Just the Facts with Gerald Posner
Gerald Posner, an award-winning investigative journalist, gives an insider account of how he and his colleagues break major stories. He explains the methods used to uncover secret documents and protect sources from retribution or discovery. The podcast also features voiceovers of his wide-ranging Just the Facts Substack posts. These cover topics including gender wars, censorship, Big Pharma, and institutional corruption.
Episodes
Not Progressive Enough: The Scott Wiener Morality Tale
There is a viral video making its way across social media this week that every Democrat who cares about the future of the party should be required to watch. It runs about three minutes. It is not comfortable viewing.In it, Scott Wiener — California state senator, frontrunner for Nancy Pelosi’s congressional seat, gay Jewish progressive with one of the most consequential LGBTQ legislative records i
In California, Caution Is About to Become Malpractice
This is another in my occasional series on the pediatric trans industry.Imagine a 14-year-old walks into a therapist’s office and announces she has bipolar disorder. She read about it online, she says. The symptoms match. She wants an antipsychotic prescription medication.No competent therapist anywhere would write the prescription. The therapist would do what therapists are trained to do, explore
When Addiction Entered the House That OxyContin Built
There are moments in a long-running public scandal when history seems to write the coda itself.Last week, while much of the national press barely noticed, Joss Sackler, wife of former Purdue Pharma board member David Sackler, appeared in federal court in Miami and pleaded guilty to obstructing a federal grand jury investigation. She admitted deleting WhatsApp messages that would have shown she was
Why Our AI Autobiography has Some Publishers Spooked
This week a syndicated newspaper columnist wrote about one of our upcoming book projects, AI: An Autobiography, and treated it as what it is: a bold, strange, funny, unsettling experiment in letting a machine narrate its own life.At the very same time, Lois Whitman, the New York-Miami PR strategist who is leading the push to spotlight project, is hearing something very different in private from ed
Release the Epstein Files
What matters most at this moment is not the specific contents of the Epstein files, but the political and cultural momentum driving their release. I’ve spent years battling governments and institutions for transparency: the JFK and MLK assassination records, Argentina’s Nazi fugitive documents, the Vatican Bank’s World War II archives. One truth emerges every time: the harder governments fight to
"Klansmen in Keffiyehs"
University presidents last week finally said aloud what many Americans suspected: the pro-Palestinian uprisings that swept across campuses after Hamas’s October 7 attack were not spontaneous acts of youthful conscience but were well-coordinated and funded. “It’s more than a social contagion,” said Vanderbilt’s chancellor. “They’re organized networks as well.” Syracuse’s chancellor went further: “I
The IRS Is Imploding
Last week’s headline that President Trump asked Billy Long to resign—making him the seventh IRS commissioner to leave this year—masked a much deeper crisis. The Internal Revenue Service is facing its worst operational breakdown in modern history just as it must implement one of the most sweeping tax code overhauls in a generation. Charged with collecting $5 trillion a year, the agency has endured
Your Perfect Child, By Design
In 1933, the Third Reich passed the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases—a chilling attempt to control who was allowed to be born, rooted in pseudo-scientific notions of “racial purity” and Aryan superiority. Nazi medical schools taught students to worship genetic “perfection,” and had the tools of today’s genetic science existed then, it’s not hard to imagine how ruthlessl
America: Big Pharma’s ATM
The United States is home to just 5% of the world’s population—but we generate 75% of global pharmaceutical profits.That imbalance was at the heart of my Oxford Union debate last week.Now, there's a fresh example of how drug companies wring outsized returns from the U.S. market.Gilead Sciences, a California biotech giant, is best known for Truvada, its HIV prevention drug (PrEP), which brought in
Trust No One
My take on the enduring seductive power of conspiracies Get full access to Just the Facts with Gerald Posner at www.justthefacts.media/subscribe
"Trust No One"
Many people think I am a conspiracy debunker since I concluded in Case Closed, my 1993 reexamination of the JFK assassination, that Oswald alone had killed the president.Not quite.Not all conspiracy theories are equal. Although they have been around for millennia, just in my lifetime I have witnessed the unraveling of consequential conspiracies that exposed government lies about Vietnam, the power
Republicans Can Save Women's Sports
