Aaron Siri Interviews Robert Malone and Retsef Levi

Published on 20 March 2026

Episode link:

Greeting and thanks between Aaron Siri and Robert Malone

[Aaron Siri]

[0:00:03]
Robert, thank you for joining. Aaron, thank you for having me here.
[Unidentified co-host/participant]
Federal judge basically wiping out ASIP, how about that? Yeah, it’s kind of stunning.

Immediate reaction to federal judge’s stay on ACIP and CDC vaccine actions

[Robert Malone]
Not totally unexpected, but I don’t think anybody foresaw that this suit by AAP, which seemed to be so flawed in so many ways, so egregiously biased, was going to result in this kind of an action of a total stay on everything that has been done by ACIP, by the director of the CDC, by the secretary of health in the vaccine space.
[Aaron Siri]
I suspect they may not have thought that either, frankly. I suspect that there was a sense of, or a strategy that even if they didn’t get the legal outcome they were asking for in the case, it was a way to constantly make news to attack the members of ASIP, to attack Secretary Kennedy, to attack what the CDC is doing.

[0:01:15]
And though they did have the judge they had, and he had taken bold decisions, but just to back up for a second, just to make sure everybody understands the acronyms we’re using, because we’re about around a few of them, obviously HHS, that’s the Department of Health and Human Services, that’s what Secretary Kennedy, Bobby, is the head of.

HHS/CDC structure, RFK Jr.’s role, federal budget, and CMS context

And in that one of the agencies is the CDC.
[Robert Malone]
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
[Aaron Siri]
And prevention.
[Robert Malone]
And by the way, HHS is the largest section of the sector of the federal government, it’s bigger than DOD by budget.
[Aaron Siri]
It’s over a trillion dollars. That’s real money. Oh yeah, it’s the largest, right. So technically Secretary Kennedy’s responsible for the largest portion of the entire federal budget among all secretaries.

[0:02:07]
And with a significant portion of that being CMS, which Dr. Oz is- Right, he’s doing a great job. That’s from all accounts, from everything I’ve seen, he looks like he’s doing a really good job. Because not to get into a segue, but health is critically important. Our national deficit is also existential to our country. And if we’re going to reduce it, starting with the almost trillion dollar CMS budget and getting that down to something manageable and getting rid of all the fraud, it’s also existential. But anyway.
[Robert Malone]
Big, big lawyer words. What he’s trying to say is, if we don’t get a rope around this thing, everything is going to just collapse financially.
[Aaron Siri]
Let me try again. It’s very bad. Okay, here. If I ran my household where I brought in X amount of money, but I spent X plus 20% of it every year, I would just go bankrupt.

[0:03:08]
The federal government is apparently not of that view so far. But it’s going to eventually run out.
[Robert Malone]
They can just print more.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, that doesn’t always work. And eventually, other countries who hold so many dollars as their reserve currency will not be happy that we are basically trying to inflate our way out of our deficit because that makes the dollars they have less valuable, potentially, any event.
[Robert Malone]
Other countries and you and me too.

RFK Jr.’s lifelong commitment to children’s health and shared mission with President

So we have got to get a handle on what the heck is going on with healthcare and the disease, the epidemic of disease. Americans and particularly American children are sicker than virtually any other group in the Western world. We have – and we’re on track, as the president has said, to have the next generation, our children, live shorter, sicker lives than their parents unless we do something.

[0:04:08]
And that is the core of Secretary Kennedy’s mandate. And he believes it and he – to his core, he is – 40 years of commitment to try to do something about this problem. He’s been seeing this train wreck in progress. He’s been yelling from the rafters that we have to do something about it. Nobody has been paying attention. And finally, he has the window of opportunity to do it and this Boston judge throws a spanner in the works.
[Aaron Siri]
And I love how people act or some in the media in particular act as if Bobby is doing this because it’s fun or because he just – that he makes money from it or he’s come benefit from it. I mean – He’s well into his 70s. He’s been quickly walking into the fire for over a decade.

[0:05:03]
I mean, you know this. He’s lost – by taking on this issue, he’s lost every single appointment. He’s lost his family.
[Robert Malone]
He’s lost his political party.
[Aaron Siri]
He’s lost everything. Everything basically. And he’s done it because he believes it’s the right thing to do. And as you might know, as he says, he wakes up every morning and when he prays, he always asks that God should guide him to help save children. And he felt that when he had this opportunity to be secretary, this was that fulfillment potentially. This was his chance to do that.
[Robert Malone]
And it’s one of the things that unifies him and the president. He and the president share this commitment to American children. It’s at the core. And I think it’s at the core of their relationship.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, there’s judge a man by their actions, let’s put it that way. And based on that measure, Bobby has shown his commitment to that issue.

[0:06:06]
Yeah. Who can dispute it? Well, the New York Times. Yeah. Well, the New York Times. Washington Post.
[Robert Malone]
Yeah.
[Aaron Siri]
CNN.
[Robert Malone]
CNN. This is like a rogues gallery, right? That’s why they’re failing. That’s why the business model of that kind of media is collapsing right now. It’s why the Washington Post is hemorrhaging positions. It’s why CNN is hemorrhaging viewers. People are seeing through it. That’s one of the, you know, I think it’s really good to take a step back and take a moment and look at what the silver lining is of things. And COVID was an ugly time, but, and it’s still ongoing, but now we can see it. Now we can see their faces. Now we can see their methods. Now we can see their sneaky little strategies for delegitimizing people and ridiculing people and gaslighting people and lying to us again and again and again.

[0:07:04]
And the American public has had enough of it. Yeah.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, I’ll just close it off by saying that I don’t know anybody who on this issue has sacrificed more, or maybe almost any, has sacrificed more, has taken more pressure and heat than Bobby has when it comes to this.

Judge’s ruling explained: stayed ACIP appointments, wiped recommendations, and VFC votes

You know, once he latched onto, I got to save these kids who are being injured by these products. He’s just never let it go. No matter how many times they’ve beaten him and beaten him, beaten him. But, and before we get back into the stock market again, because now I feel like back on Rogan, you know, I, I think that obviously the news of the week is the, this judge has, has said, has what the judge has called stayed, that’s the judge’s own words, the, all the decisions that ACIP, that’s the advisory committee on immunization practices, that is the committee

[0:08:03]
within the CDC that you, Robert, are on, and are the vice chair of.
[Unidentified co-host/participant]
Are or were, I’m not sure.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, we’ll get into that in a second. And what, what this judge has done has said, that committee, at least 13 of its members, he has said, effectively, has... None of us are legitimate. He says none of you are legitimate. He said he had, he stayed your appointment to that committee, the implication being that it’s void ab initio, sorry, that it’s as if it never happened almost, or it’s just a nullity or void. Not only that, he said that all the decisions you guys have taken have voted upon over the last many months.
[Robert Malone]
All the advice, because that’s, they’re not, most of them are not really decisions except for the Vaccines for Children program. They’re advisories that we have given to the director or acting director of the CDC, because the ACIP, and the judge doesn’t seem to get this through his noodle, the ACIP doesn’t set policy, and nor should it.

[0:09:06]
It’s an advisory committee.
[Aaron Siri]
So all of the votes that you’ve taken to give your recommendations, which is what you’re doing to the director of the CDC, on whether a, for example, should this vaccine be added to the schedule? Should it not? Should this vaccine be routinely recommended? Should it not? And so forth. Including your, and those are votes to add a vaccine to the Vaccines for Children program. And we’ll get into that in a second. The judge has wiped those away as well. And so as things stand, and the judge has said that without getting the advice of ACIP, the vaccine committee, and the CDC that you were a part of, the CDC cannot act when it comes to the vaccine schedule.

[0:10:03]
It’s literally said that. But then he says, the vaccine committee is not proper, is gone. So essentially, as things stand right now with this current decision in effect, unless it’s appealed, unless it’s reversed, the CDC’s hands are completely tied. The entire Article 2 branch of our government, Article 2 of the Constitution, the entire executive branch is not allowed to do anything, it appears, with regards to the vaccine schedule and vaccine policy. What the contours of that, where does that line end? Not clear. Judge doesn’t make that clear, by the way, in the decision. So it’s pretty incredible. And we can get into the reasoning, but what was your reaction when you first read or heard of that decision?
[Robert Malone]
So I was actually in very active discussions back and forth with Stephanie Spears, Bobby’s deputy chief of staff, about the upcoming ACIP meeting that should be happening today and tomorrow.

Robert Malone’s reaction to decision dropping mid-ACIP planning

[0:11:14]
So this is just a couple of days ago that this went down. And we were talking about that meeting and the structure of that meeting and whether or not it was likely to go forward. And she had just called me and said, absolutely, I see no reason why it’s not going to go forward. And then that decision dropped. And it was like, oh, everything’s changed now. What’s the new landscape? Who’s in charge? How do we proceed? What does this actually mean? How is it going to be interpreted? And how the heck did this happen? And out of the blue, it’s as if the leadership, from my perspective, my little perch, it’s like the leadership had not really processed.

[0:12:01]
You know, we’re going to have Retsif Levy on, who’s an expert in risk management. It’s like the administration never did a risk analysis and said, what if? And then it hit, and they were gobsmacked.

AAP lawsuit details, standing, motives, and suspected pharma/law-firm origins

[Aaron Siri]
Well, maybe the Department of Justice should have done a better job in defending against this lawsuit. And just to set the stage, this lawsuit was brought not by parents, not by the public. It was brought by a trade group, the American Academy of Pediatrics, who’s beholden to its members and their pecuniary interests, meaning their financial interests. That’s what it’s there for. It’s there to make sure that its members make money. And the American Academy of Pediatrics brought the case, and in fact, their arguments for why they have standing in the case is that, oh, now they have to spend all this money to address these changes in the schedule. Poor babies.

[0:13:00]
Poor babies.
[Robert Malone]
Which is what pediatricians and physicians should be doing. What they’re basically saying is, it’s going to be too expensive for us to provide informed consent. Let’s bake it down. That’s really what they’re saying. And furthermore, Aaron, I have it on good authority by an advisor to the American Academy of Pediatrics that, in fact, AAP didn’t develop this lawsuit. This lawsuit was crafted by a left-wing law firm as a political instrument, and the AAP was just a convenience. The AAP didn’t generate this. A law firm who is doing this for political purposes did it and found the use of AAP a convenience.
[Aaron Siri]
Do you know the name of the law firm?
[Robert Malone]
I don’t, but I could find out.
[Aaron Siri]
And who’s behind the law firm? Do you think it’s in other industry interests?
[Robert Malone]
I’ve told you what I know.
[Aaron Siri]
Okay.
[Robert Malone]
Understood. Well, I wouldn’t be surprised.

[0:14:01]
Aaron, you know that what’s happened is really some sneaky business where pharma has... We saw this all the way through COVID. One of the reasons why it was wickedly hard to find an attorney other than, say, yourself and a rare small number of others to assist patients, damaged patients, and those that have been subjected to these unlawful mandates, et cetera, the reason why it was so hard to find any attorneys to represent them is because the pharmaceutical industry is playing this very interesting game, exploiting the conflict of interest rules that are intrinsic in your profession for good reason. And essentially, whenever a law firm would start to take on one of these cases, pharma would swoop in and suddenly create a structure whereby they’re putting on retainer that law firm. Then the law firm now has a COI and they’re not able to take that case.

