Wolves in white coats and deposing Roy Cooper | Hour 3

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is herd Live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. I'd like to welcome back to the program. Ap Dylan. She's a reporter at the North State Journal. You can read that website and her work at nsjonline dot com. You can also get her substacked newsletter ad more to the story. That's the name of the newsletter. Hello, Ap, how are you welcome? Hi Pe, Good to hear your woice. Yes you too, Yeah, yeah, yeah, don all right, have a good weekend. Uh sure, yeah, same, Yeah. I had demo on Saturday. Yeah it was pretty gross. All right. So let's talk about this report that was issued a couple of days ago. Vice President JD. Vance, along with DHHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Junior and the Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Brian Christine, and this was called the Wolves in White Coats Report, How doctors and hospitals pushed and profited from the fraud of gender medicine. That's the title of the report. Okay, So what did the report allege or find? It alleged that certain hospitals and people organizations submitting claims for reimbursement had coded gender assignments procedures in a manner that kind of hid what was happening, right. So explain, like when you say coded, what does that mean. Well, they used certain certain billing codes for you know, for hormone blockers and things, and they listed them as other kinds of therapies. And you know, they had at least fourteen that were coded for hormone treatments, another fifteen for mastectomies, breast augmentations, and general surgeries. These were listed by as the top items for gender affirming care by an organization, a nonprofit organization that had been prompting these locally. And the report figures basically said that something something in the range of around you know, twelve thousand dollars for surgeries like mastectomies were coded differently. They were put under codes for endicane disorders unspecified or precocious puberty rather than gender related codes. So what would be the you know, what would be the purpose of putting those codes to these procedures, which I believe would have their own codes in the billing system. Well, it kind of obscured the figures for you know, the number of miners that were undergoing these procedures, and it looked they looked at something like five thousands, over fifty five hundred surgeries and over eighty five hundred courses of hormone blockers since twenty nineteen. They looked at all the billing for all these Some of them went to health insurance, I went through MEDICAIDS, I went through other areas. But there were one hundred and twenty million and build chargers for those since twenty nineteen. And they build the puberty blockers under a precocious puberty code for in ages thirteen to seventeen when they were really being used to transition kids. So this argument that we hear from people in this debate that oh, this isn't no one's transing the kids. That's not happening there. You got to be you know, referred by specialists and doctors and your parents are on board. Like they make it sound like there were all these safeguards in place, but it sounds like the providers are hiding the extent to which they're actually doing these treatments to underage kids. Yeah. Basically it's not that they were really skirting the lawn or anything, but they were coding them in such a way that they would ensure reimbursement, is the takeaway I got from it. At a total of and you mentioned this one hundred twenty million dollars build in charges for related services on minors since twenty nineteen, and as you mentioned, fifty five hundred surgeries, eighty five hundred hormone blockers. Yeah, I assume that would also be the hormone replacement the HRTs as well as the puberty blockers. Yeah. And the report's been given over to the DOJ, I believe, and to the Inspector General for further investigation. Considering that the Southeast Partnership for Fraud was put together just a couple of weeks ago, and we've got State Auditor Boliek on there as well as North Carolina AG Jeff Jackson. I have a feeling there'll be some involvement on that level, like they'll start doling these out to their partnerships in the different areas. That's just a something I think will happen. I don't know if it will or not. And a tie in with that is the Center Square outlet reported in the last couple of weeks that North Carolinas the HHS have been funding a transgender outfit which promotes those surgeries and hormone therapies banned by state law. And that report said one point one point eight million went to that nonprofit. Of state taxpayer money. Yeah, all right, So the idea so this investigation, what I'm hearing is that there is a belief that they may have fraudulently been billing for stuff that they should not have been reimbursed for. Not with this particular group. This group was getting this nonprofit was getting money. But they're that nonprofit is promoting things that are banned by state law. Uh so how. Are they getting the money if it was banned. Well, it looks like it they got it BEFOREHANDA looks like