Law & Crime via SnapStream The plot thickens? In an update to the on-going struggle of Navy veteran and former CIA Officer Zachary Young to publish his tell all book about his successful defamation trial against CNN, Young alleges the Central Intelligence Agency has issued contradictory letters while still refusing to give him permission to write about what was already broadcasted to a global audience.As NewsBusters previously reported, the CIA’s Author Review Office (ARO) had not only denied Young’s request to publish a book titled American Spy, in which he’ll tell his side of the CNN defamation case, they also wanted him to delete his entire manuscript.Part of the materials Young submitted to the ARO was evidence that came up during the trial that then-Public Affairs Director Tammy Kupperman Thorp inappropriately disclosed his affiliation to CNN’s Alex Marquardt:The trial record also establishes that my prior CIA affiliation was not merely incidentally mentioned by a private individual or inadvertently disclosed by an unauthorized outsider. It was confirmed through the Agency’s official press function. The documentary record, admitted as a trial exhibit and broadcast nationally, shows CNN correspondent Alex Marquardt formally tasking the Agency’s Office of Public Affairs on October 29, 2021, stating: “FYI I asked Tammy if they can look into the other guy’s claim that he’s CIA.” This was not a casual conversation. It was a directed request to the Agency’s official press office to look into whether a named individual was connected to the CIA. Marquardt testified under oath at trial that Tammy Kupperman Thorp, who served as the CIA’s Director of Public Affairs from 2021 to 2025, confirmed my Agency background and described the practice as a “steer,” which he defined on the record as the Agency’s established method of informally confirming information to credentialed journalists.Young argued to the ARO that the agency already had the opportunity to label Thorp’s involvement and his affiliation with the Agency as classified during the legal proceedings, and they chose not to act.In the ARO’s June 15 , 2026 letter rejecting Young’s request to print, they wrote this about the additional material he included about Thorp, along with the other documentation:In issuing this denial, we reviewed the additional materials you submitted with the manuscript, but must stress that these materials did not constitute confirmation or acknowledgement by the organization of the information contained in the manuscript or alter the status of the sensitive information. Therefore, you must delete any and all copies containing the sensitive information.But in a follow up letter dated July 16, 2026, responding to a separate complaint Young filed requesting an Inspector General referral over the Thorp disclosure, ARO stated it has “no additional insight into those matters” and that the complaint had been “forwarded to the requested offices.”Young says the two statements cannot both be true.“They can’t tell me they have no insight into the Thorp disclosure while having already used their judgment about that same disclosure to reject my entire manuscript,” Young said in a statement to NewsBusters. “Either they evaluated it or they didn’t. Right now their own letters contradict each other.”It’s worth noting that the ARO also seems to have dropped their initial demand for Young to delete his entire manuscript. At least for now as the appeal process proceeds.To learn more about who Tammy Kupperman Thorp is and about her personal ties to CNN, you can read NewsBusters’ investigation into her here.