[0:15:01]
That happened again and again and again. This industry is wicked. They will do anything to protect their financial interests. And the AAP is basically handmaiden to the American pharmaceutical giants and global pharmaceutical giants, and that’s well-documented on their webpage.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, I would not be surprised at all if the idea for this suit did start with some third party outside of the AAP. I mean, oftentimes policy lawsuits are, somebody comes up with them like this other firm that you... Unknown firm out there, maybe at the behest of pharma, maybe at the behest of somebody else that had a significant pecuniary interest. And then they think about, okay, well, who’s the best plaintiff? And here they decided it was the AAP. And so they brought the suit.
[Robert Malone]

[0:16:01]
And AAP obviously has very, let’s say, flexible standards. This is the organization that has been really at the foundation of promoting transgender surgery, gender transitions, this odd practice of cocooning vaccination. A lot of the policies during COVID that were so egregious were actively backed by AAP.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, I’ve said this before, but if you look at AAP’s actions and its decisions... You will know them by their actions. And with pretty good predictive ability can predict what they will decide based on which decision will make their members more money. Less vaccines, less money. Oh, they’re against less vaccines.

[0:17:01]
More chronic disease in children, more money for their members. Do you hear them make a big fuss about that? Do you see them going and promoting, throwing money into... Obesity, dietary modification, nutrition. Preventative care of that kind that has no ICD-10 code? If their members can’t bill for it, you don’t hear them promoting it no matter how much it improves the health of children. And so that’s the typically... So like you said, gender affirming care, a care where you can prescribe puberty blockers, perform the surgeries that makes their members more money. Hormones. Hormones that can make their members more money. So, yeah, they’ve been on the wrong side of a lot of things throughout history. And sometimes they’re on the right side, but it’s not for the right reasons.
[Robert Malone]
So this is the organization that filed the lawsuit.

[0:18:00]
And to my great surprise, and I think many other people, they seem to have found a chink in the armor that has been exploited.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, you know the old saying, a good lawyer knows the law and a great lawyer knows the?

Venue choice in Massachusetts, judge’s background, and random-assignment questions

Knows the? Do you know the saying? Knows the judge. Now, it doesn’t mean they know the judge personally or there’s anything unto or improper, right? That’s not what I mean when I say that. It means that they know the way the judge is likely to rule. I suspect that had they, you know, there might be a reason they chose to file. I’m not accusing anybody of doing anything improper, just to be clear. I’m just saying that they went to Massachusetts.
[Robert Malone]
Why wouldn’t they file in Massachusetts? It’s the home of American biotech.
[Aaron Siri]
I’m sure they were thinking of filing in deep Texas initially. And they just – it just turned out to be in Massachusetts. Just by chance, I’m sure.
[Robert Malone]
Yeah. And so then, I mean, you’re the expert in this.

[0:19:00]
So that gets filed in that district court and somebody in that court assigns it to a judge. And it just happens to land on the bench of the judge who is tied as a tick with Elizabeth Warren, Chuck Schumer, and has a rich recent history of, gently put, judicial activism.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, it’s supposed to be random assignment in federal courts, okay? And so when you file your case, it’s supposed to be random assigned. Obviously, the random assignment gets – is only randomized to the division in which you are typically going to have your case in. So obviously, it’s not random nationally. So there are, you know, divisions or districts and it varies. So, for example, the District of Massachusetts has a certain number of judges and you can look them up and you can see who appointed them. By seeing who appointed those judges, you can get a sense.

[0:20:03]
By the way, Aaron, where is AAP based?
[Unidentified co-host/participant]
Do you remember? Wait. I think I did know this. I don’t recall though. Okay. It’s – guess what I’m thinking. Illinois. It’s Illinois. Governor Pritzker.
[Aaron Siri]
Okay.
[Robert Malone]
Huge building in Illinois.
[Aaron Siri]
Yes. I’ve seen the picture.
[Robert Malone]
So, how Massachusetts is the right venue for a lawsuit from a Illinois-based nonprofit – you must know better than I how this works.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, there must be something that anchored their venue. I’ve got the complaint right here in front of me. There are other plaintiffs in the suit that maybe they used to anchor it. And obviously, assuming it wasn’t the correct venue, that would have been up to the DOJ to challenge, which they didn’t presumably either because they chose not to or what have you. It was supposed to be randomly assigned. In this case, let’s just assume it was, but you can also – let’s put it this way.

[0:21:05]
You’re too kind. If there’s a district with only one judge, that random assignment is going to be that one judge. There’s a wheel with one judge’s name on it, okay? And if there’s four judges, that’s what you’re going to get. I will say that there are – this is without – I’m not talking about any specific district, but I have seen cases filed where it was clearly supposed to be in one division. So, within a district, you’ll have sometimes multiple divisions, okay? And so, if the facts arose and all of the relevance should be in one division. I have seen for reasons like that there’s no reason being assigned to a judge in a different division, even though that’s contrary to the rules, where it was like, hmm, that’s very fishy.

[0:22:00]
So, I have seen that happen. And it clearly seems like maybe in those instances, it could be the chief judge of that district maybe had some basis to trying to do that. I don’t know. Anyway, you’re going to get me in trouble. Let’s move on. So, yes, they got the judge they got in Massachusetts. The AAP brings the suit. They sue the CDC. In fact, they sue Secretary Kennedy. Specifically, they sue the Department of Health and Human Services. They sue then the acting director of the CDC and the CDC. And they say, we want to just invalidate this vaccine committee. We want to invalidate all their decisions. And this decision just came down, it was yesterday, the 16th, right? And so, let me just boil it down to keep it very simple, what the judge decided, all right?

[0:23:00]
Here’s what the judge basically said.

Judge’s two-prong ruling dissected: must consult ACIP + FACA “unbalanced” finding

He said, you do have standing AAP because this will affect you in terms of having to spend some money. And because it does go to your mission, which is to increase vaccination, which also goes to what they say should be the mission, apparently, of the CDC and this committee. All right? So, let’s just put the standing issue aside. And then the judge said this, that what Congress intended is that before the CDC takes a decision regarding the vaccine schedule and items related to that, it must consult with the advisory committee on immunization practices, ACIP. ACIP being a committee of advisors, it’s an advisory committee made up of folks who are drawn from various disciplines.

[0:24:01]
We’re not in the sense that most people think of as government employees. They’re supposed to be kind of outside of government to a degree. And the judge said that what Congress intended was that before you, CDC, can change the vaccine schedule, you must get their advice. So, that’s the first thing that this decision said. And it based it, I have it right here, citing a few haphazard, truly haphazard random sections of various little snippets of law where, you know, the law will say that, for example, you know, Medicare plans must provide, quote, approved vaccines recommended by ACIP, as an example. And it says, oh, see, you see, you see, Congress intended that it’s ACIP that makes that decision. So, you, CDC, can’t make the decision without getting advice from ACIP, putting aside that the actual law that governs who makes the decision is it’s the CDC director.

[0:25:10]
Yep. Okay. That’s what the law says. Explicitly. So, what this judge did is he went and he finds these four, one, two, four random little snippets, like the one I just described. By the way, that one example I just gave you, where it says Medicaid plans have to, you know, cover things that are, quote, unquote, approved vaccines recommended by ACIP. That sentence continues, though the judge didn’t quote it, by saying that ACIP, the quote continues, an advisory committee acting through the director of the CDC, end quote. Judge leaves that out of the decision. And if you read all four of these, it’s really hard to stitch together and claim that that is what the Congress intended. But that’s what the judge decided. He’s cherry picking the data. That’s what it is. Well, he’s, he is, he needs, what the judge, this, I think, was the only way this judge could come to invalidate what the direct, then director of the CDC, Jim O’Neill, did when he revised the CDC schedule, as you recall.

[0:26:14]
He, you know, the president put out a directive, the head, the whole section two branch of our government, the president of United States of America, who embodies under our constitution, the entire executive branch. It all resides in that one man or woman, if that day comes. Right now, that man. And he said, review the current childhood schedule compared to all the other countries out there and see if we’re doing things right and change it. If we’re not basically what he said in a nutshell, CDC undertook that task, issued a giant memo explaining the reasoning, revised the schedule, never didn’t go to ACIP, didn’t get their advice.

[0:27:01]
So, what this judge is saying is, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, since he didn’t do that, that whole thing is wiped away.
[Robert Malone]
But it’s more than that. He’s not just wiping that away. Well, that’s the first thing. He’s wiping away everything else.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, okay, that’s the first thing. He decided two critical things. That’s the first critical thing he decided. So, that’s step one. Yeah, the revised schedule.
[Robert Malone]
That under the specific presidential directive. Yep. Basically, he’s invalidated the authority of the president to direct HHS to take an action relating to the vaccine schedule. And let’s remember, Aaron.
[Aaron Siri]
Unless it consults with ACIP first. Yeah. That’s the first prong of this decision. It has to have ACIP. It has to have ACIP in it. So, the judge does that, wipes away the changes. Now, of course, what that means, Robert, is that, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, all that Secretary Kennedy and CDC have to do right now is do what?

[0:28:01]
Just go to ACIP, say, hey, validate this, and boom, it’s back. So, the judge does step two, okay? So, we just did step one, which step one is you got to go to ACIP. And since you didn’t go to ACIP to change the schedule, that’s gone. Then the judge says step two is this ACIP committee? Nah, not valid because it doesn’t comply with something called FACA, which is the Federal Advisory Committee Act, because it’s, quote, unquote, unbalanced, okay? And the members on it don’t have the qualifications that he thinks, this judge thinks, are necessary to sit on this committee. And so, he says ACIP is invalid. It is no more. It is stayed. It can no longer operate, period. And everything that’s done is wiped out. So, think about that. What does that mean in practice?

[0:29:00]
It means that CDC can’t do anything without ACIP’s input vis-a-vis the vaccine schedule. And ACIP, you’re on ice. Yeah, you can’t do anything. So, that means nothing can happen now until this judge’s stay is lifted. That’s essentially what this judge said. And on that second piece, and I’ve talked a lot, so I’m going to stop. But I’m going to ask, I want to go back to you because the judge says quite a few things about you, Robert, as well as other members of the committee, including Retta Flevi, who we have joining us here in a second. And we’re, you know, we can, we’ll go through that. Anyways, was that too legal or did I encapsulate it simply enough?

Critique of judge as activist with overturned decisions and political bias

[Robert Malone]
I don’t know. It’s all in the eye of the beholder or the ear of the beholder of whether or not they can follow your legal language. I certainly understood it. And it’s profoundly troubling that you can have a – he’s really quite a junior district court judge. He’s not been at the bench that long. He’s had multiple decisions revoked. He’s been reprimanded by the Supreme Court.

[0:30:02]
That is a rare event. I mean, tell me, how often does that happen in your experience where the Supreme Court smacks down a district judge?
[Aaron Siri]
Oh, not only the Supreme Court, to be clear. In the last instance, it was seven to two, meaning a bunch of – some of the liberal judge – at least one liberal judge crossed over to side with the conservative judges to reprimand him for not abiding what SCOTUS told him to do.
[Robert Malone]
Yeah. So, he’s – what do you call that? You know, activist is I think the kindest term that you could use. It’s not somebody who is – the term jurisprudence, I hope I’m using that properly. It doesn’t speak of a mature, balanced judicial proceeding. The appearance is that this was highly biased, politically motivated, and supports the interests of commercial sector that happens to be key to Massachusetts and particularly the Boston area, which is the home base for this particular judge.
[Aaron Siri]

[0:31:17]
I think the litmus test for most people probably would be if it was the opposite, if the schedule had expanded, would this judge have reached the same conclusion that the judge reached, all other facts being equal?
[Robert Malone]
I think that’s a fair question. American people have a nose now for this kind of stuff. And the question is, are they willing to stand up and say this is not right?
[Aaron Siri]
Well, I’ll give this judge one thing credit for. He’s got the courage of his convictions, doesn’t he?
[Robert Malone]
That’s fair enough.
[Aaron Siri]
So, the – He probably knows he’s going to – he probably knows it’s not going to go well.
[Robert Malone]

[0:32:06]
The appearance is that what he’s done is he’s taken those prior Supreme Court decisions. And by the way, he just lost again on immigration decision. He’s taken those prior Supreme Court decisions and he said, OK, well, I’m going to examine the specific language that you used in setting these boundaries. And I’m going to find a loophole. And then I’m going to drive a truck through that loophole. And this is my vehicle. This is my truck that I’m driving through that loophole. And stop me if you can. That’s really what this is. Let me put it this way, my view.
[Aaron Siri]
Judges should be making unpopular decisions because the whole idea of rights, the whole idea of the court system is to be there to protect often individuals from the tyranny of the majority to some degree. And so, judges are often placed in the difficult position where a neo-Nazi is walking through a town and you don’t like what he has to say.