this, this money came to them before it became law, which it became law not so long ago. The we two override right of one of the bills in the House that banned these procedures for minors. That would have been a Roy Cooper override. Correct. That, Yeah, that was that was like a year or so ago. But it looks like this group would be getting money for some time now. So if you if you dig into it, you can read that report the center Square. I've got a link there. I just happened to notice that that was sort of a crossover item and that the White Wolfs and White Coote report only mentions North Carolina a couple of times, and it's mostly in terms of diagnostic codes that were used in certain areas of the state. The Community Equity Data and Information Lab is part of the University of North Carolina's College of Information. It created a toolkit for lgbtqu youse seeking these kinds of services, and it notes that included in the mention of that were Western North Carolina Community Health Service and Novant Health pediat Endrochronology, so they might be getting a look at what they were doing. You write in this piece also, and this is available on the sub stack at more to the story your newsletter, Wolves and White Coats. The report describes a captive patient model. Otherwise healthy miners placed on pathways of ongoing, often lifelong care, including recurring visits, monitoring, prescriptions, and possible surgeries. This pattern created recurring revenue streams for endochronology, surgery, and related services that differ from typical short term pediatric care. Right, And that has been sort of at the heart of a lot of this debate when people started realizing the extent to which hospitals were involved in fostering these things. And then of course we had that video I think it came out at Vanderbilt maybe Tennessee Hospital, right there was like an undercover video where they were talking about the amount of money that the hospitals would be getting for a lifetime of treatment, like these are permanent patients. Then, right, oh, yeah, these things don't. You don't just get the surgeries and do the hormones and then it's done. You know, you're suddenly affirmed or whatever. No, there's continuing in care for these things. Some of these things are lifelong, and a lot of times there are complications that are life threatening and will require are debilitating physically and will require long term care. So it's created a cottage industry if iving to care for having affirmed something. Right, Yeah, yeah, the human body does not recognize the affirmation when you go from male to female, for example. Yeah, that is a lifelong, painful ordeal that you now have to live with. It's pretty it's horrific and grotesque, all right. So people can read more about that at your newsletter. More to the story, let me go over to North State Journal where you had a piece celebrating the end of Roy Cooper's ED, his emergency declaration. I don't know what people thought I meant by that, but no, he ended, he rescinded the shutdowns eight hundred and eighty eight days. People may have forgotten that his emergency orders were in effect, and they were finally lifted August fifteen, twenty twenty two. Yeah. So, in his announcement ending the statewide emergency order, you're right, Cooper implied he was holding out for this state's budget, which he said includes the changes in the law requested by the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure flexibility that's currently made possible by the state of emergency. People may not remember this, but Cooper tied the end of the ED two demands from in the budget at the time, which like that was all about the science and data as I understood. Well, yeah, that was his secondary claim, the first claim when we first approached his office. His office did antras. Of course, the sent us over to the AHHS, who then claimed that it was they were, you know, had to keep the state of emergency in place in order to draw down federal funds. Well, he contacted every federal agency that was involved with doing COVID, and none of them had any idea what he was talking about. So we found no evidence whatsoever that it was required for that. In fact, other states were still drawing down funds and none of them had emergency orders. Well, luckily you were probably able to ask a question at one of his daily briefings, right, No, No, Now, North State journal was not allowed to ask any of those types of questions because they were screened out ahead of time, stuck at the kids table where they'd never took questions from any any media outlets that might ask them a tough question. Right, So that was the first lie that they told that they had to they had to keep the ed in place in order to draw down the federal funds. Yes, yeah, it wasn't until the year that he actually withdrew the declaration that he did. He claimed that it was because there was a budget item that he wanted to make sure that DHS got its money for, you know, continued emergency services or whatever. But that was not that was not the original original clan the original he'd insisted the order was sort of required quote drawed down federal funds. And we found zero