AMERICA ON TRIAL
The Evidence . . . Please!
10 May 2025
My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government. Barak H. Obama, 2009
Trials are all about evidence (documents and witness statements) that can hold individuals legally accountable for wrongdoing. But legal evidence must always be tested, as discussed below, to determine whether it meets one of three legal standards – preponderance of evidence, which is the more likely than not standard applied to civil trials, clear and convincing evidence, which applies to both civil and criminal trials by justifying further examination to protect Constitutional due process rights by shifting the burden to produce contrary evidence to the opposing side, or evidence beyond reasonable doubt, which reflects the rights of a defendant in criminal cases to equal protection of the laws before they can be convicted of a crime.
During a trial, these standards are used to test evidence to determine whether or not further evidence is required to achieve “justice” in the resolution of a case, as noted below:
a) A preponderance of evidence, often characterized as more likely than not true, is the standard required for stating a “prima facie” (on its face) allegation which can justify bringing a case to trial. That standard goes back hundreds of years in British common law and thousands of years in commercial law, where it’s assumed justice can be achieved if the weight of evidence tips ever so slightly in favor of one of the parties to a dispute.
b) Clear and convincing evidence means evidence that is substantially more likely to be true than untrue. It is a standard of evidence applied in both civil and criminal law that is a medium level burden of proof which must be met for certain convictions/judgments . It’s a more rigorous than preponderance of the evidence standard, but less rigorous standard than proving evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, In criminal law, it requires that documents and witness statements must be produced before trial that provide unambiguous evidence of a willful or willfully negligent violation of law, rule, and regulation, with the burden of proving innocence shifting during the trial to the defendant to provide contradictory evidence that is equally clear and convincing of their innocence.
c) Evidence beyond reasonable doubt is the legal burden of proof required to affirm a conviction in a criminal case, in which the prosecution bears the burden of proving that the defendant is guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. This means the prosecution must convince the jury that there is no other reasonable explanation that can come from the evidence presented at trial, which means the jury must be virtually certain of the defendant’s guilt in order to render a guilty verdict. This standard is much higher than “preponderance of the evidence ,” which only requires a certainty greater than 50 percent.
These standards of evidence are critical not only to trials at law, but to the integrity of our Constitutional system of laws, rules, and regulation. If the process of receiving and vetting evidence is frustrated in any substantial way, there can be no qualified evidence to examine, and without qualified evidence – documents and witness statements, there can be no judgement of whether or not a trial is justified to establish legal facts and hold to account those who may have violated laws, rules, and regulations accountable.
Whistleblowers have always played critical roles in the legal process as witnesses offering legally qualified evidence. They have become more important over time as our political and economic system have grown in size and complexity where expert knowledge provides a stronger context for evaluating available evidence. If there has been an organized war on “whistleblowers”, as available evidence argues is beyond doubt, then that war points to those who have conducted it as obstructing legal investigations as a means to protect the corruption that is now in plain sight.
Who is obstructing investigations that are essential to protecting the integrity of our government?
To answer this question, we need to know who has the power and responsibility to conduct legally qualified investigations.
· CONGRESS, including all Senate and House Committees with responsibilities to oversee the several hundred agencies, programs, and operations of the Executive Branch. These Committees have both a Chair, appointed by the majority party, and a Ranking Member, appointed by the minority party. In theory these are co-equal committee leaders. However, in practice they are competitive partisans reflecting the interests of their parties rather than the American people. This partisanship substantially weakens Congressional oversight, with much of the nuts and bolts of oversight left partisan interests and Committee staff that are sponsored by the political parties. Thus, most oversight committees fail most of the time to conduct investigations, even where there is clear and convincing evidence an Executive agency, program, or operation has gone off the rails.
· AGENCIES of the Executive Branch, including in order of power to investigate:
a) the U.S. Department of Justice/Federal Bureau of Investigation (DoJ/FBI), which is the principal federal law enforcement agency that investigates and prosecutes violations of federal law, rule and regulations. In recent years, clear and convincing evidence has emerged the DoJ, and particularly the FBI, have been and weaponized for political purposes, which could have been and still can be investigated by the DoJ Inspector General and/or CIGIE, but aren’t.
b) Government Accountability Office (GAO), which conducts audits and investigations as ordered by Congress. A preponderance of evidence now exists arguing the GAO has been protecting, not investigating, federal agencies for more than a decade.
c) Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), which was created by Congress in 2008 to manage the more than seventy (70) Inspector General programs in federal agencies and their support staffs of hundreds of trained auditors and investigators, who can investigate federal agencies, programs, and operations on their own initiative without oversight by any other federal agency or Congress.
d) U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC), which by law is responsible for protecting federal whistleblowers by reviewing and ordering investigations of their whistleblower disclosures and investigating their complaints retaliation. Presently, evidence beyond doubt exists, the OSC has ordered investigation into only 2% of whistleblower disclosures and no complaints of retaliation.
d) All federal agencies with regulatory powers and responsibilities, such as the Department of Labor (DoL) - private-sector, Whistleblower Protection Program, Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) - financial institutions, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) - air carriers, Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) – nuclear industry, and National Institute of Health (NIH) – heath care industry. Clear and convincing, and in some case evidence beyond doubt, now exists that regulatory agencies commonly resist investigations, whether they are conducted as part of their own regulatory process, or by another federal agency, when they involve potential allegations of administrative misconduct or criminal wrongdoing by their own officials.