[0:33:06]
But he’s not promoting violence. He’s just saying things you don’t like. Should the First Amendment protect that individual? Absolutely, it should. And a judge has to rule that it does protect that individual. Obviously, when you step back, that’s good. It is a good thing because it protects all of our right to free speech, but it’s not a popular decision. Unfortunately, in this instance, but when a judge does that, it needs to be well-grounded in the law. And in the Constitution. And in the Constitution. Not as we just went through. So, I mean, look, if this was a well-grounded decision, well, then that is what the law is. We’re a nation of laws. We have to live with that. And if we don’t like it, we go change it. But in this instance, what I, you know, and maybe I got too lawyerly on it.

[0:34:00]
That first piece where he, the judge decides that Congress intended that you must go to ASIP first. Where does it say that? Yeah, it doesn’t. It doesn’t. The judge, he stitched together these random little bits to basically create that. It’s a contrived argument. Now, look, I’ll say this much. If that sticks, if somehow that sticks, well, let me tell you, one day this administration is going to change. And there will probably be a different administration. And there will be a different, quote, unquote, team there.
[Robert Malone]
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
[Aaron Siri]
And I will look forward to that day to use that same argument. And I will be using it the other way, but I suspect it will not survive.
[Robert Malone]
Well, so, Aaron, I think this is the key thing is at this particular moment in time when the polls are saying that the American people, whether or not it’s true, some polls are being interpreted as saying that the American people have had enough controversy about vaccines.

[0:35:02]
They don’t want it anymore. And those that are causing controversy about vaccines are going to lose in the midterms because that’s the context for all of this. OK? And so there is a political position being made that discussions about vaccines and these core issues should stop until at least after the midterm because they’re going to hurt people’s possibility of being reelected. Now, the skeptic would say that’s throwing the Make America Healthy Again movement under the bus. But that is part of the context here. And the question is would this be convenient for this administration at this political moment to slow walk the appeal for this? And I argue they don’t have that option because this isn’t just about the ACIP. It isn’t just about vaccine policy.

[0:36:00]
It is about the power of the executive branch. It’s about the power of the presidency. And does a district court judge have the right to prevent the executive branch and the president specifically? This is an executive order that he’s basically remanding. Does a district court judge have the power to block the will of the president? And does it have the ability to block the federal government from populating its advisory committees with whomever it believes are most appropriate for its particular interests in question? And the judge appears to think that he has the right to tell the executive branch who can be their advisors. And if that’s the case, then we have got a huge problem and it’s a major problem in terms of executive power.

[0:37:03]
And I don’t think the administration has any other option than to go direct once again with the same judges they have before. Go direct to the Supremes and appeal vigorously. Now, why they didn’t act more rigorously during the earlier phases of this case is subject to speculation. Was it just incompetence? Is it somebody took their eye off the ball? Is it that there’s so many moving parts going on right now in this administration? Because the president is moving out on so many different issues. That it is taxing the ability of the Department of Justice to do its job and cover cases like this. But whatever reason, they – my sense is that the administration dropped the ball here. And for no other reason that none of us on the ACIP were asked for our CV.

[0:38:01]
And so what you ended up with is in this decision, the judge is basically quoting verbatim the position and the characterization, the mischaracterization of all of our core competencies. They’re relying in my case not to make it about me. But I’m a great case study. They basically – the AAP cited a New York Times hit piece on me from the early days in COVID. One that the author was fired after writing that piece. One which I attempted to sue for defamation over against the New York Times. That’s a winning prospect. But it was so over-the-top egregious. But that’s what the AAP cites. They don’t cite my CV. They cite that particular instance of hearsay from an author, a quote reporter on the disinformation news beat.

[0:39:07]
OK? The very biased article. That’s their basis for characterizing my background and experience in vaccines. As opposed to it being what it truly is, is over 30 years of experience spearheading things like what’s now the Merck Ebola vaccine. Testifying to the World Health Organization on influenza vaccine technology. Leading clinical development on a $300 million cell-based influenza contract. Running multiple clinical trials. Supporting the Dynaport vaccine company, which is the firm that had all the responsibility for advanced development. That’s clinical research. Of all of the biodefense vaccines, et cetera, et cetera. There was no recognition of any of that experience.

[0:40:01]
And furthermore, our government didn’t even bother to ask me for a copy of my CV to submit to the court. Or for the director. Or for Retsiflevi. Or for the multiple physicians that sit on the committee. Or the well-qualified epidemiologists. They didn’t ask for any of that stuff. So the judge basically just took the, I believe to be derisive, really slanderous characterization of the AAP at face value.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, why don’t I read to you what the judge wrote? And in fact, why don’t we bring in Dr. Retsiflevi since we’re going to, this quote involves him as well. Are you there, Retsif? Retsif, are you there? Yes, do you hear me? Yep, we hear you. Welcome.

Retsef Levi joins; judge’s comments on Malone/Levi qualifications read aloud

[Retsef Levi]
Hi.
[Aaron Siri]
Thank you for joining us.
[Robert Malone]
Hi, Robert.

[0:41:00]
Retsif, are you joining us from some obscure community college in the Midwest?
[Retsef Levi]
No, but I’m joining from the city where the source of the problems emerges. So unfortunately, I have to associate myself with the same city as the judge. But I’m here in the Boston area.
[Robert Malone]
And you serve as a professor at one of the top academic institutions in the world.
[Aaron Siri]
I’ll say the name MIT.
[Retsef Levi]
Yeah, that’s what they say. I think that’s what appears on my CV. To be honest, I think that if one thing we’ve seen over the last five years in particular, that credentials by themselves are not necessarily a testimony of reliability, scientific approach, courage.

[0:42:00]
So I would prefer beyond my credentials that people would judge me by what I say and even more importantly by what I do. And that’s a better test in life than degrees and credentials.
[Aaron Siri]
So what does the judge have to say about you and me? Yeah, well, I agree with that entirely. But for the purposes of this judge’s decision, he is focused on the credentials as an objective factor of whether or not you, both gentlemen, were qualified to be on the vaccine committee, on ACIP at the CDC. And here’s what he said. And here’s what he said. But I agree with you. I agree with you for sure.
[Retsef Levi]
I have something to say about this. But why don’t you read this person?
[Aaron Siri]
He says, three of the current ACIP members, Dr. Reza Flevi, Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Catherine Stein, though they have some experience, arguably relevant to ACIP’s function, appear to lack the qualifications and experience to constitute expertise in vaccines and immunization.

[0:43:09]
Now, and then there’s a footnote where, by the way, Robert, he says about you, the only evidence in the record, and this goes to your point, why didn’t they build up everything you just listed? Why was it not in the court papers? The only evidence in the record of his expertise, meaning you, Robert, related to vaccines is that he was involved in early research on mRNA technology in the 1980s and 1990s. Even crediting that experience, the court cannot conclude that this experience 30 plus years ago constitutes the requisite expertise necessary for ACIP today. And then it says further, the scope of his role in that research is disputed, citing the New York Times. And so that’s what he cabins your experience, and Reza, they similarly, you know, cabin your experience. Of course, just two quick points.

[0:44:00]
First of all, just to be clear, the judge is using the language expertise in vaccines and immunizations as if that is what is required when that is not actually what the charter of ACIP provides. It doesn’t just say expertise, by the way. It says, I’m going to flip to it if I can find it. It says that you need to have, you need to be knowledgeable in the fields of immunization practices and public health, or you can have expertise in certain other things. So it’s really just a question of having, being knowledgeable in those fields. It’s not even have to be an expert, by the way. That’s not even the standard. In, if I might add, the charter, which has those requirements, you know who adopted it? Secretary Kennedy recently re-adopted it. So the court is saying that Secretary Kennedy’s own adopted charter for ACIP, that Secretary Kennedy picked people that didn’t qualify to the very standard that he.

[0:45:00]
Anyway, let’s not go there. With that said, I’ll let you. Did you want to respond to that, Retev?
[Retsef Levi]
Yeah, maybe share a few thoughts.

Retsef Levi on diverse expertise needed for ACIP, risk-benefit rigor, and prior capture

The first thought is that, to me, you mentioned that. To me, the credentials of someone stem more from what they’ve done and what experiences they had in life. And I’m happy to kind of remind people what my experiences have been. But I think that the other interesting point of that is, what is the perception of what is required for the discussions that are taking place by ACIP? And what are the disciplines that you need to bring to the table when you consider questions like vaccination policies? And I think that the approach that AAP and others conveniently represent are very narrow in what they consider as relevant.

[0:46:03]
I would argue that when you think about recommending vaccines, like any medical intervention, but maybe even more so because this is the only intervention that you actually give to healthy people and sometimes to healthy babies. The notion of understanding risk and being able to leverage data at scale is absolutely critical. And you need to compound that with clinical experience of what does it mean to manufacture these products and what are the risks that could emerge from that? What are the risks and practical aspects that could be from the process of interacting with patients? How different things will be documented through the clinical process? Because a lot of the data that we use to inform these vaccination policies is generated by a health care system that you earlier talked about, some of its deficiencies.

[0:47:04]
So you really need to bring to the table a very diverse set of expertise that I can say with quite a lot of certainty that I don’t think that only one or a few disciplines would be able to encompass. So by definition, I think you need to bring to ACIP a very diverse team with those experiences. Now, we all read about the revolution of AI and data that is transforming basically every aspect of our life, right? And for some reason, that revolution seems to be ignored by the people that are involved in public health and specifically in those decisions about vaccination policies. So if I may say, I think that if you actually consider the previous ACIP compositions, I think they were narrowly – the set of expertise that they represented was very narrow.

[0:48:06]
I’m not even talking about some of the other potential biases that they had. And I think that if you compare it to the current ACIP group, I think you actually see quite an impressive combination of experiences that complement each other, coupled with independent minds that are not afraid of debate. And I want to remind people that if you actually look on the history of the votes of this group of ACIP, it was far from being unanimous. We actually had multiple votes where people actually disagreed with each other, and that’s good. And I think that this group of people, I’m going to say very, very clearly, I’ve been working with top-notch teams from age of 18 when I was part of the Israeli military and intelligence forces and worked really with top-notch people through that career and at MIT.

[0:49:02]
And I would say that even if I would not be able to serve on ACIP another day, who knows, I would say that this experience over the last nine or ten months, or eight months, has been really tremendous, even just from the perspective of having a chance to interact with my colleagues on ACIP. And I’ve been working with physicians for 20 years on the ground with some of the top physicians at MGH and some of the other top institutes in the US. I think that the physicians that serve on ACIP are top-notch. These are the physicians that I would like to take care of me or my kids if something, God forbid, goes wrong. They have a lot of experience. They have the ethics. They have the common sense. Others bring to the table, like Robert, vast experience in the manufacturing aspects and the clinical trials of vaccines and how you run a vaccination program.

[0:50:05]
Others bring very sophisticated ability to think about healthcare data and think about risk and benefits. So I think based on every objective threshold that you’re going to put, I think this is a very, very impressive group. So it’s very puzzling to me how a judge can even feel that they have the knowledge to assess the expertise of this group. Like, I don’t see how this judge can do that, let alone that he didn’t even spend the time to study the experiences of the different members. So that suggests to me that this was a rushed decision. And one of the things that kind of, I think you also talked about, why are they so worried about this, right? Because if you actually look on the prior decisions, the prior votes of ACIP, none of them prevented access to any vaccine.

