A California doctor known as a leading purveyor of coronavirus misinformation pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge on Thursday for joining the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol last year.
Dr. Simone Gold, founder of the anti-vaccine group America’s Frontline Doctors, entered the plea to a charge of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds. The conviction carries a maximum sentence of six months in jail.
As part of her guilty plea, Gold acknowledged she and her co-defendant John Strand, while outside the building, were directly in front of a police officer who was assaulted and dragged to the ground. The doctor also acknowledged then entering the building and giving a speech in Statuary Hall about her opposition to coronavirus vaccine mandates and lockdowns imposed by the government, as Strand filmed her comments.
Gold, 56, of Beverly Hills, later told The Washington Post that she followed a crowd into the Capitol, didn’t witness any violence and didn’t think she was breaking any laws.
“I can certainly speak to the place that I was, and it most emphatically was not a riot,” she said. “Where I was, was incredibly peaceful.”
Gold, who has over 400,000 followers on Twitter, is an outspoken figure in the anti-vaccine movement in the U.S. and is known for spreading misinformation about COVID-19. She has promoted the use of unproven and potentially dangerous drugs, including the anti-worm treatment ivermectin and the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, as coronavirus treatments.
Dr. Irwin Redlener, founding director of Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, said Gold has had “a starring role” in the anti-vaccine propaganda movement, using her medical credentials and platform to “undermine science” and politically pollute efforts to tamp down the pandemic.
“In some ways, her extremist voice seems to weigh with greater impact than the vast, vast majority of doctors who are saying, ‘Of course you need to take the vaccine. It will save your life,’” Redlener said.
Rep. James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat who chairs a special House subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis, announced in October that the panel would investigate online groups spreading COVID-19 misinformation and promoting potentially hazardous treatments. In a letter addressed to Gold, Clyburn cited news reports that her group and its partners have generated millions of dollars in revenue by selling hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin and offering online COVID-19 consultations.
“While (America’s Frontline Doctors) is not alone in providing these services, it is reportedly among the top purveyors of questionable treatments nationwide and a prominent source of misinformation related to the coronavirus,” Clyburn wrote.
Gold told the Post that she had traveled to Washington to speak at a “Rally for Health Freedom” on the East side of the Capitol on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021. She said she was worried that photos of her inside the Capitol would distract from her advocacy work.
“I do regret being there,” she said less than a week after the siege.
The Medical Board of California’s database shows Gold remains licensed to practice medicine in the state and has a Beverly Hills office address.
Strand, the communications director for America’s Frontline Doctors, told the Post that he was at the Capitol to help Gold and “ensure her safety.” He has pleaded not guilty to the charges again him. A trial for Strand is scheduled to start on July 18.
Gold’s sentencing is scheduled for June 16.
More than 750 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot. Over 220 of them have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors, and more than 100 riot defendants have been sentenced.
(AP)
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6 Responses
THE ONE SPREADING “MISINFORMATION” IS THE AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE.
If this is an attempt by YWN to present neutral reporting on this significant judgment that concerns freedoms for all Americans and for others across the globe, it is lacking.
The capitol insurgence has been widely documented from multiple perspectives, many of which show FBI involvement in setting up significant aspects of the protests, lack of police oversight, and much, much more that has been blatantly ignored by the current democratic adminstration, and feeds into degrees of overreaction on the perception of the public.
In times of tyranny – and the history of ‘plandemic’ lockdowns, mask mandates, and experimental ‘c19 vaccines’ coercion, are not far from this horror, it should be expected that many will seek to take matters into their own hands more than they usually would. Dr. Gold is on record as questioning her judgment in this situation.
However, an even bigger issue than the flaunting of irrational, leftist jurisprudence by these hearings and this recent decision is the matter of deciding the deceitful term of ‘misinformation’ against a highly credentialed medical doctor for whom we truly owe a steep indebtedness. Dr. Gold and others at Front Line Doctors (search it), have done a tremendous service to people throughout the US and beyond for defending healing protocols undermined by the BigPharma narrative, and by helping maintain their availability.
Yidden, don’t leave your heads in the sand – there is a war for you minds going on – don’t fall asleep at the wheel. Follow the money behind all the taxpayer paid medical advice and manipulated science – it doesn’t add up except for the experimental vaccine patent holders and their allied cronies. Wake up and defend your rights, especially to bodily autonomy.
The AP sheker in this piece is both heavy-handed and disgusting.
“A California doctor known as a leading purveyor of coronavirus misinformation…”
To whom is she known as that? And who decided that her position is “misinformation”? What exactly is “misinformation” about this doctor’s position on this subject?
“Gold…is known for spreading misinformation about COVID-19. She has promoted the use of unproven and potentially dangerous drugs, including the anti-worm treatment ivermectin and the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, as coronavirus treatments.”
So that’s what they claim is misinformation?
The human version of Ivermectin has already been proven, in multiple instances, and also happens to be one of the safest drugs of all time, not “unproven and dangerous” HCQ, too, is generally well-tolerated.
Besides, every drug is “potentially dangerous”. So are mere water and air, for that matter. So the implication that doctors should not (be allowed to) try Ivermectin or HZQ/Zinc, even if that means that the patient would then have no other medical hope, is absurd and evil.
Finally, the sleazy AP propagandists can’t admit that a doctor always has the right to prescribe an existing drug “off-label”. (Always, that is, except for Covid, when politicians decided that Covid must not be allowed to be treated off-label with these time-tested and safe drugs.)
Not to mention, the Covid shots are far greater unknowns than are HCQ and Ivermectin. Yet they pushed the Covid shots on everyone, even going to the extent of firing people from their jobs if they wouldn’t take that jab. But Ivermectin and HCQ/Zinc are a no?
fact check : “and promoting potentially hazardous treatments.” Ni, Ivermectin is not hazardous, it’s been millions of times on humans as an anti parasite medicine, it’s just being repurposed for covid.
typo “Ni “should be “No”
The reason her “extremist voice” weighs with greater impact than the vast, vast majority of doctors is because we’ve all had enough of the lies, the gaavah and the narrow-minded approach of that vast, vast majority of doctors, who are responsible for countless deaths and the destruction of the economy and democracy all over the world