Andrew Napolitano 

Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. Today is Friday, September 22 2023. Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins us from Columbia University professor, just to sort of reintroduce all of this, you and I were chatting about your own research on the origins of COVID, and any genetic manipulation or political manipulation that may have caused the general perceptions of, of COVID when we had internet problems, and a lot of people got to see the edited version, but a lot more would prefer the more complete version. So here we are, we will then segue into your general impressions of President Biden and a president Solinsky. Since you were there at the UN this week. So let's start with your views on the origins of COVID. Now, you are not a virologist, you are not an MD or a world class economist, you are one of the smartest people I know. And you've done some research on your own.

 

Jeffrey Sachs 

Well, I headed to commission, a commission. That was for a medical journal, the British medical journal Lancet, we had 28 commissioners, and we had 10 task forces, and one of them was looking into the COVID origin. So it was in a context of pretty intensive work on this, where I reached out to a lot of the scientific community got a lot of good tutorials about what might be the origin of the virus. And I have a lot of experience in how governments work, having advised dozens and dozens of governments around the world. So all of this is to say, in a nutshell, the odds are that this virus was a virus that was genetically manipulated in the laboratory to increase its transmissibility, and that it escaped accidentally, from the laboratory,

 

Andrew Napolitano 

from which laboratory Professor Sachs,

 

Jeffrey Sachs 

it probably escaped from the Wuhan Institute of virology, most likely. But it may have been created in a US laboratory, because virus viruses get sent all over the world. And the research that was underway was a US funded joint US China research program. So it could have been created in the United States. It could have been created in China. It was funded most likely by the National Institutes of Health. The specifically Tony Fauci is unit, the National Institute for allergies and infectious disease. It just got

 

Andrew Napolitano 

to stop you right here. Yeah, it would be in your view, inconceivable that Dr. Fauci would not know about this inconceivable?

 

Jeffrey Sachs 

Well, he certainly knows that what I'm saying that it may well and I think likely came out of a laboratory. Without doubt, he knows that. And without doubt, he was worried about that fact, from the very beginning. And without doubt, he participated in a narrative creation to tell us that it could not be so or was unlikely to be so. So he knew from the beginning that something bad out of US government backed research may have happened. It is impossible, by the way, and I can explain in detail, it's possible that they really don't know for sure what happened because one scenario is that a US funded us China program ended up being completed by China in ways that we don't know. But there's another scenario that is quite possible, and that is that we do know, and that the government has covered it up as it does so many other things. So you,

 

Andrew Napolitano 

Dr. Fauci testified on under oath numerous times, Dr. Fauci advise the President of the United States, Donald Trump at the time, numerous times. And you're suggesting that the narrative he gave under oath and to the president was false and created and deceptive. I

 

Jeffrey Sachs 

have no idea what he said to the President. But I can say what he said to the Congress was absolutely deceptive, and was not forthcoming, and did not explain the fears that scientists had behind the scenes. And that they had, even as they were telling us, that it was nearly certain that it came from nature, they were not telling us their own fears. We only learned about their fears, by Freedom of Information Act releases of partially redacted or non redacted emails, and slack messages and other social media. And we also learned a lot about what the US government was doing in this sphere that they never told us about. And we learned about that, by whistleblowers, who posted things on websites, including, most importantly posting a an absolutely shocking document, which was a research proposal being made to the Defense Department to do very dangerous experimentation on SARS viruses, that is said to have been rejected by the Defense Department, but laid out a scenario of how this virus precisely may have been created. And that was in 2018. And the virus showed up sometime around September or October 2019. Do

 

Andrew Napolitano 

you believe that any Americans were engaged in genetic manipulation which produced this virus?