[0:51:04]
So the access stayed the same, right? So you have to ask yourself what really worries them. And I think that the two conjectures that I have is either they try to politicize and use that as a political intervention, or maybe they’re also worried about or have some concerns about the liability shield of these vaccines. Because we have to kind of call it out. The AAP now, on their websites, recommend for babies to take vaccines and products that, forget about not being recommended by the CDC, not authorized, not licensed by the FDA. They recommend that healthy six-month babies are recommended to take the COVID vaccines, whereas the FDA current market licensing and authorization limits these products to only babies with risk factors, right?

[0:52:06]
So that liability shield for COVID vaccines is coming from a different source. But for other vaccines, it’s kind of part of the child vaccines. It’s part of the kind of weird thing about the vaccine industry. But I think that they are afraid that this is going away. And that can explain why the pharmaceutical companies are so interested for this type of lawsuit to go through.
[Aaron Siri]
That certainly, I think, is a factor. Going back to what you said about the thinking and the reasoning of the judge, how could this judge, you said, ignore the broad expertise that this committee has and the value that could have by providing an alternative perspective if nothing else, right?

[0:53:00]
When you go and seek advice from somebody and you want input, you’re not looking for somebody to just parrot back to you what you already believe or know or think. And so, red team, blue team, like the military often does, I don’t think the judge thinks about it that way. I think the judge thinks about it in the terms of what kind of the way the industry does. More vaccines, good. A committee that views it that way, always good.
[Retsef Levi]
But that’s driven by opinions, not by expertise.
[Aaron Siri]
So that’s one piece. I don’t think the judge thinks, I don’t think, I’m not in the judge’s head, but I don’t think the judge thinks about it that way.
[Robert Malone]
Which is you’re suggesting a bias, a judicial bias. Well, everybody has bias to some degree. That is aligned with what many observe to be almost a philosophy or religion of advancing vaccines and believing in the thesis that they are all fully safe and effective.

[0:54:02]
When in fact they’re like any other drug. They have their risks and benefits. And it’s a question, as Retsif, his career is dedicated to analyzing risks and benefits and making an appropriate decision. But I think if I can give the judge the benefit of the doubt, as I read and listen to the quotes that you’re citing and have read the opinion and written my own comments, my impression is that the government – it’s the government’s responsibility to provide that additional information about those members. It’s not the judge’s responsibility. The judge evaluates – I mean you’re the attorney.
[Aaron Siri]
As I understand the process – And the other side was saying, you all aren’t qualified.

[0:55:02]
I would have teased out of you every single possible bit of expertise or experience or as the statute provides, knowledge, okay, pretty low threshold, regarding vaccines. You ever administer them? You ever involved as a part of your training? Did you learn about it in med school? Did you do it afterwards? What clinical trials you’re involved in? I mean just the things that you listed right then and there just 10 minutes ago, that would have all been in there and none of that apparently was in there.
[Robert Malone]
And so the judge evaluates based on the information in front of him.
[Minor studio voice]
Absolutely.
[Robert Malone]
It’s my understanding the way the process works. Yeah. He doesn’t have a bunch of clerks that go out and do the government’s job.
[Aaron Siri]
The court even said, by the way, in a footnote – so the court recognizes there may be evidence to demonstrate that each of these individuals have more relevant experience or expertise than what is before the court at this juncture.
[Robert Malone]
Precisely.
[Aaron Siri]
The court even recognized that probably because maybe the court came across it and was like, well, it’s on the papers.
[Robert Malone]

[0:56:02]
Yeah. Maybe. So that – well, so I – it appears that there’s a failure here of rigorous response on the part of the government to this. And to put it in Retsif’s world, there does not seem to have been a valid risk assessment and an action plan about the risk represented by this suit. And so in a sense, it – trying to look through the lens of the judge’s position, if he didn’t have a well-reasoned counterargument, what option does he have? Teach me, Aaron. How is this supposed to work?
[Aaron Siri]

[0:57:01]
Well, I mean, look, I would say that based on the standard of knowledge in the field of immunization, not expertise as the judge clung onto, there was, I think, probably enough information on the ACIP website regarding each member, which was cited in the DOJ papers. Fair enough. So what the DOJ did cite to was the ACIP page that summarized each of your – now, could have done a lot more than that, but that’s what they cited to. And that should have been – I think that should have sufficed because if it doesn’t suffice, again, I will say this. If this stands, if this is the standard, well, let me tell you, I’m bringing a suit on the next ACIP committee that I have no doubt when administration changes one day, I suspect, and we go back to the ACIPs of old. You want to talk about not balanced?

[0:58:01]
Go take a look at every ACIP committee that’s preceded this one in terms of, quote-unquote, not being balanced, in terms of having folks who have made clear their position that vaccines are safe and effective. They have taken those positions publicly in their peer-reviewed literature about vaccines. How do they go backwards from that?
[Robert Malone]
There’s no diversity of views typically on those committees in terms of – Well, and the minutes and the experience – I’ve sat in on I don’t know how many ACIP meetings, and there is never any dissent. It is so unlike what has happened under our current structure and leadership where with this committee, you have very active discussion, debate, dissent, and diversity of voting as Retsif has pointed out. It’s completely different from the tone, the tenor, and the scope of any prior discussions that I ever remember.
[Aaron Siri]
Which is what it should be because the whole idea is the industry has a massive, gargantuan interest in getting it licensed and then critically, routinely recommended because once it’s on that schedule, it’s covered and it’s voted in the Vaccine for Children program.

[0:59:15]
It’s covered by insurance. It’s a multibillion-dollar business.
[Robert Malone]
Let’s unpack that for a moment because a lot of people don’t understand that. That’s a nuance of the vaccine industry that is unique. So if you, the manufacturer, get your product on the schedule, first thing that happens, there’s a structural issue about the cost of doing clinical research to demonstrate that your product is equal to or better than one that’s already in the market. If the one that’s already on the market is there, then the barriers to entry are enormous for a competing product. So functionally, even though your patents may expire and everything else, you’ve got a monopoly that lasts for decades, if not forever.

[1:00:01]
That’s number one. If you get it on the schedule and FDA authorizes it, in most cases, you’ve got a functional monopoly. Then if you get it on the Vaccines for Children schedule and down into the age cohorts that apply, then you get this special protection called indemnification. So if you’re the manufacturer, you’ve got a virtual monopoly, and you can’t be sued if there’s something wrong with your product. Furthermore, the government now buys your product, advertises it because that’s functionally what happens with these recommendations. So the government provides complete liability coverage, grants you effectively a monopoly because of the structure of how all this works. Purchases, does large bulk purchasing of your product, distributes it for you, and markets it for you.
[Aaron Siri]
You’re starting to sound like me.
[Robert Malone]

[1:01:01]
What’s not to like? It’s the perfect market opportunity. You want to talk about a cash cow, this is like a cash herd.
[Aaron Siri]
And to get there, the gateway, the door you got to open is to get ACIP to put it on the schedule. And so that is the gateway. That is the stop gap to assure these products are actually safe and effective before all that stuff you just said happens. That’s what it’s supposed to be. That’s what happens because there’s no immunity without a routine recommendation from ACIP. There’s no Vaccines for Children program payments without ACIP’s routine recommendation. That cascade you just described, none of that happens without ACIP as your votes to approve it. So ACIP should be incredibly skeptical. Yes. It should be. Rigorous, skeptical. Because it is the gatekeeper. Yes. It shouldn’t be in any way beholden, aligned with industry.

[1:02:00]
It’s supposed to be there to do as Retsef was describing, to have a diversity of views and opinions and thoughts and disciplines. To really think critically about whether or not injecting millions of children every year with this product makes sense.
[Retsef Levi]
And it’s actually, do you hear me guys?
[Minor studio voice]
Yeah.
[Retsef Levi]
So I think that there’s some deep questions here that have to do with how do you view the scope of what ACIP is supposed to consider, to be considering. So I think that when we started back in June and I was tasked with being the chair of the work group on the COVID immunization products. For those people that don’t know, most of the work by ACIP is done through its work groups. Each work group has terms of reference that describes what it’s supposed to do. And typically, a work group is formed to deal with either a product or a collection of products that aim at a certain disease.

[1:03:10]
So for me, it was obvious that the role of the work group and that should reflect on its composition and terms of reference. So what people should serve in that work group, because the work group typically consists of ACIP members, but then complemented by external experts that are being recruited. To me, it was clear that the role of that work group and then the role of ACIP is to bring to the table all the published and unpublished knowledge and broadly consider all the aspects that can inform the benefits and risks of these products. And that should include long-term immunological changes that potentially vaccinated people are showing, could include or should include things that have to do with the manufacturing of the product and potential impurities.

[1:04:04]
And when I was putting that forward as a draft terms of reference, there was a very immense objection that this is even a legitimate topic to discuss. Who gave you that pushback? Well, the entire leadership at the time. Fortunately, we had the department.
[Aaron Siri]
The leadership at CDC.
[Retsef Levi]
The leadership at CDC, right.
[Aaron Siri]
And you were the head of the COVID ACIP task force.
[Retsef Levi]
Yeah, so the debate was on two levels. One was on the substance, on the scope of what we are supposed to consider, where they claim that certain things are out of scope. For example, the fact that we see in people that are vaccinated with mRNA vaccines that the makeup of their antibodies is changing over time, potentially with some consequences on their long-term ability to protect themselves from future infections.

[1:05:06]
And Robert just recently put out there a few summaries of what that might mean. But without getting into the details, I’m just talking about the topic.
[Aaron Siri]
They didn’t want you to consider biological markers.
[Robert Malone]
All of them. Any biological markers?
[Aaron Siri]
It was worse than that.
[Robert Malone]
If it had already been considered by the prior work group or there’d been an opinion rendered by the CDC, they didn’t want us to ask about that either. Wasn’t that true, Retsef?
[Retsef Levi]
Yeah. So they actually argued that this is not the CDC turf. We are not supposed to discuss it. And my point was, what do you mean? Our job is to inform the CDC director and give them the best advice about what is known and what is not known about the benefits and safety of these products. So we need to bring whatever information is relevant. And that would look like an obvious statement.
[Robert Malone]

[1:06:00]
By the way, it also includes the FDA information associated with the licensure package.
[Aaron Siri]
Are you trying to say that how the product might change biological markers might be relevant to that question?
[Retsef Levi]
Yeah, that was the argument. I was shocked. I was like, when they told me first time, oh, it’s out of scope. I was like, what do you mean?
[Aaron Siri]
I will say I don’t find that surprising because when I depose vaccinologists, they often want to always focus on epidemiological, retrospective epidata. They never want to talk about biological markers and data. But anyway, keep going.
[Retsef Levi]
That goes back to what I think that there is a fundamental disagreement here about how to approach those questions where the traditional narrative, maybe for objective or subjective reasons, wants to narrow that to exactly what you just said, Aaron. And I believe and I think my colleagues on AC believe that, no, we should do a far more thorough and comprehensive job.

[1:07:02]
So that was one type of argument. The other type of argument was on the process where basically the implicit and explicit sentiment was this is our show, CDC show. You guys on AC, you just come. We’re going to tell you what to do, how to do it. We’re going to present to you, and you’re going to just say yes. And that’s going to start with who is going to be on the work group because I said, okay.
[Robert Malone]
They wanted to control who you could nominate.
[Retsef Levi]
Yeah, my sense was if I’m the work group chair and you trust me with responsibility, I want to build my team. I’m not going to take a team. And, you know, when I looked at the initial work group roster of the COVID vaccine, there were 70 people there, you know, that many of them were the representatives, the liaisons of all the organizations like AAP and alike. And I said, like, how can you even work with 70 people?

