DeSantis Announces Grand-Jury Probe into Alleged ‘Wrongdoing’ by Covid-Vaccine Makers

Florida governor Ron DeSantis announced on Tuesday his intention to empanel a grand jury to investigate “any and all wrongdoing” involving Covid-19 vaccines in the state.

DeSantis, a potential Republican presidential candidate, made the announcement during a roundtable discussion about vaccine accountability that he held with Florida’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who has previously expressed concerns about the safety of Covid mRNA vaccines and boosters. The roundtable was attended by medical and health specialists who raised similar concerns about the safety of the vaccines.

Most health officials agree that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are safe and effective at preventing serious illness or death from Covid-19.

DeSantis said he intends to petition the Supreme Court of Florida to empanel the grand jury, likely in the Tampa Bay area. DeSantis did not specify what “wrongdoing” the grand jury would investigate, but he said the grand jury would come with legal processes to obtain information from vaccine manufacturers and “those who committed misconduct.”

“We’ll be able to get the data whether they want to give it or not,” DeSantis said. “In Florida, it is illegal to mislead and misrepresent, especially when you are talking about the efficacy of a drug.”

In addition to petitioning for a grand jury, DeSantis also announced that he is establishing a Public Health Integrity Committee, which will be overseen by Ladapo, and will assess federal public-health recommendations and guidance. The state will also be “leading further surveillance into sudden deaths of individuals that received the COVID-19 vaccine in Florida, based on autopsy results,” according to a press release. The state will collaborate with the University of Florida to compare research to studies in other countries.

In recent weeks, DeSantis has been talking about taking steps to hold vaccine manufacturers accountable for side effects. “We are going to work to hold these manufacturers accountable for this mRNA [vaccine] because they said there was no side effects, and we know that there have been, and there have been a lot,” DeSantis said at a private event recently.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and prevention has acknowledged that the vaccines come with a slightly elevated risk of myocarditis, the inflation of the heart muscles, but Florida officials have said their own research has found a much more significant increase.

“We did a study in Florida, and you saw an 86 percent increase in cardiac-related activity from people 18 to 39 from mRNA shots,” DeSantis said, according to a report from an NBC affiliate in Tampa. “This is something that we’re going to lead on in Florida.”

In a prepared statement, Pfizer said Covid-19 vaccines have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, and tens of billions of dollars in health care costs. “Regulatory agencies across the world have authorized the use of our COVID-19 vaccine,” the statement read. “These authorizations are based on robust and independent evaluation of the scientific data on quality, safety and efficacy, including our landmark phase 3 clinical trial. Data from real world studies complement the clinical trial data and provide additional evidence that they vaccines provides effective protection against severe disease.”

During Tuesday’s roundtable, DeSantis accused the public health establishment of arrogance and of squandering any confidence and good will people had toward it. He said “these elites” want to “cocoon themselves from any criticism and to try to denigrate anybody that had a different way of thinking.” Concerns about vaccine safety were one reason the state rejected vaccine mandates and vaccine passports, DeSantis said.

“What you had is, you had a lot of elites in this country trying to condition society so that if you didn’t bend the knee, you were basically a second-class citizen,” DeSantis said, adding that, “our CDC, at this point, anything they put out you just assume at this point that it’s not worth the paper that it’s printed on.”

DeSantis also expressed concerns about Big Tech companies silencing dissenting opinions about the Covid-19 pandemic and vaccines. “They were censoring from Day 1. People who would write any lockdown things in March of 2020, April 2020, some of those would get taken down off some of thee Big Tech platforms,” he said. “We saw that over and over again.”