My latest WSJ OpEd went live this evening online and will be in the print edition tomorrow. Here it is in full for Just the Facts subscribers (note: The VoiceOver for this article is an AI automated voice)Protecting women’s sports should be at the top of the Trump administration’s to-do list. The issue gained national attention in 2022, when male swimmer Lia Thomas, who had been ranked 65th among
A Whistleblower Highlights the Hypocrisy of American Health Insurers
The brutal murder of UnitedHealth Group CEO, Brian Thompson, in the streets of Manhattan, has elicited widespread condemnation but also unleashed an online tsunami of celebratory memes and praise for the killer. The polarizing reaction has put a spotlight on the deep-seated animosity that many Americans harbor toward health insurance companies that often deny critical medical claims to protect pro
The Arrogance of Mark Zuckerberg
Meta has kept secret a disturbing flaw in its systems by which cybercriminals exploit Instagram accounts for illegal activities, including running up charges on stolen credit cards and selling nonexistent products. The criminals exploit a weakness in Meta security by creating and linking fraudulent Instagram accounts to randomly selected legitimate Facebook profiles. This enables the hackers to mo
The Great Bank Swindle
The World Bank somehow lost track of upwards of $41 billion to fight climate change, about 40% of all its climate funding over the past seven years. The stunning disclosure was made public last week following an audit by Oxfam, the left-leaning British NGO focused on fighting worldwide poverty.The amount of missing money “could be twice or 10 times more,” according to a World Bank insider who ask
“The Sin of Doing Real Journalism”
A whistleblower leaked to The Free Press an audio tape of a CBS news editorial meeting on Monday, October 7, in which senior executive Adrienne Roark admonished the CBS Mornings cohost, Tony Dokoupil, for his interview the previous week with author Ta-Nehisi Coates about his just published book, The Message.This episode should send shivers down the spine of every serious journalist. As Bari Weiss
Secret Earphones and Bad Moderators?
It did not take very long for conspiracy theories to start about why Trump had a bad debate night. One pro-Trump Twitter account with half a million followers posted last night, “It appears Kamala Harris was being coached by using earphones embedded in her earrings during the ABC presidential debate against President Trump.” Another pro-Trump X account posted that claim while the debate was underw
A Tabloid's Clickbait Spin on the JFK Files
The Washington Post published an article today by Kyle Melnick about Trump’s promise to release all the JFK assassination files and what those documents might disclose. It is thorough old-fashioned journalism, one of most balanced and informative pieces about the JFK files from a mainstream outlet this year.Melnick sets out the facts and includes interviews with me and Jefferson Morley, the editor
Shame of the Week Award, Episode 84
Many of our subscribers are familiar with yesterday’s disastrous landmark court ruling in Australia that women’s only spaces must admit men who identify as women. “[I]n its contemporary ordinary meaning, sex is changeable” concluded the trial judge, and “sex is not confined to being a biological concept.”This was a test case for whether women would remain a protected sex class. The answer is no. S
My Shame of the Week Award
[This post will be familiar to those on Twitter, where I have posted much of the below in a couple of long tweets that kicked off a lot of debate. At least it is getting people thinking about the consequences of what many at first think is a virtuous policy]My ‘shame of the week’ award goes to Wes Streeting, the UK Health Secretary. He said this past Wednesday that people who are racist to NHS st
“The Greatest Breach…I’ve Ever Seen”
This 10 minute attached video covers the issues I raised the other day in my article “A Dereliction of Duty? Problems in the Trump Shooting Deadline.” Smerconish lays out in the first half the latest information about the security lapses that preceded the shooting. Then we talk about what I conclude is “the greatest breach and dropping of the ball in terms of Secret Service security that I’ve eve
A Dereliction of Duty?
[Updates to this article are in double brackets, dated and in bold]. The VoiceOver for this article is only the original July 16 post] I wrote on X a couple of days ago decrying the rush to conspiracy theories about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. “How about waiting for the facts to emerge?” I asked. “There is a story behind the Trump assassination. I just don't know what it is yet.”I
"The Forgotten Lessons of Dallas 1963 and Memphis 1968"
[Sorry for a second Just the Facts on the same day. Long time subscribers know my regular pace is a new piece every couple of weeks or so. Below is a reprint of my Wall Street Journal OpEd. It is online now for those who have a WSJ account and want to comment there. It will be in the paper tomorrow]Incendiary political language has consequences. Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was sto
A conspiracy in the failed Trump assassination?