CNN/SnapStream Thursday’s CNN This Morning was forced to cover the aftermath of Dr. Anthony Fauci pleading the Fifth Amendment in a Senate hearing focused on Fauci’s actions during the pandemic and diaries released by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). But the network continued to minimize the diaries and the hearing overall, as Democratic CNN commentator Maria Cardona called it a politicized “sham” and fill-in host Erica Hill called the diaries “a choose-your-own-adventure of 1,100 pages.”Hill first started the segment near the end of the show with a brief defense of Fauci’s use of the Fifth Amendment, because he feared Paul “wants to see him behind bars.”Cardona jumped in with her own defense of Fauci and said she was not a lawyer, but she agreed with the decision because, “Republicans wanted to catch him in a lie, wanted to catch him - twist his words and hold him in contempt, you know, get him for lying to Congress.”She then said, “they’re so obsessed with going after him.” Thursday’s CNN This Morning was forced to cover the aftermath of Dr. Fauci pleading the Fifth, but minimized it.After panelist Terry Schilling tore into Fauci over COVID and his diaries, Maria Cardona responded: “A Diary is a diary, okay?” Fill-in host Erica Hill also jumped in… pic.twitter.com/KSOE6cgzpn— Nick (@nspin310) July 30, 2026 Cardona continued and labeled the hearing as a politicized sham while she praised Dr. Fauci:And Dr. Fauci right now has a much better approval rating than anyone at HHS right now. And so many people in - when I posted about this, they were like, thank you, Dr. Fauci. Because of you, I'm alive. He saved the lives of millions of Americans. (...)So, this is all a sham by Republicans who, again, have nothing to talk about when it comes to the economy and just want to distract.Panelist Terry Schilling, President of American Principles Project and a member of the Media Research Center’s board of directors, tore into Fauci after he heard Cardona’s praise:He can't even answer why. He can't even answer why so many of our loved ones had to die alone in hospitals. They can't answer why our young kids had to go outside of schools, had learning loss, had serious mental crises happen to them. This is pathetic. Schilling then noted, “And if anyone's politicizing this, it's not Republicans who are seeking justice. It's the Democrats who failed to even account or acknowledge the fact that our kids and our families were hurt so badly by his actions while he was lying. “After he called the diary “so incriminating and an indictment of him,” Cardona interjected by huffing, “The diary is a diary, okay?”Schilling pushed back, “The diary is him admitting that he cares more about Kim Kardashian.”Hill interrupted the back and forth and gave her own form of minimization and called it, “a choose-your-own-adventure of 1,100 pages of I think - anybody in there who wants to find something that they don't like about Dr. Fauci, they can find something in there.”Schilling tried to get back into the conversation and stated, “But he was caught lying,” before Hill instead turned to NPR’s Tamara Keith to discuss the long-term polarization of COVID.It was not as much of a “choose-your-own-adventure” as Hill suggested, as the diary release was full of comments of Fauci loving his newfound celebrity status while he also said things in private that completely contradicted what he said in public. Moreover, even if they did want to “catch him in a lie,” the truth would be that Fauci lied.  Even after the hearing, the liberal media, as seen on CNN, seemed to not want to lose their love for Fauci, at least not yet.The transcript is below. Click "expand":CNN This MorningJuly 30, 20266:51:05 AM Eastern(...)ERICA HILL: Senator Rand Paul, Fauci's longtime foe who subpoenaed him to testify under oath, is now threatening to hold the doctor in contempt. Republicans still want answers about the doctor's personal diaries, which Rand Paul put out publicly, and also past testimonies to Congress. The group chat is back. So, over 100 times, he did say in his opening statement that he felt, and I'm paraphrasing here, right, that he was there because, as Senator Paul has said, he wants to see him behind bars.  So, there were questions about what he would and wouldn't say.(...)6:52:15 AM EasternMARIA CARDONA: But I heard other lawyers say that if Fauci was their client, they would absolutely have advised the same exact thingHILL: Yes.CARDONA: Because the pardon is for stuff, apparently, that you have done. They're not sure whether it will count for things moving forward. And so what the danger was, is that Republicans wanted to catch him in a lie, wanted to catch him - twist his words and hold him in contempt, you know, get him for lying to Congress. And because they're so obsessed with going after him, I think, you know, and again, I'm not a lawyer, but I talked to a lot of them yesterday and the vast majority of them said this is the safest place for him to be. And I think what it did to the American people is it showed what a sham this congressional hearing was, because I agree that there are things to talk about, but because Republicans have politicized this so much, there was no way that they were going to be able to get to the things that we wanted to know.And Dr. Fauci right now has a much better approval rating than anyone at HHS right now. And so many people in - when I posted about this, they were like, thank you, Dr. Fauci. Because of you, I'm alive. He saved the lives of millions of Americans. He got the Presidential Medal of Freedom, or whatever the medal was that Donald Trump got him - put around his neck. So, this is all a sham by Republicans who, again, have nothing to talk about when it comes to the economy and just want to distract.TERRY SCHILLING: I just got to say, he's already been caught in several lies. His diary was leaked. This guy is - he has nothing to protect himself from being incriminated against. He was pardoned. He can't even answer why. He can't