Conspiracies Are Common & Often Prosecuted

Overcoming the shallow knuckleheaded, cliché'd conception of “conspiracy theories.”

The greatest trick that powerful interest groups ever pulled was convincing the world that everyone who detects and reports their activities is a conspiracy theorist.

Only the naivest consumer of mainstream news reporting would fail to recognize that powerful interest groups in the military, financial, and bio-pharmaceutical industries work in concert to further their interests. Their activities cross the line into conspiracy when they commit fraud or other crimes to advance their interests. The term “conspiracy theory” suggests the feverish imaginings of a crackpot mind. This ignores the fact that the United States government prosecutes the crime of conspiracy all the time. As one prominent defense attorney described this reality:

Any time the government believes that it can allege that two or more individuals were a part of a common agreement to commit the same crime, they will include a charge of conspiracy into the indictment. There is no requirement that all of the members of the conspiracy even know about each other, or even know each other personally.

A person may be charged with conspiracy to commit a crime even if he doesn’t know all of the details of the crime. When COVID-19 arrived, the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex vigorously and exclusively pursued the vaccine solution instead of the early treatment solution. In order to realize their ambition, multiple actors simultaneously waged a propaganda campaign against hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and other repurposed drugs.

It’s likely that only a relatively small number of these actors knew they were making fraudulent claims about the generic, repurposed drugs, and knew they were taking action to impede access to these drugs based on fraudulent claims. These actors were the conspirators. Countless others unwittingly played roles in the conspiracy because they themselves believed the propaganda.

Conspiracies are common and are frequently prosecuted. To understand this, take a look at the Federal Conspiracy Statute — that is,18 U.S.C. § 371, which allows federal prosecutors to charge individuals not merely for committing a crime, but for agreeing with others to commit one.

The statute has become an important instrument of federal law enforcement, particularly in cases involving organized crime, public corruption, financial fraud, and conspiracies to obstruct government functions.

The statute, whose antecedents date to 1867, establishes two principal forms of criminal conspiracy. The first involves an agreement between two or more persons to commit an offense against the United States. The second, commonly called the defraud clause, concerns an agreement to defraud the United States or one of its agencies. The Supreme Court has interpreted this latter provision to encompass certain dishonest schemes designed to obstruct or impair legitimate governmental functions, even when the government suffers no direct financial loss.

Conspiracy is a frequently used category of federal criminal charges. Among the most important are:

• 18 U.S.C. § 371: General conspiracy to commit a federal offense or defraud the United States.

• 21 U.S.C. § 846: Conspiracy to commit federal drug offenses.

• 18 U.S.C. § 1349: Conspiracy to commit mail fraud, wire fraud, or other specified fraud offenses.

• 18 U.S.C. § 1956(h): Money-laundering conspiracy.

• 18 U.S.C. § 1962(d): Racketeering conspiracy under RICO.

Conspiracy charges are especially useful to prosecutors because they permit the government to address collective criminal activity without proving that every defendant personally committed the underlying offense. They can also create considerable negotiating leverage in plea discussions. Indeed, federal white-collar practitioners have observed that § 371 is frequently employed in plea agreements because its five-year maximum can be substantially lower than the penalties associated with the underlying offenses.

Anytime one of my readers is tempted to characterize my investigative work as “conspiracy theory,” he should consider that the federal government prosecutes conspiracies all the time.

A primary area of my investigative work is how US government agencies have been corrupted by powerful interests who conspire to pursue their objectives at the expense of the citizenry. The most powerful among them do not break the law—they lobby Congress to change to law to serve their interests. The PREP Act is a highly conspicuous example of this.