Take your pick of suspects. The Deep State, Jews, the Democratic Party, Islamists, Israel, maybe Putin? How about it was staged? Since I wrote Case Closed 31 years ago about the JFK assassination, I have been asked hundreds of times in interviews about whether the Kennedy conspiracies would have started quicker and been more florid had there been an internet and social media. I always said yes. Th
Pseudonyms for Safety
Everybody gives lip service to free speech. Until it runs counter to what they believe. It is not easy nowadays to have a reasonable discussion about topics such as gender ideology or the effect of the T on LGB without some zealots making life miserable for those with whom they disagree. Debate often quickly devolves into a verbal food fight. No wonder so many of the smartest people I know stay aw
My Resignation from the International Criminal Court
I joined the International Criminal Court in 2012. It was only ten years old and had been tarred by controversy over its credibility and independence. Still, I believed in its stated mission of providing a legal forum for bringing to justice those guilty of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression. Being an ICC member did not mean I agreed with everything it did.
Are Smartphones Starving Adolescent Brains?
There has been a lot of news recently about the deleterious effects on the developing brains of children and adolescents who spend too much time online. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt (@afterbabel) and many others who have studied it pin most of the blame for spiraling rates of poor adolescent and teen mental health — including depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation — on social media. “The
A Transgender Roe v. Wade?
Gender activists are hailing an 8-6 decision by the U.S. Fourth Circuit as a Transgender Roe v. Wade. Their celebration is, however, premature. While Kadel v. Folwell is undoubtedly a landmark ruling that the Equal Rights Amendment bars state health plans from excluding medical coverage for transgender surgical procedures, one of the dissenting circuit court justices called it “imperial judging at
Campus Insanity, Vol 83
Most readers are familiar with Sirius radio and CNN host Michael Smerconish. In an era of increasingly polarized politics, where the loudest voices on the far right and far left often garner the biggest ratings, Smerconish is an old-fashioned centrist, a lawyer by training who tries striking a reasoned balance on even the most contentious issues. Listeners to Smerconish filter him through their ow
Words Matter
The United States, European Union, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, are among several dozen countries that have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. The New York Times, Washington Post, PBS, and all three major television news outlets, ABC, CBS, and NBC, and other legacy media outlets, will not use the word terrorist to describe Hamas.The Black Panthers were milita
Mercedes Maoists
There has been a recent wave of comparisons between the massive late sixties and early seventies antiwar protests and today’s campus Israel-Palestinian demonstrations. While these parallels are largely imperfect, they share a common element: activist professors and radicalized teaching assistants can significantly intensify campus unrest.I experienced this first-hand growing up in San Francisco d
Orwell's Latest Doublethink
California has reaffirmed that convicted male sex predators who have declared themselves to be women can serve their sentences in all-female prisons. The state says it is following federal law by “expressly prohibit[ing] housing decisions based solely on an incarcerated person’s external genitalia.” Mishandling this fundamental common sense issue was a key factor in Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation l
Full Version: "The Frankenstein Files"
Many Just the Facts subscribers requested the full OpEd published in the NY Post, not simply a link to the paper. It is below in full. I have included a voice over for those who prefer audio. It will also be available as a Just the Facts podcast.Thanks to everyone for the overwhelmingly positive response.Secret files show how international group pushes shocking experimental gender surgery for mino
Who Put the Kids in Charge?
This is another in my occasional series on the trans industry.The United States has one of the world’s most progressive standards of gender affirming care for minors. It requires that professionals, including physicians, therapists, and teachers, must confirm the self-diagnosis of children and young teenagers who believe they are a different gender than their birth sex. The judgment of children ca
Weapons in the Wrong Hands. US Arms to Ukraine Diverted to Criminal Gangs?