even answer why so many of our loved ones had to die alone in hospitals. They can't answer why our young kids had to go outside of schools, had learning loss, had serious mental crises happen to them. This is pathetic. And if anyone's politicizing this, it's not Republicans who are seeking justice. It's the Democrats who failed to even account or acknowledge the fact that our kids and our families were hurt so badly by his actions while he was lying. The diary is so incriminating and an indictment of him and anyone that doesn't speak up against - CARDONA: The diary is a diary, okay?SCHILLING: The diary is him admitting that he cares more about Kim Kardashian.CARDONA: That is way political -HILL: The diary is a - I called it this yesterday, and I stand by it: the diary is a choose-your-own-adventure of 1,100 pages of I think - anybody in there who wants to find something that they don't like about Dr. Fauci, they can find something in there. SCHILLING: But he was caught lying -HILL: [To Tamara Keith] What's fascinating in this moment is the fact that there is still six years later, right? This is still so passionate for so many people. What does that say about where we stand and what the priorities are in Congress?TAMARA KEITH: Yeah, I mean, I think that COVID was this massive rupture for the American people. I mean, globally, it was a terrible event that extended for a long period of time, changed people's lives, and really drew out the political divisions that definitely already existed in this country. But the polarization has very much been applied to COVID and that experience that I'm pretty sure everyone can agree was terrible. But other than that, there's not a lot of agreement on how long people should have had social distancing, whether there should have been masks, whether the vaccine is going to kill you or save your life.Like, there's just so much polarization about this, but this is the this is an event, a global event that people will be talking about, that we will be talking about when we're 100 years old, and people will still be fighting about it.(...)

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), who have defeated several Democrat incumbents this election cycle, will be hosting their “Socialists Summit” this weekend, July 31-August 2, in Chicago. At this summit, the DSA will offer socialist organizing training to its participants, including on “Governing as Socialists” and on “Building to a General Strike.” This event will include a surprise keynote speaker, and all those who attend will have to submit a negative COVID test.At the same time, the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), “the youth and student section of the Democratic Socialists of America,” are holding their convention, where they will be voting on whether to field and endorse a presidential candidate in 2028, as well as on whether to call for a new party outside the Democratic Party.The YDSA will be voting on several resolutions at the convention, most of them having to do with forming and supporting labor movements and other Socialist organizations. One of the more noteworthy resolutions is resolution 18, titled “Preparing for a Class-Struggle 2028 Presidential election.” If adopted, the YDSA would move to create an infrastructure to support a potential DSA candidate for president.In one of the resolution’s preambles, the YDSA criticize Kamala Harris for being too rightwing. In another, it characterizes the Democratic Party as “class-collaborationist,” and states its aim to “build an independent, socialist political force fighting to win a majority of society over to our politics,” implying that it believes a Democratic Socialist could win a majority of Americans over to the movement, despite the party’s many radical proposals. If DSA were to advance a presidential candidate, the YDSA would not “hide, minimize, or alter [their] platform and vision” for the sake of appealing to more voters. It also promises to criticize and differentiate itself from the DSA candidate, if it deems necessary, a strategy quite uncommon in presidential elections.The young Democratic Socialists will also be voting on a resolution (23) to call for the creation a new Socialist party in America:“Let it be resolved that the signatories of this resolution motion for the creation of a Socialist Party independent of the Democratic Party; one which should be fit for competing in state & local races no later than 2028, a roadmap to the accomplishment of which DSA/YDSA invites, as equals, other anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist & anti-Zionist associations or parties to participate in drafting.”According to the resolution, the DSA would invite other current leftwing organizations, including the Working Families Party, the Communist Party USA, and the Green Party into a new party, a “Socialist Party.” The resolution does not explicitly rule out contesting Democrat primaries, as the DSA has been winning many of them. It does, however, signal opposition to working within the Democratic Party framework, and accuses the Democrats of favoring “Fascists” to Socialists, while indicating a belief that Socialist candidates could win apart from the Democratic Party:“Whereas the recent successes of openly socialist candidates (DSA or otherwise) in state & local elections have demonstrated clearly the political appetite for a Socialist Party independent of the Democratic Party.”…“Whereas the liberal capitalists in control of the Democratic Party would sooner do battle with socialists than with fascists.”The Democratic Socialists of America currently have negative net favorability. According to a July 15th Echelon insights poll, 25% of Americans have a very or somewhat favorable view of the DSA, while 46% have a very or somewhat unfavorable view. A CNN poll suggests that around one in three Democrats identify as Democratic Socialists, though it is unclear whether they would leave the Democratic Party to vote for hypothetical Socialist Party candidates.