evidence baldy that claim. Yeah, and we asked his office and they didn't respond when I asked to clarify. So now that is on brand for Cooper. So all right, you can read that at North State Journal and asjonline dot com is that website how NC was kept under statewide emergency for eight hundred and eighty eight days. AP. Always good to hear from you. I tell you what, take next week off? Thanks all right, AP, Well she will not be with us next week, so I appreciate your time. AP. Always a pleasure, Thank you, always pleasure. Take care. That's AP, Dylan again, North State Journal and more to the story, subscribe to her substack newsletter. Lots of good stuff in there. All right. For over a year now, you've heard me talking about create a video, great local company. In mint Hill that has helped more than two million families preserve their memories by turning old photos, VHS tapes, film reels and slides into lasting keepsakes, now creative videos helping families and groups create brand new memories while they're traveling. Introducing group travel videos perfect for family reunions, church mission trips, group vacations, destination weddings, student trip, senior adult groups, sports teams, I mean, really any gathering of people that you care about that's traveling together. 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You can email Katie Katie at group travel videos dot com. Group travel videos from old memories to new adventures, preserving life's moments for a lifetime. So remember during the pandemic when King Cooper had us all lockdown for a ZED for eight hundred eighty eight days. Do you remember the bars? You remember what happened to the bars? Right? They got shut down? Because remember, COVID knows. This was a big theme that I was hammering during the pandemic was that COVID was the smartest virus that ever virused. Okay, COVID would know if you were out at a say Sunday church service, sitting in your vehicle, you know, out in the parking lot or whatever, versus being at a BLM riot. It would know. COVID knows, and so it knows one of those activities is not good, and one of them is good, and the BLM rioting is the good, and the gathering for a funeral, bad bad, bad bad, and it would know that you were there for a funeral, not for racial justice. And so if you were attending a funeral, it would smite thee much like it knew if you were sitting or standing. COVID knows if you're sitting at a restaurant, say Tiggy Friday or or an Applebee's or something. It would know that you are seated in the restaurant section, not at the bar section. So if you're seated at the restaurant section, COVID knows not to smite you. However, if you were to be stack without a mask on, COVID would know that too, and then smite, Smite, smite. If you went to a bar to get alcohol, it would smite you, But if you went to an ABC store and got alcohol, it would not smite you because COVID knows. This was the science and data that was used by Governor Cooper and his Health and Human Services Secretary Mandy Cohen, who's got it going on. As I understand, this was the science that was relayed to us from the experts, from the medical professionals, from the doctors, right, they knew these things and when we would ask for the proof of this gnosticism, please tell us, oh, knowing ones, how does COVID know these things? We were told shut up, you're trying to kill people. So this brings us to the bars. See, there was a certain class of bar that was not allowed to open when other bars were because those other bars were called breweries. See, COVID knows if you are making your beer on site, it will not smite you. However, if you are simply selling your beer, not making it on a site, smite, smite, smite COVID. Nos. Well, the bar owners of the smiting kind they sued and it's working its way through the court system. And I have an update, Mitch Kokai wrote, writing over at Carolina Journal dot com. Forcing former govnor Roy Cooper to provide sworn testimony would be and quote an extreme remedy in a lawsuit brought by bar owners that were shut down because of Cooper's COVID related shutdown orders. That, according to at least state government lawyers, that's their argument. Okay, so you got taxpayer funded lawyers representing the former governor Roy Cooper and Mandy Cohen trying to prevent them from being deposed in this litigation. Now the current governor, Minnie Cooper, Josh Stein. He is listed as sort of the defendant in the case because he's the current governor, but the people they want to depose are the previous administration members. Right. Superior Court Judge Edwin Wilson tomorrow will consider the bar owner's motion to compel testimony from Cooper and Mandy Cohen, who was the secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. The State Supreme Court ruled back in August of twenty twenty five so last year that the bar owners could proceed with their case that Cooper's COVID executive orders violated state constitutional economic rights. This was filed under the Fruits of your Labor constitutional protection right that you have a right to the fruits of your labor. And the bar owners said that Cooper did not protect that, in fact, he prevented