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Many Americans have questioned the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is doing something about it.
Paxton has just launched an investigation into Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson to find out whether or not they engaged in gain-of-function research and misled the public regarding the vaccines.
Paxton believes if these companies misrepresented the efficacy of the vaccines, they could have violated the Deceptive Trade Practices Act in Texas.
BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales of "The News & Why It Matters" had Paxton on the show to discuss his investigation.
“We’re going to ask questions about their trials, about what they knew at the time, when they knew it, and see if they told us the truth,” Paxton explains, “or whether they misled the public about the efficacy of their vaccine.”
Gonzales asks Paxton how he plans to prove it, as she thinks “they’re not going to provide documents that maybe they have.”
“Well, the problem with them not providing the documents they have — that potentially turns into criminal action and certainly results in other risks for their company,” Paxton says.
However, that doesn’t mean the company will comply.
“They could decide ‘Hey, we don’t want to disclose information,’” he explains. “You know, usually the cover-up’s worse than the crime.”
While this could be the case, “there will be some civil penalties and it will cost them some money” if they’re honest about what they knew and did not know. If they’re caught in a lie, they could be facing criminal charges.
Paxton continues, explaining that “if they answer the questions and we find that they’ve misled the public — then we’ve got different issues that we either have to settle with them or we have to sue them to recover the damages that they’ve caused.”
Gonzales notes that if that’s the case, there’s a lot of money behind them to recover damages.
She adds that the Moderna CEO made nearly 400 million last year on his stock options and owns a reported 2.8 billion shares in the company.
Albert Borla of Pfizer made a $33 million salary last year “off the backs of the American public,” Gonzales says.
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Millions of Americans are eager to cast their ballots ahead of the Nov. 3 election. A new report states that over 8 million Americans have voted early in the presidential election in 31 states compared to approximately 75,000 people who voted one month early before the 2016 election. Thus far, Democratic voters reportedly have a commanding lead over Republicans in early election estimates, but one pollster says there's no reason for conservatives to panic just yet.
The United States Elections Project, which compiles early voting data, found that Democratic voters hold a wide margin when it comes to voting early. Over 1.7 million voters registered as Democrats have cast their ballot already, versus only 750,509 voters registered as Republicans as of Oct. 9. There were more than 600,000 with no party affiliation who voted early. States that provide party affiliation data include California, New Jersey, Maryland, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and South Dakota.
Chris Wilson, a GOP pollster who has worked for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, says there's no reason to panic that Democrats have voted early at a much higher rate than Republicans.
"There isn't a reason for Republicans to panic just because Democrats are 'winning' the mail vote," Wilson told USA Today. "Every vote counts just once whether it is cast today or cast on Election Day."
Wilson said Democrats participating in mail-voting more than Republicans was forecast long ago. However, Wilson did give a warning to Republicans.
"That being said, the concerning thing for Republicans has to be that once a Democratic vote is cast, it can't be taken back," Wilson said. "So our window to message and convert any of these voters away from voting for Democrats is shorter than the number of days left in the campaign."
Florida has had the most early voters with nearly 1.4 million, where over 700,000 registered Democrats voted versus nearly 400,000 Republicans, and there were more than 250,000 voters with no party affiliation. Virginia has over 886,000 early voters, followed by the battleground states of Michigan with more than 844,000, and Wisconsin with over 646,000.
Michael McDonald, associate professor of political science at the University of Florida, who manages the United States Elections Project, said the early turnout is unprecedented.
"We've never seen this many people voting so far ahead of an election," McDonald told Reuters. "People cast their ballots when they make up their minds, and we know that many people made up their minds long ago and already have a judgment about Trump."
The total number of voters who voted early, absentee or by mail-in more than doubled from 24.9 million in 2004 to 57.2 million in 2016, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Experts expect that number to increase exponentially because of the coronavirus pandemic, and because numerous states have made mail-in voting more accessible.
There are 25 days until the general election.