence that my campaign and presidency were spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign in an effort to develop a completely fabricated connection to Russia,” he said in a statement issued by his Save America PAC.

“This is a scandal far greater in scope and magnitude than Watergate and those who were involved in and knew about this spying operation should be subject to criminal prosecution. In a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death. In addition, reparations should be paid to those in our country who have been damaged by this,” he added.

For her part, Clinton has denied the allegations in an attack on Trump.

“Trump & Fox are desperately spinning up a fake scandal to distract from his real ones. So it’s a day that ends in Y. The more his misdeeds are exposed, the more they lie. For those interested in reality, here’s a good debunking of their latest nonsense,” Clinton tweeted along with a story from far-left Vanity Fair that also ‘debunked’ the allegations and called Trump a “moron.”

Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said during a Fox News interview on Wednesday he believes that Durham has unconvered a “criminal conspiracy.”

“What did John Brennan tell President Obama in the Oval Office in 2016?” Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer asked Ratcliffe during Monday’s interview.

“Well, I can talk about this because this part has been declassified,” he said.

“He briefed President Obama and Vice President Biden and other members of the national security team about this specific intelligence that John Durham now has about a Hillary Clinton plan to falsely accuse and vilify Donald Trump with a scandal, and the discussion around that and whether or not it was good intelligence,” Ratcliffe continued.

“Those are the issues that John Durham is looking at and I think there will be many more,” he predicted, adding: “I would expect there to be quite a few more indictments because of that. There wasn’t a proper predicate to begin that investigation and John Durham has said that publicly already.”


https://conservativebrief.com/fec-records-60214/?utm_source=CB&utm_medium=539

https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/23/amid-geopolitical-strife-us-corporate-giant-mckinsey-has-deep-business-ties-in-russia-and-china/

Tragic: 5-Year-Old Kid Suffers Vaginal Hemorrhage 10 Days After Receiving Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine

 A link below is similar to a co worker of mine.  He has a monitor and an ap on his phone. When he feels a heart issue coming he needs to get the ER.  Never had any issue before his vaccines.

  Why are their no side affects announced on the "vaccine" tv ads but all others do???


A 5-year-old kid from Illinois suffered a vaginal hemorrhage and vaginal disorder after receiving her first dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine, according to information submitted to the VAERS website.

The young girl received her first dose of Pfizer vaccine (BNT162B2) on January 14, 2022 at a pharmacy. After ten days, the young girl experienced bleeding on her genital and was evaluated during a visit to the physician’s office.

TRENDING: T-Mobile Admits in Letter to Missouri Attorney General They Have Been Blocking Gateway Pundit Content in Text Messages -- Insists It Was a Mistake

According to the VAERS report, the 5-year-old kid didn’t have any vaginal issues before, and it only occurred after taking the Pfizer vaccine.

Her doctors are currently treating her abnormal bleeding. Her past medical history showed she had “no other vaccine in four weeks, no other medications in two weeks, no COVID prior vaccination, and no known allergies.”

Details for VAERS ID: 2108864-1:

She is bleeding out of her vagina; This is a spontaneous report received from a contactable reporter(s) (Consumer or other non HCP). A 5-year-old female patient (not pregnant) received bnt162b2 (BNT162B2), administered in the right arm, administration date 14Jan2022 10:30 (Lot number: FL0007) at the age of 5 years as dose 1 (tris), single for covid-19 immunization.

Relevant medical history included: “no” (unspecified if ongoing). The patient’s concomitant medications were not reported. Past drug history included: No, reaction(s): “Allergy”. The following information was reported: VAGINAL HAEMORRHAGE (medically significant) with onset 24Jan2022 07:00, outcome “unknown,” described as “She is bleeding out of her vagina.”

The event ” she is bleeding out of her vagina” was evaluated at the physician’s office visit. Therapeutic measures were taken as a result of vaginal hemorrhage, vaginal disorder. Clinical course: The patient is now having vaginal issues. She is bleeding out of her vagina. She has never had this issue before the vaccine. For treatment, they are currently working with doctors to treat. Additional information: the patient had no other vaccine in four weeks, no other medications in two weeks, no covid prior vaccination, and no known allergies.


 https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/tragic-5-year-old-kid-suffers-vaginal-hemorrhage-10-days-receiving-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine/


https://dcweekly.org/2022/02/28/i-am-now-a-part-of-the-clinical-trial-22-year-old-woman-develops-pericarditis-one-week-after-receiving-second-dose-of-the-moderna-vaccine/


https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/wasnt-just-gateway-pundit-t-mobile-blocked-text-messages-dr-malone-saying-moderna-vaccine-nearly-killed/