· Federal Courts have the power only to adjudicate not investigate, except for formal Employment Dispute Resolution Complaints. These investigations are rare, particularly in regard to sitting judges. But in recent months, the federal courts have come under scrutiny for political bias, with the DoJ/FBI opening investigations into potential violations of federal law, which could prompt Congressional actions to retore integrity.
Existing evidence tells us the overall record of employing authorized investigations to protect the public integrity of federal agencies, programs, and operations is dismal, and nonexistent with the OSC and CIGIE, almost nonexistent with the GAO, and rare with Executive Branch Agencies. Further, existing evidence points to a steady decline in the independent and objective conduct of investigations and increase in politicization of investigations over the last century, suggesting a creeping culture of corruption that protects potential criminal wrongdoing and discounts the public interest in transparency and integrity in government.
How and why investigations are obstructed
The evidence for these conclusions now often appears in internet publications managed by independent and (generally) objective investigators, such as Dr. Jeffrey Sach, Whitney Webb, and this Diogenes Project, which tests evidence provided by qualified witnesses and documentation. Below are weblinks to a report by Jeffery Sachs, talking about his research on the origins of COVID-19, and Whitney Webb talking about the sudden difficulty producing Jeffery Epstein files. If listen closely, you’ll see how they support their arguments with qualified witness statements and documentation that few other sources cite, which also reveal how and why investigations are obstructed.
Professor Sachs’ evidence is sufficiently clear and specific to qualify as legal evidence in a DoJ or FBI investigation indicting those responsible for concealing evidence of the origins of a virus that killed millions of people. What Professor Sachs may not know, but wants to know, is that by law Allison Lerner, the Inspector General for the National Science Foundation (NSF) is responsible for overseeing the NIH, and that she is/was at that time a protégé of Michael Horowitz, Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Justice, Chair of the CIGIE, and thirty-year veteran of federal investigations, during the time the origins of COVID-19 were under scrutiny.
Both Lerner and Horowitz were clearly informed about the allegations of wrongdoing made against Anthony Fauci, and his history as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022 and Chief Medical Advisor to President Joseph R. Biden from 2021 to 2022, and Frances Collins, Director of the NIH from 17 August2009 to 19 December 2021. But, instead of investigating these allegations, Lerner and Horowitz chose silence, allowing the corruption within the NIH, including the conspiracy by Fauci and Collins to smear independent investigators, including Jay Bhattacharya who was recently appointed as the new Director of the NIH and who challenged the cover-up of the origins of COVID-19, to remain concealed. These are documented facts that could/should be used to investigate, indict, and bring to trial those associated with the violations of law, rule, and regulations that occurred.
Whitney Webb, like Professor Sachs, similarly cites specific evidence, including qualified whistleblower reports, to frame her discussion of the ongoing failure to release information about Jeffrey Epstein, whose violations of law are now a matter of public record and intense public interest. Webb’s work also is published with detailed allegations, naming names and citing publicly available evidence. This is a classic approach to investigations that exactly follow what federal investigators could/should be using but apparently aren’t.
Both Sachs and Webb critic official narratives that conceal wrongdoing, rather than reveal wrongdoing that can hold accountable those involved in the corruption they confirm. It brings to mind former Attorney General, Eric Holder’s explanation at the beginning of thi article of why he never investigated and prosecuted those implicated in the 2008-2009 financial fraud, claiming, “they were too politically powerful to jail.” That admission reveals both Holder’s motive and the systemic failure of justice in the U.S. half century, if not longer. It is an insight into the lack of interest in investigations that has grown to the extent it has become “common”, unquestioned wisdom, leading to an assumption there is a parallel system of justice for ordinary Americans that doesn’t apply to the rich and powerful. Thus, Holder’s admission is evidence beyond doubt the U.S. Justice system is broken.
In the case of America on Trial, the American people are the ultimate trier of fact. It is they who decide who is responsible and accountable for the corruption, and it is they who must make findings of fact and apply the rules of law. Failing that duty would be evidence beyond doubt that the American public allowed the corruption which led to the ultimate collapse of the American Constitutional Republic, giving meaning Benjamin Franklin’s answer to the question, “What kind of government do we have?” To which Franklin he replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Respectfully,
Dr. Darrell L. Whitman, for
Whistleblowers United