 

Jeffrey Sachs 

I think it's very, very possible. Yes. And

 

Andrew Napolitano 

do you believe that Dr. Fauci must have known about that? Well,

 

Jeffrey Sachs 

he funded a research program for many years, we don't really know the full extent and the full purpose of it. But there was an active research program to study and manipulate SARS like viruses. It's by that I mean, a class of viruses called sarva co viruses, which are in a bat populations related to the original SARS outbreak in 2003. For in, principally China and East Asia, after that outbreak, that's a Corona virus, but a specific type of Coronavirus. After that there was a lot of scientific research, much of it funded by the US government. And from already 2005. Scientists were trying to understand how this type of virus might become even more dangerous because the fact about SARS was that it killed a lot of people. I don't remember the exact numbers but in the low 1000s. But it didn't it spread like a pandemic. And so already back in 2005 2006, there were scientific experiments to see what would make such a virus more transmissible. And there was a focus on a particular part of the genetics of the virus already back to 2005 2006. That, that plays a major role all the way through to the emergence of the virus. Technically, it's a piece of the genetic code that is called a Furin cleavage site. So it's a way that the spike protein which we came to know about gets divided up so that the virus can enter the cell. And in nature, no cervical virus, none of the SARS like viruses of the hundreds that have been found and identified has ever been found with a Furin cleavage site. But back in the early 2000s, who was discovered that if such a sequence of the RNA were actually in the genetic code, it would make it much more infectious because it's a way that viruses enter the cell thereby causing the infection. So there was a lot of interest in this specific issue. A guy called the protease cleavage site for 15 years how lo and behold, judge if I could just the shocker, the biggest shock of all of this was in 2021. Late in 2021, I believe a whistleblower posted this proposal research proposal online. That blew everyone's mind, because it said in this proposal, which was a proposal that linked the University of North Carolina, where there's a brilliant lead researcher on coronaviruses, with the Wuhan Institute of virology, the following, it says that the Wuhan Institute of virology has collected more than 100 ad previously unreported SARS like viruses, and that this research project will test those viruses examine their properties and test them for transmissibility. And one of the things that it will do is to see whether there is a Furin cleavage site in the virus. And if there isn't, it will insert a Furin cleavage site in order to examine whether that would increase its transmissibility. Now this is

 

Andrew Napolitano 

like that's, that's the genetic manipulation that is

 

Jeffrey Sachs 

exactly the codebook for making SARS Cove to because SARS cov. Two is a SARS like virus that has a Furin cleavage site, the likes of which have never been seen before in any other SARS like virus, who in the United

 

Andrew Napolitano 

States government knew about this, and what role did the CIA play?

 

Jeffrey Sachs 

So in terms of this original research, there is a group of neurologists that had been engaged in this kind of genetic manipulation centered at University of North Carolina. It's a it's brilliant work, let me say from a technical point of view, because they were able to create what they called a reverse genetic system that could do the following if you really want to just understand the manipulative power that the scientists have right now. This SARS like virus and I'll get to the answer, but I just want to explain how powerful this work is

 

Andrew Napolitano 

the IRS, they're captivating, so please continue this

 

Jeffrey Sachs 

SARS like virus, and specifically SARS cov. Two, which is the virus that causes COVID, has 30,000 base pairs or nucleotides. So these are these letters, that A G C T, that our coding the genetic code, and it's 30,000 long, and people will know the double helix. It's those letters, which are nucleic acids, which code for the genes of this virus. What this scientist Ralph barrack, who's the lead of the laboratory at UNC developed brilliantly, was the capacity to be given a list of 30,000 letters, like a G, C, A GGACCA, and so forth. 30,000 times just as a list of letters not as a biological entity, and turn it into an actual live infectious virus. That's pretty amazing. He could construct not only the the gene, but make it actually inserted into a cell and then have the cell machinery, produce the viruses, harvest the viruses, and then show that they are infectious in human tissue. So he was creating new sounds like viruses. It's amazing. And he had an approach that has an approach called Creating a consensus virus, where if you're given for example 10 Different SARS like viruses, nine of them may have an A in the 18th location and one of them has a G in that location. That is slight difference in the genetic code. He'd say, well, the consensus in that 18th place is an A and then go to the 19th place and GE and just I know I don't want to go you know overboard, but just to say he not only could bring a virus to life, but He could create a kind of virus never seen before, and he could insert a Furin cleavage site in that virus. Now why would he do that? Because he knew better than probably any other scientist in the entire world that introducing that Furin cleavage site would most likely make the virus more infectious, more transmissible, and he was very interested in what would make such viruses more dangerous, more transmissible, more infectious, so that was the cookbook. Now, who knew about that? I am sure, of course, the virologists, the funders, which is Nia ID, Tony Fauci, the Wuhan Institute of virology, and so on. When this pandemic first appeared, the first thing that the scientists looked at, they almost went straight to this specific site, you have 30,000 letters, but they went to three of them right away and said, Whoa, how did that Furin cleavage site get in there? And when the group of scientists was originally canvassed privately by Fauci, they said, one of them said, I don't see how nature does that. And another said, Whoa, yes, you know, so I'm paraphrasing, but 6040 out of a lab, you know, only 40% of the nature we've never seen that before. And so this was an alarm bell ringing, to see that there. And it was an alarm bell, not only because of Furin cleavage site would make the virus more dangerous, but because these insiders knew that's an object of intense research. That's an object of study. That's an object of lab manipulation.