it. And they highlight the disparent treatment that similar establishments were given versus them. And so they want to know what is the science who came up with this idea, who said that a bar has to stay closed, but a restaurant that as a bar in it, or a brewery or a winery how come they are allowed to stay open? What was the science behind that? I mean, aside from political science, because you know, democrats like breweries and wineries, maybe not so much the you know, just a dive bar. The court filing from the State says, without any other discovery being completed, plaintiffs cannot demonstrate that these witnesses have factual information that cannot be obtained through written discovery or by deposing others who were involved with the executive orders at issue. Plaintiffs rush to compel these depositions is unnecessary and premature given the current posture of discovery in this matter. Discovery is the process where, you know, each side provides what they've gathered so the other side can prepare for the motions and the trial. So, like, I read this and it sounds an awful lot like Cooper and Cohen are trying to find somebody else to toss under the bus, right to find some emails or communications or that they're going to be I mean, this is going to be difficult because, as we learned after four terms in the Attorney General's office, Roy Cooper had managed to send like four emails. And the explanation was he just doesn't email. He just rarely prefers to do things in person or jump on a phone call. He he doesn't send the emails. Okay, Well, without any kind of written record here of how they came up with all of these ideas and why they set about making these determinations. For you know, one bar can stay open and the breweries have to close, Like, why did that occur? What was your rationale for that? When was this decided? Because the buck stops at Cooper, But it seems like they're trying to say no, no, no, you can get this information from some underlings. Well who would they be, Well, we're not really sure because remember during the pandemic he talked about how he has people that are advising him, but they never told us who they all were. We had no idea. They would come out, Cohen or Cooper or both of them, and they would walk out, they would make their pronouncements. They would say, we're moving to you know, phase two of opening up. Oh, now we got some more cases that we're dropping back to phase three and whatever. Like they were constantly moving the goalposts all over the place, and whenever anybody in the reporter crew that was allowed to ask a question if anybody came close to asking a question about why, like what is the what is the evidence the evidence used to support this decision, and they would just say science and data. This is why I began mocking it as this mantra like high priests use in the you know, in the Church of Branch Covidians, this science data and it's like, oh oh h, they said science and data. Everybody fall in line. Thirty one bars are involved in this lawsuit. Current Governor josh Stein became the official defendant in the case when he took office in twenty twenty five, and state Justice departments lawyers represent josh Stein in the case. Okay, but they're not looking to depose josh Stein. Tuesday's hearing so tomorrow is likely to include a request from Stein to drastically limit the number of written discovery requests that the bar owners can make. While plaintiffs do not oppose some limit on written discovery, they respectfully submit that any such limits also apply to plaintiffs and defendants. So, in other words, the state Josh Stein's lawyers are trying to limit the discovery requests from the bars, and the bars say, okay, if you want to limit discovery requests. You too, then, because you want to limit us to one hundred and twenty five total written discovery requests, but the state is seeking one thousand, four hundred from the bar owners. So if you want to limit us to one hundred and twenty five, then you need to be limited to one hundred and twenty five as well. Mike Taddich, who represents the bar owners, accused Cooper of performing kabuki theater in twenty twenty when he forced private bars to remain closed while allowing restaurants, brewery, wineries, country clubs, and literally every other type of establishment with an alcohol license to reopen. Bar owners filed a court document back in June suggesting that state government lawyers representing Cooper are simply trying to shield him from providing testimony under oath because he's running for US Senate. No, I suspect that's exactly correct. They don't want this guy to post. We're going to find out why they were making some of these decisions, and that will be campaign fodder to be used against Cooper. Now, maybe people don't care, Maybe voters don't care. You want to black it out right, You don't want to remember all of the stuff that we went through. Oh you know, just oh remember woke one was crazy kind of an approach. Or maybe some people find out that there wasn't really a lot of science and data involved in some of this stuff. Maybe some of these decisions were made based on lobbying efforts. I don't know. Neither do