Comedy Central’s The Daily Show host-of-the-week Jordan Klepper and NBC’s Late Night host Seth Meyers finally acknowledged the existence of the Fauci Hearings on their Thursday shows and eagerly stepped up to defend him. According to Klepper, the hearings featured Republicans trying to reduce a complicated topic to “a performative partisan filter," while Meyers blamed President Trump for any of the federal government’s public health apparatus's trust problems.Klepper gave the story the most attention and summarized his feelings by declaring, “And look, this is not to say Donald Trump is the one big villain of COVID. There is no one big villain of COVID. Well, except maybe COVID. He was a bad dude! It was an unprecedented pandemic that we spent years stumbling through, trying to find some patchwork of solutions that would protect our health while keeping our society from total collapse.” The Daily Show's Jordan Klepper says of the Fauci hearings "Did our leaders make mistakes? Of course they did! Should we try to find out what we did wrong? Of course. But that was not what was happening with Republicans this week. They were doing the only thing we do anymore:… pic.twitter.com/L9Nx5u7WFg— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) July 31, 2026 Klepper kept going, “Did our leaders make mistakes? Of course they did! Should we try to find out what we did wrong? Of course. But that was not what was happening with Republicans this week. They were doing the only thing we do anymore: Shove a complex issue through a performative partisan filter.”That may sound all well and good, but at the time it was presented as simple: either accept Fauci and others’ recommendations or be a grandma killer. Klepper is also part of a trend that wants to concede that one can ask tough questions of Fauci, but the moment anyone actually does, it becomes a partisan clown show. Shoving complex issues through partisan filters is also what The Daily Show does on a routine basis. Over on NBC, Meyers did not devote nearly the same amount of time to the Fauci Hearings as Klepper. Instead, he only told a couple of jokes about them, and the first had nothing to do with the actual hearings, “Dr. Anthony Fauci testified yesterday before the Senate Homeland Security committee on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘Please don't be us, please don't be us,’ said Taylor Farms.” Seth Meyers also discovered the Fauci hearings, but made them about Taylor Farms and Trump, "During the Senate homeland security committee hearing yesterday with Dr. Anthony Fauci, Republican Senator Rick Scott criticized Fauci for destroying the federal government's credibility… pic.twitter.com/MvRUz6w2vw— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) July 31, 2026 As for the actual substance of the hearings, Meyers sought to redirect attention to Trump, “During the Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing yesterday with Dr. Anthony Fauci, Republican Senator Rick Scott criticized Fauci for destroying the federal government's credibility on public health. What? Your boss literally told us to drink bleach, which after ten years of him, I’m starting to warm up to the idea.”Trump did not literally, or even figuratively, tell people to drink bleach, but Fauci and others did literally tell us to stay six feet apart from each other even though there was no scientific basis for that.Here is a transcript for the July 30 show:Comedy Central The Daily Show7/30/202611:11 PM ETJORDAN KLEPPER: And look, this is not to say Donald Trump is the one big villain of COVID. There is no one big villain of COVID. Well, except maybe COVID. He was a bad dude! It was an unprecedented pandemic that we spent years stumbling through, trying to find some patchwork of solutions that would protect our health while keeping our society from total collapse.Did our leaders make mistakes? Of course they did! Should we try to find out what we did wrong? Of course. But that was not what was happening with Republicans this week. They were doing the only thing we do anymore: Shove a complex issue through a performative partisan filter.But it's not going to do anything for us to throw Anthony Fauci in prison. It's not even going to do that much to Anthony Fauci. I mean, threatening an 85-year-old with life in prison? That's kind of like putting a kid in timeout 10 minutes before school is over.***NBC Late Night with Seth Meyers7/31/202612:38 AM ETSETH MEYERS: Dr. Anthony Fauci testified yesterday before the Senate Homeland Security committee on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. "Please don't be us, please don't be us," said Taylor Farms. "We can't handle another one."“We've got some good news and some bad news. People are no longer blaming the diarrhea on youDuring the Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing yesterday with Dr. Anthony Fauci, Republican Senator Rick Scott criticized Fauci for destroying the federal government's credibility on public health. What? Your boss literally told us to drink bleach, which after ten years of him, I’m starting to warm up to the idea.

