“In a sense, a wartime president”: 18 March 2020
Was DoD the ‘Lead Federal Agency’ the day Trump “gave the order”?
This post presents ‘new’ material which suggests that the US Department of Defense was in charge domestically on 18 March 2020 when Trump “gave the order” for the Department of Homeland Security/ FEMA to lead the COVID response, effective the following day - 19 March 2020.
A brief overview/ recap of relevant material from previous posts is covered first.
A military operation… and a manufactured ‘crisis’
COVID was a major geopolitical event. In the shock-and-awe operation that was decades in the making, the transnational public-private defense-and-security apparatus seized power and profits using the pretext of a spreading infectious disease.
A deliberately damaging and deadly ‘lockdown response’ contributed to the illusion of a ‘pandemic’, with a dangerously experimental ‘vaccine solution’ promoted - then enforced - as the exit strategy.
Centralized control-and-command of this “live exercise” was critical to its success.
The model for the lockstep weaponization of ‘public health’ against the citizenry under the guise of ‘homeland defense’ originated in the United States before 9/11 and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
This substack has covered at length the events of mid-March 2020 with respect to the US domestic ‘health security’ coup that underpinned the so-called whole-of-society ‘emergency’.
Recall the sequence of political events in the days before 19 March 2020 (cut-and-paste from a previous post)…
President Trump’s timeline for mid-March 2020 (after the WHO called a ‘pandemic’ on 11 March) was as follows…
13 March 2020 - declaration of a National Emergency (Stafford Act)
16 March 2020 - announcement of 15-Days-to-Slow-the-Spread
18 March 2020 - order for FEMA (DHS) to lead the federal response
Up to this point in the timeline, the Lead Federal Agency (LFA) for the ‘COVID response’ had been HHS, with DHS/ FEMA in a supporting role.
Note the evidence relevant to the events of 18-19 March 2020 (per previous posts) in particular:
(1) “…President Trump’s decision to have FEMA take the lead…”
the announcement by the Vice President on 19 March 2020 regarding the President’s decision [the day before] to make the Federal Emergency Management Agency - a sub-bureau within DHS - the lead for “the national coronavirus response”.
CLIP: Vice President Pence at the White House Coronavirus Task Force press briefing on 19 March 2020 with President Trump and Dr Deborah Birx (25 sec)
(2) “… as of yesterday, when we gave the order, FEMA’s totally involved…”
the reference by the President and Commander-in-Chief on 19 March 2020 to an “order” being given the day before to put FEMA (DHS) in charge - i.e. the decision/ direction on 18 March was announced and took effect on 19 March.
CLIP: President Trump with VP Pence at FEMA headquarters on 19 March 2020 - flanked by the Secretaries of HHS and DHS - prior to a virtual meeting with the governors (25 sec)
(3) the DoD operational document which in retrospect explains this “unanticipated” change regarding Lead Federal Agency for US homeland ‘pandemic response’
ie. the change from HHS to DHS, whereby DHS is the lead for a US domestic response to a biological incident: Joint Publication 3-41 on Chem-Bio-Rad-Nuclear (CBRN) Response.
SCREEN SHOT: DoD’s “CBRN Response” framework - with green box added to denote the ‘US homeland’ environment, with DHS (or DoD) as Lead Federal Agency.
From 19 March 2020 onwards, the Department of Homeland Security, through FEMA, was effectively running the militarized ‘public health’ operation behind the facade of the (lavishly-funded) all-of-America ‘disaster response’.
On 20 March 2020 Mike Pompeo, in his role as US Secretary of State, famously revealed that “we’re in a live exercise here… to get this right”.
This development and the context in which it unfolded - including the Pentagon’s preset policy framework - raises another question…
(Rewind a day - to 18 March 2020 - noting the presidential necktie for date differentiation):
Which agency was in charge on 18 March 2020 when Trump “gave the order” for FEMA (DHS) to take over as Lead Federal Agency?
The phrase “gave the order” clearly intimates a military imperative for an executive order.
Note that the date 18 March 2020 is omitted - see space with red arrow and text inserted below - in terms of the official sequence of “changes in federal agency roles and responsibilities” during the so-called ‘pandemic’.
Although the date March 18, 2020 is conspicuously missing-in-action in the chronology of the Initial Federal Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic (blue box, A-E above) the relevant details are alluded to on pages 130-131:
During this meeting [at the White House on 18 March 2020] President Trump directed [FEMA] Administrator Gaynor to “take over” and lead the operational coordination of the federal response.
[…]
Mr. Gaynor told Committee staff that he had expected FEMA to play a supporting role to HHS and considered it a “unique” and “historic” situation for FEMA to be placed in the lead for this pandemic response.
HSGAC Majority Staff Report - Historically Unprepared: Examination of the Federal Government’s Pandemic Preparedness and Initial COVID-19 Response - Dec 2022
Note that, according to the official timeline above…
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was the “Lead Federal Agency” up to and including 17 March 2020, consistent with the pre-COVID (and “adapted”) Pandemic Crisis Action Plan. But despite this…
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officially took over as the “Lead Federal Agency” on 19 March 2020 based on Trump’s “order” (the previous day), consistent with DoD’s Joint Publication 3-41 on CBRN Response.
Also note that…
In the DoD’s Joint Publication 3-41 (September 2016 edition), the Department of Defense is listed as a “Lead Federal Agency” - in addition to DHS - for Domestic CBRN Response.
Was DoD the Lead Federal Agency for a day on 18 March 2020 when the presidential “order” was given to transition from HHS to DHS?
This was a significant day in the COVID timeline in terms of the political theater associated with the militarization of the ‘response’.
“We will be invoking the Defense Production Act…”
18 March 2020 was the day President Trump famously started the press conference by announcing that he would be imminently signing the Defense Production Act in the “war against the Chinese virus”…
(40 sec)
“… in a sense a wartime president…”
After outlining how US-led vaccine development had been aggressively expedited starting two months before the declaration of the ‘national emergency’ - ie. in mid-January, a week before the first US ‘case’! - President Trump took questions from reporters and referred to himself as “a wartime president” in terms of the bold actions he’d taken “in order to defeat this enemy” - including the lockdown of the US economy.
The President’s use of war rhetoric on 18 March 2020 was a recurring theme.
(30 sec)
“… based on direction from the Commander in Chief.”
Also on 18 March 2020, the Secretary of Defense Mark Esper - in addition to outlining DoD’s progress on accelerated tests and vaccines - announced that he had ordered the Navy hospital ships Mercy and Comfort to prepare to deploy and likewise alerted field and expeditionary hospitals to be prepared to deploy “based on direction from the Commander in Chief”.
Lockstep… across the ‘free world’?
To repeat the rhetorical question asked several times regarding the COVID coup:
Did the US Commander-in-Chief and “leader of the free world” also give an “order” in terms of the globally-coordinated and militarized ‘biodefense’ response to the phony-baloney ‘pandemic’?
Put another way…
In projecting US power under the pretext of ‘global health security’ - and in keeping with policy changes under his predecessor - did the President make the Pentagon the ‘Lead Federal Agency’ for the international lockstep ‘COVID crisis’ operation by America’s allies… including NATO and Five Eyes nations?
i.e. “Did anyone… accept orders from the United States military…?”
More posts are in the pipeline re. the US-led international COVID coup.
Thank you to the American patriot who assisted with this post!