[1:08:00]
That’s not even a workable work group, right? So I think that this AC brings to the table a very different approach both in terms of what we think that we should consider in terms of the type of data, the type of questions, and as a result, what type of expertise needs to be brought to the table. But also we own this process. We believe that we own the process because the recommendation is coming from AC and we need to own it as an independent group of advisors and not as part of the CDC.
[Robert Malone]
Now, can I jump in on this just for a moment? Because it’s a key point. What he’s describing, everybody that’s listening to this, step back for a moment and think about what you just heard from Retsif. What he’s explained to you is the mechanism by which the CDC bureaucracy functionally captured what is supposed to be by federal statute and charter, a independent advisory committee that’s nongovernmental employees.

[1:09:02]
And functionally, the CDC bureaucracy controlled that to such a point that it was demanding, it was imposing its ideas of what questions can be asked, what information can be accessed, and who can even participate in the committee. The ACIP and the workgroups were completely captured by both the bureaucracy, by these trade organizations, these medical bureaucracies that are nonprofits or not, and frankly, by the pharmaceutical companies that are manufacturing the products that are being regulated. That’s where we were at before Secretary Kennedy came.

Irony of decision gutting independent ACIP after ending CDC bureaucracy control

[Aaron Siri]
And doesn’t that make this decision all the more ironic? Because you finally had an independent group of folks who were willing to really independently evaluate these products, and this judge just undid it.

[1:10:02]
Please.
[Retsef Levi]
And so two other short points. If you listen through the meetings that we had since June, one of the repeated theme from our friends in the medical associations was, A, you don’t follow a rigorous process, and they quoted this evidence to recommend and great framework. And I’m a methodologist, but part of what I do is develop risk-benefit frameworks. By the way, not just in kind of the absence, I’m actually working with pharmaceutical companies, with hospitals for over 20 years on developing those frameworks in the context of very similar medical clinical settings. But when I started looking on those frameworks, I was like, what’s going on?

[1:11:00]
These frameworks pretend to give you a sense of objective approach by structuring some set of questions, but frankly speaking, do not prescribe what answers and how the answers should look like and what information and what precise answers you need to actually provide. So when you actually look on what actually happened, first of all, most of the recommendations of prior AC did not follow these two frameworks.
[Aaron Siri]
Because they’re pretty recent, both of them.
[Retsef Levi]
They are relatively recent.
[Aaron Siri]
Relatively recent. I don’t even agree.
[Retsef Levi]
But even those that followed, you actually look at this and lack of consistency, throwing at you information and data that has nothing to do with the decision. And we actually felt that this is not appropriate. And so part of what we started to build here throughout the actual working is really new methodology that really asking very precise questions and require the right data to be presented or be honest and tell the public what we don’t know.

[1:12:10]
Like, what are the uncertainties? What do we know and what we don’t know? So, for example, and Aaron, you would probably resonate with this. I bet money that it will resonate with you. Often we hear in those discussions, we have no evidence for harm. Oh, everything is okay. No evidence for harm. But the problem is that nobody is discussing what actually did you measure? What is the statistical power of what you measured? And in fact, in most cases, you’re not going to be able to detect anything. The clinical trials that often are being used are grossly underpowered. Our post-marketing surveillance systems that are declared and claimed to be the best in the world are not exactly very efficient.

[1:13:01]
And you can actually show statistically that even very glaring signals will not be detected. And yes, I know that they like to pride themselves that they detected myocarditis. But frankly speaking, they did not detect myocarditis. Myocarditis was detected in Israel and was actually for a while was rejected and ignored by the regulatory authorities in the U.S. So I think that when you actually look on the track record of what kind of discussions we had, what kind of depth and rigor we had in prior discussions, and I can tell you also now that one of the things that I’ve done is also look on the records of the past World Group meetings that were before us. And I’m not going to get into details, but let me just put very kind of, I will try to be polite. I did not come very impressed by reading them.

[1:14:01]
It’s not that I felt, oh my God, these people did the most rigorous process and really set a very high threshold that we will need to comply by. And again, I’m not objective, but I think that I feel very comfortable and very confident to say that the World Groups that I’ve been part of, and the depth of the war, the rigor, the comprehensive approach and asking all the questions, but also very, very lively debates. Our World Group, the COVID-19 immunization product World Group that Robert is part of, the composition of the people in it is diverse, both in terms of expertise as well as in terms of opinions. And in fact, it also includes people that served traditionally on this World Group from the prior ACIP intentionally. And in fact, if you remember, in one of the ACIP members, we actually wrote this minority opinion group to speak to the ACIP for the first time.

[1:15:03]
There was a minority opinion being brought to present in the ACIP meeting, but very, very robust discussions and debates. And one of the things I feel most proud of that work are those debates, because they were rigorous, they were passionate, but they were also very, very respectful. And to me, that’s what is missing currently in our society in general, but specifically on vaccines, but maybe more generally, the ability to disagree and argue as scientists and not villainize the other side and just acknowledge, yeah, we can think differently about certain things, and we’re still respecting each other. And to me, that’s one of the things I’m most proud of, of what we have been doing so far. And I think it’s very unfortunate that the process that led to the ruling by the judge did not consider all of these aspects.

[1:16:00]
And for whatever reason, if it’s because of the judge, maybe some deficiencies of the government. The last thing I want to say is just to point out that to the best of my knowledge, the current charter of ACIP is expiring by the end of this month. So there will be a question now, how the new charter would look like and what is it going to include? And I think that’s going to be interesting to see how does it affect this legal litigation as well.
[Aaron Siri]
And I think what it looks like will also help answer the question, Robert, that you brought up. What is the commitment of the, probably the White House, I think it’s fair to say, because we know where Bobby’s heart is. He’s all in to doing what’s right and really fixing this issue. Retsef, thank you so much for joining us. Robert has a…
[Retsef Levi]
I’m going to watch the game.

[1:17:00]
You’re going to what? I’m going to watch a Celtics game. Okay, good.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, Robert’s got a TV hit, actually. So we’re going to take a break now anyway so he can go do his TV hit and then we’ll reconvene shortly. Enjoy the Celtics game.
[Robert Malone]
Bye. Bye-bye, Retsef. Bye. Bye, Robert.
[Studio producer/co-host]
All right. We’ll take that break now. Yeah. Yeah, we’ll reconvene shortly.
[Robert Malone]
It’s quite a position and there’s no question that Retsef is a major thinker in this entire space of risk analysis, risk benefit analysis. I have never in my entire career, which is now moving on 40 years, I’ve never known anybody that has the mental acuity and capabilities to detect issues within data that Retsef has. He is a monster. His ability to sniff things out and detect flaws in logic and problems in datasets is truly profound.

[1:18:09]
And I – speaking for myself, it’s been a huge pleasure to be able to work with him. I’ve learned a lot. And I think that if the secretary and Jay Bhattacharya and whoever becomes permanent CDC director loses access to Retsef, it’s going to be a real major loss.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, hopefully, they’re going to appeal this decision expeditiously and get it overturned. I think that if the first circuit thinks about it, and I think they will, and lets us stand, they’ll understand that they’re opening Pandora’s box in many ways to having an endless cascade of lawsuits with regards to whether – I don’t know the number, but I bet there’s hundreds, thousands of advisory committees?
[Robert Malone]

[1:19:08]
There’s hundreds of fucking committees.
[Aaron Siri]
There’s hundreds. Okay. And everybody’s got – I mean, the reason you have a committee is that somebody’s got a divergent interest. And, you know, you’re going to end up with challenges all over the place as to whether or not they are qualified. And you’ll have, you know, potentially those cases being filed in venues and so forth.
[Robert Malone]
And Aaron, think about this. Yeah. Where does this go? Okay. Who wins if the FACA committees basically are compromised? Industry. It’s the bureaucracy. The power of the bureaucracy because FACA committees are set up to serve as a counterweight for the administrative state. That is the truth. Those are words that are tossed about. But that’s what is going on is the structure of FACA as impaneled by Congress.

[1:20:04]
There’s a congressional act. It’s specifically designed to provide an independent counterweight to the administrative state, to the bureaucracies and the bureaucrats who are otherwise making decisions. And that’s going to be the real loss. Yeah. You know, sometimes those are captured by industrial interests. Sometimes they’re captured by political interests. Sometimes they’re captured by intrinsic bureaucratic inertia. But what the government and the citizens will lose is a pathway for those – the logic, the thinking, the actions of those entrenched bureaucracies to be challenged.
[Aaron Siri]
That is – could be a loss for sure. Whether or not the appellate court deeply considers that concern remains to be seen. But I’ll tell you something I know courts consider is we’re about to open the floodgates for a thousand more lawsuits.

[1:21:08]
They really consider that too. And do we want to be sitting here and judging the qualifications of the members of every single advisory committee across the whole federal government? Is that our role? Is that what we want to do? What you just said is a level beyond that, which is if we do that, if we gut these committees, that has a – that’s against the intent of Congress. But do they even want to do that in the first place? I just don’t think they want to go there. I just – I can’t imagine they want to go there. But I have a lot more questions for you about stuff in here. Well, let’s do that after the break. Let’s do that right after this break. All right. All right. We’re back. So picking up sort of where we left off, which is back to this court decision.

Immediate impacts on Vaccines for Children program, RSV/COVID/flu access, and quorum workaround

[1:22:02]
And I want to talk about what are the implications of the judge’s decision? What are the immediate practical effects? I know you’ve got some thoughts on that.
[Robert Malone]
So I think a lot of us that actually think about cause and consequence have been pondering this and discussing it because it’s only been a couple of days at the time that we’re recording now when this came down. One of the things that doesn’t seem to have been processed – and I spoke to some senior leadership in HHS earlier this morning about this and about what they perceive as key issues. And they really hadn’t thought through the implications for the Vaccines for Children program. And if you – to my eye, as I’ve looked through it – and I had a discussion about this the other morning with Daniel O’Connor of Trial Site News. He’s just written an article about this very topic of what are the impacts on the Vaccines for Children program.

[1:23:04]
And if there have only been about four or five decisions or recommendations – actually, in the case of the VFC for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices – that Congress has bizarrely granted to this unelected committee the ability to make decisions that result in massive federal spending to purchase these vaccines. And distribute them largely to children who are disadvantaged in some way socioeconomically.
[Aaron Siri]
40 to 50 percent of all childhood vaccines are paid for by the Vaccines for Children program in the United States.
[Robert Malone]
It’s a massive buy.
[Aaron Siri]
It’s 7,8 billion right now.
[Robert Malone]
A year. In their infinite wisdom, Congress has granted to the ACIP the right to authorize those expenditures. And so there have been about four or five decisions that relate to the Vaccines for Children program.

[1:24:04]
And just to give you a sense of the mechanics of how this works – When you say four or five decisions, you mean ACIP during the period that the current – Since Secretary Kennedy has enhanced the current ACIP. Right. There’s been about four or five decisions.
[Aaron Siri]
That have authorized the Vaccines for Children program to pay for certain vaccines.
[Robert Malone]
Or have more – let’s modify that a little bit. That have impacted on VFC process and decisions. Right. And because the majority of them have – those decisions have related to things like authorizing the influenza, seasonal influenza vaccines. And what – the mechanics of how this works is that anytime the ACIP comes up with recommendation language that they’re going to vote on, then – and that’s a recommendation to the director of the CDC or to the secretary of HHS.

