Anti-vaxxers borrow ‘Grand Jury’ concept from sovereign citizens to organize scapegoating ‘trials’

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The COVID-19 con artists never miss a trick. Check out their latest scam: For just a small fee—well, or maybe not so small, depending on whether you want a hat and shirt or participate in the show proceedings in Nashville—you too can be seated on “America’s Grand Jury,” which plans to hold a mock trial for Dr. Anthony Fauci, accused in “the deaths of millions of people all over the globe.” It’s like a sovereign-citizen scheme for the anti-vaxxer crowd.

The scheme is part of a pushback by the same charlatans who have wrongly insisted that the anti-parasite drug ivermectin is a powerful treatment/preventative for COVID-19 and are selling it to gullible buyers online through “telemedicine.” But they tip their far-right hand by targeting a singular scapegoat—in this case, the COVID denialists’ chief boogeyman, Fauci, though in fact he’s only their first target—to be put “on trial”: This isn’t about the pandemic, it’s about the targeting liberals for revenge and creating permission for violence.  

It’s not clear who is financing the “America’s Grand Jury” operation, but its website tells us plenty about who is involved, not to mention how the scheme is supposed to work:

“Let YOUR VOICE be heard in the worlds most important Grand Jury!”

“For the first time in history you can be a Grand Juror in a case that involves the DEATHS OF MILLIONS of people all over the globe.

“For this purpose we’ve put together America’s Grand Jury! The fair & balanced way to decide if Anthony Fauci should be INDICTED! We want YOU to be a Juror and cast YOUR VOTE!”

It quickly discloses that this “is a mock Grand Jury closely simulating what an actual Grand Jury might conclude if the case were to actually be brought before an official Grand Jury by a prosecutor.” Most of all, they envision it as “the official template for Attorney Generals and Prosecutors on any level to not have any excuses not to prosecute Fauci and his bandits.”

The concept of ordinary citizens convening a grand-jury proceeding independent of civic authorities has long been the purview of the far-right sovereign-citizens movement, which claims that ordinary people can declare themselves free of all kinds of government jurisdictions and prescribes a blizzard of pseudo-legal paperwork as the road to “freedom” from taxes and regulations.  

Sovereign citizens have often convened vigilante “people’s grand juries” as a way of threatening and intimidating local officials. In 2017, a group of Colorado sovereign citizens who had threatened dozens of elected officials—including the sheriffs of two counties—were indicted and brought to trial for such a scheme. They were all convicted, and the ringleaders were sentenced to 38- and 36-year prison terms each.

The “America’s Grand Jury” operation includes the added feature of being a large-scale moneymaking scheme, especially considering the extent to which people on the anti-vaccination far right have demonized Fauci, routinely demanding he be fired, that he be brought to trial, and that he be hanged. It’s spread to mainstream Republicans, like Fox News’ Jesse Watters, who urged his viewers to “ambush” Fauci in the streets and record a “kill shot.”

If you want to be one of those “grand jurors” who “proves” Fauci should be prosecuted for genocide (and you’ll be excused for thinking this is one of those “fair trial afore we hang him” affairs), all you have to do is pony up $25. But wait! There are multiple levels of participation: For $100, you can tune in to “prosecutors” on Zoom chats, plus you get an “America’s Grand Jury” hat. For $250, you also get the T-shirt. And for $10,000 you and seven others can get VIP treatment in Nashville.

And just who would these “prosecutors” be? According to their bios, the team is headed up by the disgraced former Indiana attorney general, Curtis Hill. A Republican, Hill was driven from office in 2018 amid credible charges of sexual harassment by four women.

Their chief witnesses:

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaxxer guru who has taken a leading role in the movement’s shift from vaguely left to far-right conspiracism (and is suing Daily Kos because we have documented this). His scurrilous book attacking Fauci has sold a ton of copies, claiming that the doctor helped orchestrate “a historic coup d’etat against Western democracy.”
• Pierre Kory, the Wisconsin doctor whose testimony at a hearing chaired by Republican Senator Ron Johnson went viral when he accused the government of silencing health professionals and doctors who recommended “alternative” COVID-19 cures, like ivermectin. Kory is the co-founder of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), one of the primary promoters of the ivermectin claims.

Of course, a recently released gold-standard study based on a large, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial from Brazil confirmed that ivermectin does not help reduce hospital admissions or emergency room visits for patients with COVID—as dozens of studies had already found.

But this operation is not about science. It’s about politics—the eliminationist politics of the far right. We know this because Fauci is only the first target.

The organization’s website reveals that after they’re done putting Fauci “on trial” (scheduled for April 11-15), there will be upcoming trials: One for Hunter Biden this summer, and a third for Hillary Clinton in the fall.

We’ve known for a while now that for the anti-vaxxer/anti-mandate/anti-mask crowd, the issue really isn’t about the pandemic or the disease—it’s about their hatred of liberal democratic governance and their intention of tearing it down at every turn and through every opening, even those they create themselves. It’s a far-right movement whose purpose is not to enhance “liberty,” as they claim, but rather to take everything away from the people they hate.

As Kavita Patel explained at MSNBC this week, the issue of ivermectin and COVID-19 is just a stalking horse for far-right radicalization and extremist insurgency—one that has proved disturbingly effective:

The playbook is clear: stoke fear, prey on vulnerable Americans, launch social media to promote lies and attack credible officials and repeat. In the process, these charlatans stand to profit or gain power as the subjects of their con suffer the consequences. The similarities between the campaign to discredit the 2020 election and the proliferation of ivermectin are clear—both resulted in needless death and the normalization of fear and misinformation.