The spectacle of Dr. Anthony Fauci refusing to answer questions from senators by repeatedly citing his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination was blatantly ridiculous. A man who never found a microphone he didn’t like was refusing to engage in defending his record. Then the elitist media that claim to be all about transparency and accountability rushed to his defense. Sen. Rand Paul’s release of Fauci’s writings on his government computer revealed just how cozy the wily doctor was with the network news stars in 2020, from George Stephanopoulos to Chuck Todd to Jake Tapper. This was an obvious reason for the networks to bury the story of these writings. It was all reminiscent of 2016, when Wikileaks dropped a pile of communications between Hillary Clinton aide John Podesta and other Democrats and political journalists. The networks discussed the leaked documents about the Clinton campaign vs. the Bernie Sanders campaign. But they weren’t going to discuss the chummy content between Podesta and the “objective” reporters. Wikileaks exposed that in 2015, NBC’s Chuck Todd invited Podesta (among others) to their home for “Cocktails & Dinner in honor of” Jennifer Palmieri, another Clinton staffer, and her Democrat husband, Jim Lyons. Wikileaks revealed CNN asked the Democratic National Committee for questions to ask Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. What we’re never told is how cooperative the journalists were with the Democrat suggestions. This is, in a word, collusion – a complete blur between journalists and Democrats, all seeking the same political objectives. But the media that claims to be all for democracy and transparency hide their inner chumminess in concocting the “news” product while pretending there is no secretive alliance. In mid-October 2016, CNN’s Brian Stelter denied the flaming mountain of Wikileaks collusion: “In Trump's world, journalists are really just Clinton campaign workers in disguise collaborating with her in an attempt to rig the election. This is not just false, it's ludicrous and it's damaging.” Fast-forward to 2020. Now, Fauci revealed two dinners at Jake Tapper’s house, and called it “friendship building.” Just like CNN and the DNC in 2016, Tapper asked Fauci to suggest spicy questions for a hardball interview with a Trump official on Covid policy. This is why the networks settled with Trump in his defamation suits – they didn’t want Trump officials rifling through internal emails that would demonstrate, like Fauci’s diaries did, the way "mainstream" reporters conduct their business. Dig down several layers and you find there is no distance between most journalists and Democrats. There is an ongoing partnership. They "rig" every campaign. “Journalists need sources, and friendships aren’t uncommon,” wrote the Wall Street Journal editorial board about Fauci’s messages. “But the conformist media idolatry of Dr. Fauci was a way of shutting off debate over Covid policy. It also became a way for the press to attack President Trump in an election year.” These friendly sources can have their names on the record, when their weighty authority can be milked, or they can share their hot takes as anonymous “senior government officials.” It all depends on which concoction is needed in the “news” cycle. During the pandemic, Dr. Fauci was an integral cog in the Democrat messaging machine, and they love it the most when the partisans can be painted as nonpartisans, that a political activist like Fauci can be presented as the quintessential fact-based scientist and public servant. All of them wanted to use Covid to remove Trump from office, and they succeeded – for a time.