[1:25:06]
That’s the way it works. Anytime that that’s done, there’s a individual within the CDC who reports to us in CMS. That will come in and together with a team of lawyers, work on wording that parallels that recommendation. But specifically relates to the Vaccines for Children program. So, that’s why we always have these two votes on any key issue. Is because we have to have the vote relating to the language for the recommendation to the director of the CDC. And then we have to have this legally binding vote for the Vaccines for Children. So, that has to all be vetted by the attorneys, et cetera. And then – so, what are those decisions? As I’ve looked through it, they have to do with authorizing the most recent, you know, last year’s influenza composition, vaccine composition, which turns out to not have been very effective, by the way.

[1:26:10]
And issues about, for instance, the COVID vaccination changes in policy that resulted in, as Secretary Kennedy likes to emphasize, not a restriction on the availability of products for individuals, but shifts in the recommendations for whether or not those are recommended or are put into this different category of requiring shared clinical decision-making between the physician and the patient. So, that makes it kind of optional. And so, anytime we make any of those changes, there’s had to be wording to make – because, frankly, the administration is very concerned that this is a fundamental policy position,

[1:27:08]
that the ability of Americans to access vaccines, and that includes the poor, should not be affected by changes in the policy recommendations for whether or not these are advised or recommended or whether they are put into this shared clinical decision-making category. So, what’s happened with those decisions is that with this judge’s position that basically walks back those decisions on policy, it’s also walked back the VFC authorization to what it was previously. So, functionally, it is returning the VFC recommendations to what they were before, and functionally, there’s no real change because these were carefully worded so that they preserve the access of patients.

[1:28:06]
Now, the one that is going to make a big difference is one of the very first votes we had, and I took no end of grief from social media for this, which was the vote to support recommendation of a new respiratory syncytial virus monoclonal, typically for use in neonates or very young children at risk for development of respiratory syncytial virus, which can kill children. And you’ll recall that that was a fairly hotly contested vote, and Retsiflevi, who was just on, disagreed with that decision because there is some signal in the data suggesting that there may be a mortality risk, a death risk,

[1:29:02]
associated with that product at some level, but that it hasn’t met statistical significance, potentially because the size of the trials weren’t powered, as you were mentioning earlier, sufficiently to verify whether or not that is a statistically valid signal. And a case can be made that one of the trials was stopped, paradoxically, before, strangely, right before it hit statistical significance, but nonetheless, it passed, and the corresponding VFC language that authorized the purchase of this for children that qualified for these kinds of subsidies also passed. And so by rolling that back, what this is going to do is it’s going to remove a key product, and the reason why that product was brought into the market, in part, was because of manufacturing supply chain problems with the other RSV monoclonal antibodies, so there wasn’t enough there to meet the need.

[1:30:07]
A new product from a new manufacturer came in. That new manufacturer, of course, asserts that it’s a superior product. That could be argued, but in any case, that product which had—you know, there is a logic for why that was on the market and why FDA approved it. The subsidy for that is no longer going to be present, and so the consequence here of the judge’s ruling is going to be to withhold subsidized access for a key monoclonal antibody product to protect newborns and infants from respiratory syncytial virus. I doubt that the judge had thought that through.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, I don’t think so, and it goes to the heart of the bias I think some people perceive is that had the judge thought it through, I think most people think, well, maybe the judge would have carved that out if he could.

[1:31:05]
Not only will—just to make sure everybody understands, you know, what exactly the Vaccines for Children program is and how ACIP is critical to it, ACIP has to vote to add a vaccine— By congressional status.
[Robert Malone]
Right. By congressional statute.
[Aaron Siri]
It’s in fact, as far as I’m aware, the only time that a advisory committee has the ability to force the federal government to spend money, and not just a little money, not like a new desk, billions of dollars literally every year. And in fact, if ACIP, the way the statute is written, if ACIP doesn’t vote to add a product or a vaccine to the Vaccines for Children program, it is not covered.

[1:32:10]
So looking forward— To the next flu shot and the next COVID shot. Yeah, so that’s— Unless ACIP votes on it, it’s not going to be covered.
[Robert Malone]
Those issues are going to drop before the midterms.
[Aaron Siri]
And so next flu season, soon FDA is going to license a new flu shot, and now ACIP would normally vote to—convene to vote to recommend it and to add it to Vaccines for Children. But right now, can’t do that.
[Robert Malone]
Well, so there—that’s this senior official that I was speaking about that I spoke with this morning before coming onto your podcast here mentioned interesting nuance. Okay. The filing was made at a time when there was—is it 14 members that are specifically named as— 13.

[1:33:03]
13. 13 members that are unqualified. And so those 13 members are—you know, what’s the status? In limbo, we could call it that. Well, they’re stayed. Yeah, stayed, whatever that means. But since that point in time, there were additional members up to—there’s 17 now. Right. And so there’s, I think, four members that aren’t included in this stay. So in theory, the government has four—it’s required to have a quorum of at least seven. So potentially the government could anoint three additional and then would have an ACIP that could vote on the VFC. That is one scenario of how this may play out is basically the members who have been enjoined— Stayed.
[Unidentified co-host/participant]
Stayed. The members who have been stayed— You’re stayed, Robert.
[Robert Malone]

[1:34:02]
I’m— Just stay.
[Unidentified co-host/participant]
Okay.
[Robert Malone]
Sit.
[Unidentified co-host/participant]
Sit. Robert, sit.
[Robert Malone]
Shut up. Well, there is that too. I mean, we were also told to not talk to each other as a committee. We were told that those days are over and the members of the old ACIP are instructed by the CDC leadership that we shall not talk to each other.
[Aaron Siri]
Wait a second. You’re not—did they also tell you that you’re not on ACIP effectively at the moment too?

Current limbo status of stayed members, meeting ban, and appeal outlook

[Robert Malone]
That seems to have been the implication. Those specific words were not used. And what is—so what is your status right now?
[Unidentified co-host/participant]
That’s— Point two.
[Robert Malone]
It’s unclear to me. There is a case to be made that the perception is that I am no longer a member of the ACIP. I happen to still be a special government employee without pay because that status was granted after three months of vetting prior to Bobby announcing on some broadcast somewhere that I was appointed.

[1:35:09]
But—so I think I’m still technically an SGE.
[Aaron Siri]
So why can’t you and the other members, the now stayed members—and just to read the language of the court, the court said that the court stays the appointments of the 13 ACIP members appointed on—and it lists the three days you were among them. You’re saying those 13 folks were told they just can’t meet and talk about anything about vaccines?
[Robert Malone]
We are not supposed to meet as a group. You’re not supposed to meet about anything? We can meet. We can discuss one-on-one. This is what the instructions were given. We can discuss matters one-on-one, but we’re not supposed to come together and discuss anything. Strategy, you know, what we’re having for dinner.
[Unidentified co-host/participant]
Cat videos?
[Robert Malone]
That’s— Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. No cat videos.

[1:36:00]
Interesting. Huh. Okay. Yeah. So, strange times. I’m not sure that the government, say, broadly, has fully processed the implications of what just happened.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, I think that they may not have to process it if the First Circuit reverses it. Assuming that the DOJ, with due haste, runs up to the First Circuit to reverse its decision. But given what you said earlier, that there may be a desire to slow roll that. Who knows if they’re rushing it?
[Robert Malone]
I think we—by their actions, we will know them. Yeah. And it will reveal many things. I mean, this is D.C. Yeah. And it’s—I hate the town. I hate the culture. And, you know, I like to live my life in kind of an open, transparent way.

[1:37:02]
But that is not the culture of D.C. You know the famous saying, if you want a friend in D.C., get a dog.
[Aaron Siri]
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, the repercussions, I—you know, we’ll see how they play out. And I suspect, by the way, that if it turns out that they don’t run to the First Circuit, the DOJ, don’t get this decision reversed, and it sits there, there’s no ASIP, and that the precedent is, as this judge says, no ASIP means you can’t change the schedule, which means you can’t add the new flu shot, you can’t add the new COVID shot, you can’t add it to the Vaccines for Children program. I suspect you’re going to see the AAP go in and maybe ask— they might even go in and ask for a modification because they’re not going to want that to be the case.
[Robert Malone]
I think that is one of the levers here is to help the community appreciate the full scope of impact of what they have done here because I think that this was poorly thought out on a number of levels.

[1:38:08]
It was reactive, it’s aggressive partisanship, and I don’t think it’s good policy.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, turning to a lighter topic, you know, in the complaint that the American Academy of Pediatrics filed, they made a few statements about you, and you want an opportunity to respond to them?
[Robert Malone]
You know, Aaron, I’ve had—so we were talking earlier about all the feces that have been thrown at Secretary Kennedy. Not to mention, you know, I like to say my earlobe is still intact referencing the assassination attempt on the president. So this poor me— Well, it doesn’t include you, but we’ll have fun with it. Yeah, so this assertion—the backstory is that the AAP used this New York Times hit piece that was written by a disinformation reporter about four to five years ago after visiting our house.

[1:39:16]
We took her into our house, another lesson learned. You know, the New York Times seems to specialize their journalists in this little game of— Atlantic Monthly and others do the same game. The game is, I just want to write a real article about you that has the full depth of nuance of who you are, etc., etc. And so they kind of woo you. They seduce you with this language that they’re your friends. And in this case, I was still wet enough behind the ears that I said, OK, yeah, why don’t you come up to the farm? We’ll show you the documents. We’ve got a whole box of all the old laboratory papers and the patent filings and the invention disclosures.

[1:40:03]
Come on up. And that was stupid. So this particular reporter came up, didn’t want to look at any of those documents, wanted to take pictures of the very rudimentary studio that I had that I was using for podcasting at the time, etc., etc. And what came out of that, I happened to have been in Paris at the moment when the New York Times published. And there was the newspaper when I came down from my room of, you know, Dr. Malone, the, you know, false valor, claiming that he had played a key role in this invention. And it’s, you know, basically saying that I was totally illegitimate. And, you know, there’s no retort. You have no—you know, this is the international paper of record saying that you are basically lying about your CV.

[1:41:03]
That then became weaponized on Wikipedia as one of the top citations, that I’m basically a liar. And, of course, that feeds into anything that I’ve said in questioning the rights of individuals, the importance of bioethics, how wrong medical mandates are, etc., etc. Well, by inference, all of that becomes illegitimate because I am not an honest observer of it.
[Aaron Siri]
That was the point.
[Robert Malone]
That’s the whole—that’s the thrust.
[Aaron Siri]
That was the point. Yep. It was an agenda and the point was a hit piece.
[Robert Malone]
And it— They know what they’re doing. So, since then, I was brought in just as another example as an expert witness for a really egregious case of an inappropriate firing of an employee at Scripps Clinic in La Jolla.

[1:42:00]
And so the issue revolved around whether or not there was some alternative way that Scripps could have mitigated the risk of this individual who wouldn’t accept the vaccine by testing, etc. And so I was asked by the attorney to come up with evidence to support that in fact Scripps had viable alternatives other than requiring vaccination. And so what I did was, okay, I say to myself, self, if I cite this bit of literature or that bit of literature from the alternative community that is resisting the narrative, the judge is just going to discount it or the opposition, the attorneys are going to belittle it and it’s not going to go anywhere. And so the only way that that expert witness report could have any merit would be to cite official government sources like, say, the CDC and the NIH.

[1:43:06]
And so that’s what I did. I built an expert witness report citing exclusively CDC communications and documentation and information coming from the NIH and their studies. And it was easy to prove. You know, it was timely. This is information that was available at the time that the employer made their decisions, etc. So, filed the report and the judge threw it out because I was not a credible witness citing the New York Times report.
[Aaron Siri]
Okay.
[Robert Malone]
And so then along comes this case and AAP is citing as basically the only documentation for my CV this false narrative that’s been actively promoted now for four plus years and has gotten longer and longer in the tooth. It’s become more and more difficult to sustain that narrative.