“Never underestimate Biden’s ability to f*ck things up” – Barack Hussein Obama

  

h/t Amil I

WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN:

And then, there’s this:

And this…

And this:

 

https://barenakedislam.com/2022/02/26/never-underestimate-bidens-ability-to-fck-things-up-barack-hussein-obama/

https://barenakedislam.com/2022/02/26/joe-bidens-latest-anti-american-plan-for-u-s-border-control-agents-at-the-southern-border-is-a-wet-dream-for-islamic-terrorists/

Liberal Marxist Socialist America and their Shithole Cities

https://www.theblaze.com/news/video-shoplifters-brazenly-steal-items-off-shelves-at-walgreens-in-broad-daylight-as-uniformed-security-guard-just-watches

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/outrageous-liz-cheneys-jan-6-committee-subpoenaed-phone-records-mother-owen-shroyer-works-alex-jones-never-entered-us-capitol/


https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/another-house-democrat-retirement-spells-trouble-pelosi-31st-incumbent-dem-wont-seek-reelection-year/


https://www.theblaze.com/news/supreme-court-could-limit-federal-bureaucracy-power-epa




US Capitol lifts face mask mandate just in time for Biden's State of the Union address

 Will Clueless Puppet Joe claim that he eradicated the virus????


It's a miracle!


Just in time for President Joe Biden's State of the Union address, face masks will no longer be required in the United States Capitol.

What are the details?

Capitol physician Brian Monahan advised Congress in a memo published Sunday that masks will no longer be required at the Capitol complex because of plummeting COVID-19 cases. Monahan cited new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to bolster his decision.

"The Washington DC region is now in the 'green level' or low level in this new CDC schema allowing for reduction in coronavirus prevention measures such as coronavirus testing frequency and indoor mask wear," Monahan said, Axios reported.

"COVID19 layered protection measures such as vaccination emphasis, and daily home health screening inventory prior to coming to work should continue," Monahan explained.

Monahan also reversed instructions from House Sergeant at Arms William Walker that said every member of Congress attending Biden's State of the Union address on March 1 must wear an N95 or KN95 face mask.

"KN95 or N95 mask wear is no longer required and mask wear is now an individual choice option," Monahan said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ultimately controls face mask guidance for the House floor, but she has deferred to Monahan's guidance in the past and will likely do so now, Politico noted. The Senate never adopted mask requirements.

What is the background?

The CDC released updated indoor masking recommendations last week, which now determine the necessity for masking based on COVID-19 positivity rates and hospital admissions in a particular community. The changes mean that more than 70% of Americans can go indoors without a face mask.

The CDC's updated recommendations and Monahan's new guidance come as Democratic leaders nationwide drop pandemic-related mandates.

The swift changes have raised suspicion that midterm polls — and particularly the fact that a majority of polls show Democrats could lose big-time in November — are driving the decisions as opposed to public health considerations, but Democratic leaders say decreasing COVID case numbers and hospital admissions are behind the mandate rescissions.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky also stressed the importance of rolling back mandates now to bolster government credibility should they be deemed necessary in the future.

"None of us knows what the future may hold for us and for this virus," Walensky said Friday. "We need to be prepared and ready for whatever comes next. We want to give people a break from things like mask-wearing, when levels are low, and then have the ability to reach for them again, should things get worse in the future."


https://www.theblaze.com/news/us-capitol-lifts-face-mask-mandate-just-in-time-for-bidens-state-of-the-union-address


https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/roth-sotu-2022-preview-the-state-of-the-union-is-a-mess-heres-how-biden-is-likely-to-spin-it


https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/new-york-city-lift-vaccine-mandate-indoor-businesses-dining-events/


https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/california-washington-oregon-end-school-mask-mandates-just-time-bidens-sotu-address/


https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/new-house-lifts-mask-mandate-just-time-bidens-sotu-address/


https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/new-york-state-lift-mask-mandate-schools-march-2-one-day-bidens-sotu-address/


https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/horowitz-why-is-only-one-state-bucking-the-cdc


https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/psaki-insists-cdcs-updated-mask-guidance-released-ahead-bidens-sotu-address-nothing-timing-around-state-union-video/


https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/nyc-mayor-unveils-end-nycs-controversial-vaccine-mandate


https://www.zerohedge.com/political/california-drops-school-mask-mandate-will-allow-unvaccinated-unmask-indoors