 

Andrew Napolitano 

Okay, tell me how the CIA gets involved in

 

Jeffrey Sachs 

this. The CIA gets involved when it is asked to examine the question of where this virus came from. And when there were early reports, and it's unclear to me exactly. What kind of investigation was done in 2020. But when President Biden came in, he called for the intelligence community to look at this question, where did this virus come from, of course, the public has never seen, nor has the scientific community, ever seen the basis of any conclusions or the kind of data that were made, or the interviews or the lab records that were or were not collected, we'd never seen any of it. But what we did see was about two pages, a two page note, that said that there's some division, the FBI, and the Department of Energy, which runs scientific laboratories. So that's why do we is in this lean towards a lab possibility. Whereas other agencies, including the CIA, lean towards natural or conclude, overwhelmingly likely natural, so the CIA was apparently on the side of it, natural release until a couple of weeks ago, when, when and what happened, a whistleblower came forward to the House Committee of oversight, which is investigating this, and this is just a in adding parentheses. Fascinating. The Democrats won't touch this in either house. It's amazing. They've turned this into a partisan issue, which is so absurd, what could be less partisan than the question of where a pandemic that killed, an estimated 18 million people actually came from, but they sorted it into a partisan issue. So the house which has a majority Republican took on the investigation in the Senate, they won't touch this, because the Democratic controlled Senate, absolutely blocks

 

Andrew Napolitano 

and I don't know how this could become partisan, but let's probably agree, okay, put it aside. CIA whistleblower say Did he say that other CIA people were lying? Yes.

 

Jeffrey Sachs 

He said that. We concluded. Now this is from a press release of the house Investigation Committee. We've not seen the CIA agent we've not seen testimony we've not seen Anything other than the press release by the committee, which is called now for further witnesses, but the statement by the committee is that a whistleblower has come forward to claim that the original seven members of the CIA investigating committee had leaned, I believe it is six to one in favor of laboratory leak as the most likely explanation. And this whistleblower is claiming that his colleagues were bribed with substantial payments by the CIA to reverse their conclusion. The

 

Andrew Napolitano 

CIA bribed its own agents. That

 

Jeffrey Sachs 

is what is being alleged. Wow. John Radcliffe,

 

Andrew Napolitano 

you may know him was the Director of National Intelligence, I think in the last year or 18 months of the Trump administration had a piece in The Wall Street Journal's editorial page Tuesday saying, essentially what you just said, and suggesting how reprehensible it is. Now, if this happened that happened under his watch. He didn't know about it. But here you have the Director of National Intelligence, warning the American public of the dangers of a CIA that can bribe its own agents to make certain statements. Where'd the CIA even get the competence? I thought they were spies, who steal information? Where did they even get the competence to make a determination about the origins of COVID?

 

Jeffrey Sachs 

We do not know what the government has or has not investigated. Those of us on the outside. And there are a group of scientists that have been really rattling the cage for years saying show us data evidence lab books, let scientists look at this. This is a scientific question. This isn't a partisan question. This is a scientific question. But we haven't seen the details other than what has been garnered by leaks, whistleblowers, and Freedom of Information Act,

 

Andrew Napolitano 

a comprehensive Professor Sachs, you should testify before that committee. I don't know that the committee members have an understanding of the way you just explained this. So just want to switch gears we only have a few minutes left. You were at the UN. Most of this week. The two most talked about speeches where President Biden's and President Solinsky says I think you were physically present in the General Assembly When President Biden spoke your impressions, first of President Biden, how his Russia is the monster that must be stopped argument resonated and your impression. Secondly, a president Solinsky and his it's Russia against the world and you have to join us argument resonated.