[1:44:01]
Even Wikipedia is not citing that New York Times article quite so prominently. But nevertheless, the AAP relied only on that article in characterizing my background, which is literally 30 plus years of extensive work in vaccines, vaccine technology, bench to bedside, regulatory affairs, clinical trials, blah, blah, blah. Including some leading things like spearheading the Ebola vaccine in the context of the West African outbreak and getting it. I literally am the one that called up Merck and got it sold to Merck and now it’s the Merck vaccine. And I wrote the big part of the proposals that funded by the government Merck to do this. Okay. But, you know, all of that.
[Aaron Siri]
But somehow you’re an anti-vaccine.
[Robert Malone]
Yeah. Well, there’s that too. Yeah. That’s one of the other ironies about this, Aaron, frankly, is I have this extensive vaccine experience and I’m attacked as an anti-vaxxer.

[1:45:05]
And by the way, I often quote it as a tweet that I put out that if you’re going to, as Webster’s does, if you’re going to define an anti-vaxxer as somebody who’s against vaccine mandates, then I’m a proud anti-vaxxer. And so what the press has done repeatedly, it’s died down now, because I’ve made it clear in multiple podcasts and other venues that the real context of the quote, they just pick out that part that I’m a proud anti-vaxxer.
[Aaron Siri]
They forget about the part that- Where you explain Webster’s dictionary says, if you support or you oppose taking one or more vaccines or mandating one or more vaccines effectively, then you are a dictionary definition anti-vaxxer, which makes 80% of Americans anti-vaxxers.
[Robert Malone]
Yeah. And so I owned it and said, yes, if that’s your criteria, I am against mandates and therefore I am a proud anti-vaxxer.

[1:46:01]
Okay. And so that became a core part of the narrative that gets cited. But you have to kind of come to terms. If you’re going to be in this public space, and that’s one of the things about the secretary, talking about Bobby, is Bobby doesn’t let it bug him. Somehow, and I don’t know if he’s completely honest. No one knows what’s inside a man’s head. But he seems to be fairly impervious to this wickedness that characterizes modern media, where there is this kind of standard trope of delegitimizing people who say inconvenient things. And they have done everything they can to delegitimize Bobby in a myriad of wicked ways. And when I look at that, and I get this all the time on podcasts, oh, poor Robert, you’ve suffered so much.

[1:47:06]
And I completely reject it.
[Aaron Siri]
I’m not giving you that. I know you’re not doing it.
[Robert Malone]
I’m not giving you that. I know you’re not doing it, but I wanted to say this. So yeah, this is pretty wicked. It is hearsay evidence.
[Aaron Siri]
Yeah. That’s why I still get on the phone with it, because honestly, I kind of find it laughable. It’s funny. To me, it’s funny. And I think Bobby is the proof that you stand in your truth, right? They attacked him viciously for 10 years on public health, that he’s anti-science, he’s an anti-vaxxer, he’s a quack. And where did he end up? Secretary of Health and Services. My point is that he doesn’t let – because he focuses on what’s right and what’s positive. And that’s, I think, a lesson on how to look at this stuff.
[Robert Malone]
And he’s a seasoned fighter, okay?

Praise for Aaron Siri, Robert’s NYT hit-piece defense, and vaccine-industry journey

He is battle-hardened. But here’s where I want to get to this on this. Make it not about me.

[1:48:01]
The judge also smeared virtually every other member of the ACIP. And most of these folks are just practicing physicians, epidemiologists, academics. They haven’t been in the battlefield. They have never been subjected to this kind of aggressive hate. And they now – there are multiple instances on that committee of people whose employers have threatened or tried to fire them. Because they became members. For the sin of volunteering hours and hours of free labor for the American public, they are told that they’re going to lose their jobs.
[Aaron Siri]
You think that might have a chilling effect on anybody that might actually try to approach these products in an objective manner, in a manner that’s not completely aligned with industry interests?

[1:49:04]
You think? I know.
[Robert Malone]
And so these people, they have lost enormous amounts of income. And this determination from this judge has – you know, they have judicial immunity, I understand. You would know more about that than I do. But they’ve been defamed by this decision, in my opinion. It does not represent their true expertise and capabilities and competence. It misrepresents them, I believe, intentionally. And I don’t know if there’s a case to go after the AAP. You and I are both aligned. And for me, it’s a lesson learned. Going – you know, trying to prosecute for defamation or slander is a fool’s errand these days with – you know, in part because of Sullivan versus The New York Times.

[1:50:00]
And it’s given our press this latitude to pursue this business model of smearing people.
[Aaron Siri]
I mean, unfortunately, if you are a public figure, you have to actually show – essentially, depending on the state and so forth, but malice is often the standard. Yeah. And so that’s – And malice is a high bar. It’s a very high bar. You have to show not only that it’s false. You have to show that they knew it was false and that they intentionally did it anyway.
[Robert Malone]
And typically, it intentionally did it repeatedly.
[Aaron Siri]
That’s tough. And on the immunity part, yes, judges as well as the lawyers and the litigants, you know, within the legal process, there’s something called litigation privilege. And there’s judicial privileges that apply.
[Robert Malone]
So, Aaron, teach me about this. One of the things that some of the members have been doing is writing complaints. Apparently, there is some complaint process where one can file a formal complaint with the court.

[1:51:00]
Oh, you mean against the judge?
[Aaron Siri]
Yeah. Is that real? Yes. You can file judicial complaints. That is something that can be done, yes. And it’s reviewed by often other judges or a committee depending on what – you know.
[Robert Malone]
And the other thing, verify this for me. The only remedy for a judge who is off the reservation, out of control, and is not comporting with standard judicial norms and practices is impeachment.
[Unidentified co-host/participant]
Well, there’s appeals, of course.
[Robert Malone]
Of appeals. Of course there’s appeals. If you have a judge who has a repeated pattern of, frankly, partisan misbehavior, there’s no remedy other than impeachment.
[Aaron Siri]
So, typically, the way to remove an Article III judge on the federal level would be by impeachment and removal by Congress.

[1:52:03]
Yes.
[Robert Malone]
That’s rare, isn’t it?
[Aaron Siri]
Yes. That is rare as far as I know. But obviously, that’s why you’ve got two layers of appellate review above. And hopefully, if there’s a judge that’s repeatedly creating – deviating, they’re going to get overturned on appeal. And that’s supposed to conform their conduct over time. Not always, but it’s supposed to. And as you saw, sometimes even the appellate courts get unhappy and they’ll even reprimand, even though it’s not like publicly. And most judges, they don’t want that. Judges don’t want to be overturned on appeal, including some judges that have aspirations to end up in appellate court. They have – it is a career as well to some degree.

[1:53:00]
They don’t want to get overturned as well. So, there are some on the federal level. On the state level, a lot of judges are elected. So, they can just not be really elected. The public can take care of that. So, yeah. Here’s the good news for you. For what it’s worth, the New York Times went after you in the manner they did. I apparently, being a little facetious, killed half the country with polio. So, according to New York Times. And I still get that a lot.
[Robert Malone]
So, this is something I rarely talk about. I was – the one threat to my medical license came from a physician in Hawaii who filed a complaint that I’m a mass murderer because I cause vaccine hesitancy. And the irony about that is that I also have folks on the other side. I hesitate to call them far right.

[1:54:00]
Other folks. Other folks that assert that I’m a mass murderer because I invented the technology for mRNA vaccines. And been involved in other vaccines. And then I have a whole cohort. This is another one of these bizarre ironies. There’s a whole cohort of folks that are, in many cases, understandably – and I say that with empathy – radicalized on the topic of vaccines. And that hate me. Rabidly hate me. Because I am a vaccine developer. Have been a vaccine developer. And that is a cardinal sin. So, I find myself in this bizarre world where, on one side, I’ve got corporate media and the establishment, including my old peers in the vaccine community, attacking me because I am fundamentally in favor of the right to choose and medical rights for individuals to choose whether or not to accept a medical procedure, which is something that was drilled into me as a fundamental requirement.

[1:55:11]
If you’re going to be involved in managing clinical research, you have to respect the rights of the individual and inform consent. If you don’t do that, you will basically be defrocked. Okay? So, that’s where I came from. That’s why I saw this crap going on early on. And I knew how dangerous it was to speak out. But I thought, okay, in the face of all of this, all of this propaganda and everything else that’s going on, at least we can all agree on the fundamentals of medical ethics. And so, I wrote literally, this is not bragging, in Trial Site News, I wrote one of the first op-eds in which I talked about the history of biomedical ethics and the Nuremberg Accord and the Belmont Agreement and all that kind of stuff and how that applied here and how that was being disregarded.

[1:56:05]
That was what, you know, if I came out of the closet, metaphorically speaking, it was on the topic of the rights of individuals to make their own decisions about acceptance of medical procedures, which I thought was safe space. I thought that no one would disagree with that for sure. And of course, that we’ve seen what’s played out. And it seems to be almost as if there’s a special exemption for vaccines that for some reason vaccines and well-established medical ethics don’t – the medical ethics don’t apply to vaccines. I don’t understand it. And I know you’ve written about it.
[Aaron Siri]
Yeah. Well, I think if you look at it through the – I’ll give a – this is my simplistic take on it.

[1:57:03]
There’s a more complex take. But with the vaccines, the economic model has coalesced around mandates. Mandates have driven uptake. In the United States. In the United States. I’m talking about in the United States. In the United States. And that, in fact, once they’ve reached a certain level of sales, to maintain that, if it starts dipping – oh, now we’ve got to get rid of the exemptions. So, if you follow the – There’s a ratchet. Right. So, as long as vaccination rates stay high, okay, Maine or whatever state, you can keep your exemptions. California is going down 2%. 2%. No impact. Got to get rid of the exemptions. So, I think that you can look at it through that lens because, I mean, that’s one component of it.
[Robert Malone]
And another one of these ironies, and this is part of what underpins that – But that’s not how statins are sold.
[Aaron Siri]
That’s not how other drugs – and that’s the divide there, I think, over time.
[Robert Malone]

[1:58:02]
There’s nothing like vaccines. And another one of these ironies that relates to the president’s directive to realign the vaccine schedule with Western norms of peer-to-peer countries is that in the Scandinavian countries, they generally don’t have mandates. And yet, they have better uptake. And they have much higher approval of the public health infrastructure and trust. People trust it. And so, for some reason, here in the United States, we seem to reflexively reach for – I’m going to say the word. In the land of the free. A totalitarian response to this issue. And it seems to be wrapped up in the weaponization of fear. The fear of the great boogeyman of infectious disease, which seems to be actively promoted.
[Aaron Siri]

[1:59:08]
That’s how you take away people’s rights. You scare them. You know what else is different in Scandinavia? In the Scandinavian countries, they often have a tiny fraction, a small fraction of the number of routinely recommended vaccines. I can go through the whole Danish schedule with you right here. It’s tiny compared to the U.S. schedule. And they also rarely vaccinate pregnant women in some of those countries. And they have better overall health outcomes. Imagine that. Yeah. Imagine that.
[Robert Malone]
Yeah. So, maybe that’s a good place to close because what we’ve come back around to is kind of the core thesis of your practice. Yep. And I just want to – I like to close on positives.

Scandinavia comparisons, 1986 Act, informed consent as last defense, and positive close

And I like to speak from the heart.

[2:00:01]
I honor, just like with Bobby, I have huge respect and honor what you’ve done with your life in pursuing this against all kinds of obstacles. And you’ve done it effectively. I could tell you from all the journalists that contact me, if I kind of process what they say and the questions they ask, the underpinning is they’re afraid of you. You are damn good. And you showed that in the Ron Johnson hearing. And you showed it at the ACIP. I mean what I heard as feedback from your speech at ACIP was basically why did they allow him on there because he’s so effective. That was really the subtext of the criticism. And so, that’s my way of really recognizing from the heart what you’ve contributed to the world with your labors.