An alarming report released Wednesday by the Defense Department Inspector General reveals that the U.S. has lost track of nearly all of the 40,000 sophisticated weapons sent to Ukraine’s front lines since February 2022.The redacted report underscores that the advanced technology and compact size of these untracked weapons — including more than $1 billion in kamikaze and switchblade drones, Javelin
A Brief End of Year Thanks from Just the Facts
Thank you to the 5000 loyal subscribers to Just the Facts. This Substack is somewhat unorthodox. It does not adhere to the typical model of focusing on a single subject. Some of you discovered my work from articles about OxyContin or Fentanyl, only to find the next piece discussing the dangers of puberty blockers for minors or the risks posed to free expression by increasing censorship. Just whe
Don’t Let The Sacklers Get Away With It
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments tomorrow morning about whether it should invalidate Purdue Pharma’s approved bankruptcy plan, the largest and most consequential in legal history. The elaborate $10 billion bankruptcy was approved in 2021 but is on hold at the request of the U.S. Trustee, the Department of Justice division that oversees bankruptcy cases. The question the Supreme Court mus
Let’s Annihilate Israel
There has been a lot of talk from the Biden administration and European allies since October 7 about the need for a two state solution. OK, let’s find out what the moderates in Gaza think about that. Ghazi Hamad is widely considered a Hamas moderate. He was a Deputy Foreign Minister in the Hamas government, and the chairman of the Border Crossing Authority in Gaza. He holds a veterinary medical d
Why Didn't One Presidential Candidate Stop Purdue Pharma's OxyContin Express in 2002?
The discussions at Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee will largely be about the absent Donald Trump and subjects important to Republican primary voters. Opinion polls list one of the top issues as the lethal opioid crisis, especially that fentanyl is now the #1 killer of Americans and is pouring over the southern border. The fentanyl epidemic, however, might not have existed
A Quick Thanks
Just the Facts reached 3,000 subscribers today. I am grateful to all of you. Some have been with me since the start and others subscribed only today. The growth has been slow and steady.One of the first bits of advice another writer offered when I set up my Substack was to stick to a single topic. “Carve out a niche on one subject and you will get a following fast,” he assured me. Those of you
Sensitivity Language Police Strike Again
There was an outcry recently over hundreds of changes made to Roald Dahl’s books and Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, all intended to make them “inclusive and accessible” through today’s progressive lens on issues such as gender, race, misogyny, weight, mental health, and violence. Author Salmon Rushdie condemned the publishers then for their “absurd censorship.” In a Substack I wrote last month a
How the Word Police affect the news you get
The World Obesity Federation issued a grim 232-page report earlier this month that predicted more than half the world’s population will be obese by 2035. Childhood obesity will more than double. Scorecards on 187 countries ranked each by their ability to address the epidemic. An independent advisory committee estimated the economic impact to the global economy will be $4.32 trillion in lost produc
ChatGPT tackles the JFK Assassination
Most of us have been deluged by prognosticators warning that the first widely available artificial-intelligence tool, ChatGPT, is either “a major threat to society’s well-being” or the start of an unchartered era in which machine intelligence will be “used for everything from customer service and sales to education and entertainment…. [and] will be able to hold more complex and nuanced conversatio
How did Sweden Become a Gangland Paradise?
Sweden passed a milestone this month, but the dubious achievement was mostly lost under a deluge of news and commentary about Chinese spy balloons and the war in Ukraine. Crime statistics from last year revealed that the nation that once had one of Europe’s lowest rates of gun violence was closing in fast on Croatia for the continent’s highest per capita rate of fatal shootings.Thanks for reading
The Assault on Freedom of Speech
Note: This is the first in an occasional series of short essays about the perils of what I call one think, a pernicious type of censorship in which voices and opinions that veer outside the guard rails of what is deemed “acceptable speech” are themselves banned, canceled, humiliated in the public square, and often branded as some form of bigotry.I made my first trip to London in 1981 to visit the
Are Treasure Hunters on the Brink of Finding Millions in Nazi Loot?
Last week’s headlines summed up the gist of a breaking story. The Netherland’s National Archives had put on public display a map that purported to show where German soldiers had in 1944 buried diamonds, gold, and jewelry stolen from a bank branch that had taken a direct bombing hit. The Germans hid their haul in four oversized munitions boxes they buried on the outskirts of the small town of Ommen
5 'Big' Stories of 2022 that Faded Away
Everyone will have their own favorite short list of the stories they think turned into nothing burgers. This is my subjective top five. They are stories I followed closely that fizzled away. Fellow journalists understand all too well that a piece that captures headlines might sometimes fade without any significant follow up. Sometimes there are no more developments and other times journalists are