 

Jeffrey Sachs 

You know, in both cases, I don't think this argument has any chance in, in the world community. Most of the world sees this as a proxy war between the United States and Russia. Most of the world does not see this as Vladimir Putin in a in a fit of delusion, believing that he's Peter the Great, woke up one day and decided that it was necessary to invade Ukraine, most of the world sees this as a battle, a contest between the US and Russia for political and military influence or even control in Ukraine and most of the world wants that battle between the two biggest nuclear superpowers to stop. So I don't think that either President Biden or President Solinsky made any headway in swaying the 80% of the world population that says, Would you stop the fighting? You're hurting everybody. You're endangering everybody by getting them to take sides. So Lenski, of course comes with in the context of both a failed disastrously failed counter offensive of the last three months. It completely unrealistic. Claims claim that Ukraine is going to defeat Russia on the battlefield and push Russia out of every bit of territory. but also with a a absolute rejection of negotiations other than on this completely unrealistic line. So I don't think Zelinsky also made any headway or had much credibility, he, he did not speak to a packed hall. I wasn't there by then. But a lot of others weren't there by then either. And the reports are that it's a pretty for Lauren, and Solinsky right now, because the claims, I think, pumped into him by us generals, often who do this, told them all the wonderful things that were going to happen and nothing wonderful happened except to the massive number of deaths of his countrymen in recent weeks. So he couldn't carry any credibility in these claims other than what they now say, as well. We're in this war for years, and people don't want to be in a war for years, this war is dangerous. It's costly. It's bleeding Ukraine, it's killing Ukrainians. And in massive numbers, they're not winning. They're not going to defeat Russia. In fact, this was quite clear to objective observers, not to those listening to American spin, but to objective observers, for a very long time and observers that and people that you have interviewed judge repeatedly who have been very clear about this point, and it's playing out just as those people said that who said, don't listen to the US propaganda to the US narrative to the US spin, look at reality. And the reality

 

Andrew Napolitano 

I want to play. I want to play a clip of someone whom I have not interviewed about. I've met him many times, and who accepts the US spin and I want to play the clip because it's almost slapstick. I don't know if you've seen this. This is President Solinsky. Shaking hands with majority leader, Majority Leader, Senator, Senate Majority Leader, Senator Chuck Schumer, watch this.

 

 

Here we are in New York.

 

Andrew Napolitano 

I've never seen a bow like that. And of course, by the way, are on your we are in your corner as a double entendre because because so let's get painted himself into a corner and Joe Biden in this crazy foreign policy is more or less in a corner that they can't get out of. And

 

Jeffrey Sachs 

what McConnell said, because we saw McConnell there as well. You hear what he said. What McConnell said? Because I read it today. Didn't hear it on this tape. But what he said maybe standing up at a podium afterwards was you're fighting the good fight and and this is America's fight. It shows China that we are standing strong. I went to look, there is one after another Senator Blumenthal is another one Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Mitt Romney is another one who literally say, this is good value for America because it shows China how strong we are. Right?

 

Andrew Napolitano 

It's money well spent, because we're killing Russians. And they're not killing Americans that that's the Stated differently version of this. Yes.

 

Jeffrey Sachs 

And I could never have imagined in a million years, frankly, that the mass deaths and destruction of Ukraine is so America can look tough to China. This is so mind bogglingly wrongheaded. And this is exactly what McConnell said but but then when I went to look, boy, he's not alone. This is yet perhaps, you know, another, another one of these narrative statements that you're fed and then you repeat, and it's so shockingly awful. But it is actually said by these grown ups who profess to represent us and they don't represent us. I don't think they represent the views of Americans at all.

 

Andrew Napolitano 

They represent the military industrial congressional banker warfare complex. We all know that Professor Sachs it's always a pleasure to be with you. You have an incredible ability just to keep speaking in a lucid and compelling way. Thank you for joining us. Have a great weekend. I hope you'll come back next week.

 

Jeffrey Sachs 

Absolutely. Great.