[2:01:13]
And I know they’re not over. You’re still a young man compared to me. But well done, sir. And thank you.
[Aaron Siri]
Those are very kind words. And I – wow. That was very kind. I hope they’re scared of me, by the way. I’m pretty sure they are. But – and, you know, I will say reflexively that coming from the place that you are coming from as being a vaccine developer, it’s rare for folks to – I was indoctrinated in all this.
[Robert Malone]
The logic of the controls have to be another vaccine. This was taught on an almost daily basis.

[2:02:04]
I lost three jobs with clients for asking questions about the issue of immune imprinting and influenza vaccines. That’s just not allowed. You can’t ask those questions in this industry. And then, frankly, my journey, if I can share – Is – and this is only talked about in the negative by the press. But I was brought in to support this case of Crailing versus Merck, this Keytam case that eventually lost from a Pennsylvania judge that seems to have been, in my opinion, arbitrary and capricious and disregarded the data. But I was brought in and I’m now constrained. I had to sign legal agreements that I will never work in the area – any area having to do with MMR vaccines because I was given the ability to look at all the discovery information and to make my assessment.

[2:03:11]
My – anybody who doubts my integrity as a vaccine developer or as an objective analyst in this space should read that report that I wrote, which I’ve been told is one of the most definitive reports indicting the vaccine industry. What I saw was rampant, lying, just amazing breaches of scientific norms, all justifying a marketing position. And that two-year-plus effort, thousands and thousands of documents – I mean, I got a stack of binders that’s longer than this table from that of the discovery documents that I had to wade through and summarize.

[2:04:05]
All manually. That was pre-AI. There was no clod for that. And when I got through it, and the leadership of the team that was being challenged in that suit by the relators includes some of the biggest names in vaccinology. And when I saw what they actually did, what they wrote, how they behaved, that’s when I realized that this enterprise that I’d committed my entire professional life to was rotten to the core. And that was the point at which I – it became clear to me that this thing that I had committed my life to, you know, I had wanted to be a pediatrician.

[2:05:01]
This thing that I had spent so much labor and my youth, I sacrificed my youth to become skilled in this was corrupt. And I couldn’t be part of it. And that’s really speak about my journey. The change point there was having to write that expert witness report on Kraling versus Merck. What year was that? It was like ended in 18, I think.
[Studio producer/co-host]
2018?
[Robert Malone]
Yeah. Just in time for COVID. I had to basically train up Dr. Kessler, former FDA director in vaccine science. He wrote his own report based on mine.

[2:06:01]
It was a pivotal event. And I think a lot of people would be well served to go back. It’s publicly available to go back and review that report and what I summarized from the documents about, you know, what matters there is not the specifics of who did what and when, but rather the sense of the underlying culture that had been developed in, in this case, Merck vaccines and enterprise. But the same culture existed, you know, in Wyeth, which is now Pfizer. And there are good people in vaccinology. Absolutely. There are people with integrity. There’s, you know, small innovators. There are good people, including one of my first postdocs, who’s now working to advance mRNA delivery technology so that it’s safe and effective.

[2:07:03]
And I think Peter is a good person. He’s trying to advance the technology in a responsible way. He recognizes what the problems are. I think it’s so easy for folks to denigrate those that are truly trying to help others. But somehow this core ethical rot that’s driven by profit motive and all these other things has got to be expunged if this industry is ever going to recover its soul because it’s lost it. And, you know, you’re hitting them with a big hammer.

[2:08:00]
And I don’t think most of them can hear it. It may be that it just has to be swept away and rebuilt. I don’t know where we go from here. But I don’t think that vaccines all, you know, vaccines as a concept is intrinsically wrong. I think that the culture around it and the complete disregard, this kind of chronic propaganda that all vaccines are safe and effective is fundamentally just twisted.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, they may not be able to hear it now, but when enough of the public understands there’s a problem, clamors, and they understand they’ve lost enough of the public, they will have to change the culture. And I think that’s part of the work.
[Robert Malone]
Or we’re going to have to train up a whole new cohort of people to replace them as they retire out. You know, Aaron, I don’t know how much time you spend dealing with regulatory affairs in the FDA.

[2:09:04]
You laugh, so maybe it’s more than I know.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, there is a formal docketing system, right, when Pfizer, Sanofi, Merck wants to get a new vaccine license and so forth. We use that same docket to petition the FDA to take certain actions, which they hate because nobody else does that.
[Robert Malone]
So you found a way to work the system. So where I’m going with this is if you were an attorney or a regulatory professional that was supporting companies that are petitioning for INDs or market authorization, et cetera, you’d be dealing with the frontline regulatory staff. And there’s a saying in the FDA that the only time the FDA changes position is when somebody retires or dies. That’s what we’re dealing with.

[2:10:00]
I’m not surprised. Is an agency that is so entrenched that it can’t change because people find it very convenient. They establish their position, they move up in the ranks, and they basically say this is the way things are and they don’t have to rethink it.
[Aaron Siri]
And they also have to justify what they’ve done. Fair enough. I mean, this is something I’ve said in the past. For example, every single person, for example, in the OVVR, the office within the FDA that licenses vaccines has been involved in licensing any of the currently routine injector childhood vaccines. You’re never going to get change unless you let them all go. Yeah. Because they have to justify what they’ve done. They’re so invested. How are they going to admit what they did was wrong?
[Robert Malone]
Yeah, the cognitive dissonance is too powerful. There’s just fundamental psychology there.

[2:11:02]
And, you know, there’s been this thread that we’re going to have to burn it down. But, you know, there’s kind of two models because that’s what we’re really talking about is fundamental reform. And I’m taught that there’s two models within the government and the DOD and elsewhere of how you do this. One is, you know, functionally you burn the house down. You flush out that and you just try to bring in new staff. Well, the president is experiencing the challenge associated with that strategy as is the secretary. The other one is you build a parallel structure and you strengthen it to such a point that it’s ready for prime time. And then you tear down the old rotten one. And, you know, there’s merit for that. But I think we as a community of dissidents, I’m taking the liberty of associating with you in that way.

[2:12:03]
I really think we have to think hard now about how we convert our mandate and momentum into sustainable change.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, I can give you my view on that. I agree. I agree. And I think often change comes when there’s enough people in society that are on board with it. This is Ron Johnson’s position. Because politicians do polling. Judges work off cultural cognition. I use this example all the time. Gay marriage was never going to be found to be a constitutional right by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1800s or 1910, 1920, 1930. Did the Constitution change? No. What changed? Cultural cognition. The public’s perception. Views on the topic. It is critical to change what happens in the legislative houses and in the court system.

[2:13:02]
Critical. And so, you know, that is why when it comes to this topic, are we going to be able to repeal the 1986 Act? They got a farm as 1,000 lobbyists. There’s no vaccine. Extremely difficult.
[Robert Malone]
Without repealing the 1986 Act, what- And by that, what you’re referring to is this fundamental act which conveyed the liability protection to the vaccine manufacturers.
[Aaron Siri]
The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 that gave immunity to the vaccine manufacturers. So that made it so that vaccines are the only product in America where my law firm of well over 100 professionals, we sue for all kinds of things. But we can never bring a lawsuit ever to claim that had that pharma company made their vaccine safer, this child would not be dead or seriously injured, would not have an autoimmune issue, neurological issue, cardiovascular issue. We can’t do that. And vaccines are the only product in America we cannot bring that claim for, the only one.

[2:14:04]
And that’s the law that created that reality. And so, are we able to repeal that law? No. And if we can’t repeal that law, what financial incentive do pharmaceutical companies have to do proper clinical trial? So, they don’t have this. So, how are we going to get pharma companies to do the right thing with clinical trial? No. And our agencies, now we’ve seen it firsthand. Bobby is sitting there, Secretary of HHS, and look how hard it is for him to make change. To do anything. So, are we going to be able to fix the FDA, the CDC, NIH? Even with Bobby at the helm, that’s difficult. So, what’s left? What is the last line of defense? The last line is the ability for that parent, for that individual, when standing at a doctor’s office or any other, to say no without any penalty. That is the last line of defense.
[Unidentified co-host/participant]
Which is why the vaccine injured cannot be allowed to be heard.
[Aaron Siri]

[2:15:03]
And, you know, I’m sure that’s also maybe part of what really drove so hard to shut down this ACIP hearing. Not only from outside, from inside.
[Robert Malone]
Okay, so that’s a sensitive and that is certainly a viable hypothesis.
[Aaron Siri]
Yes. I’m not saying it is. I have no idea. But, you know, your upcoming ACIP hearing that was just canceled. Oh, today. It should be happening today. Instead of you sitting here with me, you should be sitting at ACIP. Talking about IgG class switching. Class switching and letting the vaccine injured finally get an opportunity to speak. Including, I understand, Breanne Dressen was going to be able to come down from REACT-19. Which has one group, it’s only one group in America, with over 30,000 seriously injured folks from COVID-19 vaccine alone. And, you know, I suspect, I’m going to speculate, there are forces that didn’t want that to happen.
[Robert Malone]

[2:16:03]
There’s certainly that appearance.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, I’m glad, well, I’m not glad that ACIP was canceled, but I’m glad you took the time to come and sit with me today.
[Robert Malone]
Thanks for calling and asking me to fly out here and do this. It’s, as I said, I’m a huge fan and I’m grateful for the chance. And I don’t think there, perhaps if Joe Rogan called and said, I want you out here tomorrow, I might have done it. But there are not very many people that I would have said yes. So, for what it’s worth. And my wife would have given me permission to come out on short notice and sit here. So, thanks for having me.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, I appreciate it. And when I was like, oh, I’m going to go through the decision. I said, who better to do that with than with you, Robert. So, thank you for doing that. And it is a beautiful place to visit.
[Robert Malone]
And the topic matters. It really does matter.

[2:17:01]
This isn’t esoteric. This isn’t academic. This is people’s lives. Vaccine injured are real. And the Secretary’s attempts to reform this industry are heartfelt. And we spoke to RETSEF. RETSEF has just won this whole committee. Think about it. These are professionals. They’re not retired. They make their living on a daily basis by doing academic work and seeing patients, doing surgeries. And they’re giving up that for free for the – basically in their commitment to help people. And I don’t know what’s in this judge’s heart. But I hope he can see that these are not evil people.

[2:18:04]
They’re committed to and capable, qualified to make serious decisions about serious topics. This is not a partisan game.
[Aaron Siri]
The ultimate irony is that despite the gloss that is put on the individuals who were sitting on ACIP until recently, they’re doing it because they really have a heart and a commitment to the well-being of children. They want to save all children. Children could be infected by infectious disease as well as those that could be harmed by those products. In contrast, the individuals, the AAP that’s petitioning this court and driving this court to where it’s gone, they really only have one interest, and that’s just drive vaccine uptake up, period. So it’s upside down. Yeah.
[Robert Malone]
Something’s got to change.

[2:19:01]
And so I think, you know, trying to end on a positive note, hopefully this brings people together and reenergizes and gives them a sense that there is something here that matters. And they have reason to act to support the secretary, to support the president, to support the thousands of people that are trying to make their lives better. It’s not that they’re anti-vaxxers. It’s that they are acting as responsible physicians, scientists, administrators. The people at the CDC, I could name names, that are involved in the ACIP are incredibly professional, hardworking, committed. Many of them work seven days a week.
[Aaron Siri]
Well, let’s see where this goes.

[2:20:02]
Well, on that positive note, we’ll close it off and we’ll reconvene, I suspect, at some point in the future, and maybe we’ll look back and laugh at what happened here in the last 24 hours.
[Robert Malone]
Yeah, or at least learn from it.

Episode wrap-up and forward outlook

[Aaron Siri]
At least learn from it. Let’s leave it at that. All right, good. Thank you, Robert. Thanks.