the bar owners, and they would like an explanation as to why you deprived them of the fruits of their labor a constitutional right. Again from the Carolina Journal piece by Mitch Kokai, the bar owners are complaining that the lawyers for the state are trying to smother the bars, these small business owners under mountains of requests for information. So if you're going to limit the amount of documents that the bar owners can ask of the state, then they're like, well, then you should cap what the state can ask of us, because you're you're drowning us in paperwork. Basically, Bob Orr, former North Carolina Supreme Court justice who is helping to represent the bar owners, accuse the DOJ lawyers of over complicating the case. He said that the state Supreme Court decision ordered the trial court to determine whether Roy Cooper made a reasonable decision when he ordered private bars to remain closed in twenty twenty as other businesses reopened. He said the burden of proving the reasonableness of the decision is on the governor. That burden is not on the plaintiffs. There's also this question of who exactly are these lawyers representing, because the lawyers work for the DOJ, and the DOJ is representing Josh Stein, who's now listed as the defendant. But they don't want to depose Josh Stein. They want to depose Roy Cooper, and so they said, it's not clear from the defense's motion where they tried to get they wanted a motion to continue, whether the request is submitted on behalf of the defendant, one or both of the non party witnesses, or some combination of those jointly represented parties. However, it is apparent that the request is not motivated by a legitimate need for additional time to respond. Rather, it appears to be more likely motivated by a desire to shield former Governor Cooper, who is running for elected office, and perhaps also to shield former Secretary Cohen from having to provide testimony under oath. Regarding the reasons for their decision to deprive the plaintiffs of their means to make a living for over a year, while allowing many similarly situated businesses to open. Here's the timeline. Saint Patrick's Day twenty twenty, busiest day of the year for bars. Cooper issues Executive Order one eighteen. That order allowed limited drive through, carry out and delivery operations of certain permitted food establishments, but it required the closure of the plaintiff's bars entirely. So everybody else could be slinging beers and stuff through your car window because COVID knows that's safe, but the bars, they weren't given that option two days or sorry. Two months later, in May, a new executive order allows seven of eight types of bars to reopen with guidelines. And that's where you get the breweries and the wineries and the restaurants. They're all allowed to open in May of twenty twenty, but not the bars. Eight days later, Cooper said in a media briefing his decision to exclude the plaintiff's bars from the Phase two reopening was based on science and daida UH, as well as daily briefings from doctors and healthcare experts. The next day, lawyers for the bars requested public records related to the science and data and the briefings, like, Okay, you're citing science and data and briefings, We would like to see the public records related to these decisions. The governor did not provide any records responsive to the request until September twenty twenty, so this would have been June July August, so four months later. In the meantime, Governor Cooper kept most of the plaintiff's bars closed in their entirety. So from March seventeenth, twenty twenty Saint Patrick's Day through May twenty twenty one, Cooper's executive orders prohibited these bars from operating either entirely or on any reasonably profitable basis. But the other seven types of bars were permitted to reopen and were permitted to survive. Why see this is and by the way, I have not seen this story being covered outside of Carolina Journal This is accountability North Carolina Press Corps. This is accountability. Why it's one of them? It's one of the questions that you're taught in journalism school, right, Who, what, where? Why it's one of the ws it's right there? Why Why did he make this decision. Why was this was this class of bars uh excluded? What made this class different than all of the other classes? What was the science, what was the data? Where was the reason search used to support this decision? These are questions that I asked at the time. Now what five years ago? Five years ago I was asking these questions and we still don't have answers. Maybe to the reporters who do get invited to the Governor Cooper, to the candidate Cooper's campaign events, maybe somebody could ask him, maybe, maybe throw a question out there about why why did you make that call? What made these bars different? What was the science and the data? Explain it like we're children, because that's how you talk to us during the briefings. So explain it to me like I'm a child, but a child that understands metadata analysis. Please Govna all right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpetecleanershow dot com again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.