By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 23, 2026

An attorney for seven Dutch plaintiffs in a COVID-19 vaccine injury lawsuit against Bill Gates and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla accused Gates and others of

orchestrating the pandemic to help usher in the “Great Reset,” a global economic, political and social system promoted by the World Economic Forum.

During oral arguments Thursday, attorney Peter Stassen told a packed courtroom that the COVID-19 vaccines were akin to a bioweapon, developed as part of a broader global effort to strip democratic and individual rights.

Speaking outside the courthouse in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, Stassen said Thursday’s hearing “was about publicly telling what is happening in this courtroom and what is the real case. The real case is that COVID-19 was not a disease but was a project.”

He accused Gates and Bourla of participating in that project, which he said was coordinated and undemocratic. He also accused the defendants of using censorship and propaganda to hide their intentions while promoting the COVID-19 vaccines as “safe and effective.”

COVID-19 vaccines were developed and procured as military countermeasures, bypassing the standard development and approval pipeline for such products. By developing the shots as military countermeasures, they bypassed traditional safety regulations, leading to widespread injury, Stassen said.

Stassen said that while this is a civil case, he believes the defendants’ actions constitute serious criminal offenses that violate global treaties and the Nuremberg Code.

For their part, attorneys for the defendants “claimed the shots saved millions of lives and that they were safe and effective,” said Joseph Sansone, Ph.D., a psychotherapist, critic of the mRNA shots and one of the expert witnesses for the plaintiffs.

“They basically said, like a parrot, that all of Stassen’s accusations were either conspiracy theory or based on medical reports that are from people who are not neutral in this case,” said Ido Dijkstra, a Dutch journalist and the editor-in-chief of De Andere Krant, who attended the hearing.

Dutch attorney Meike Terhorst said the defense did not respond to Stassen’s assertions that COVID-19 was a project. “There was no response to that at all, nothing.”

Journalist Penny Marie, who has reported on the case, told The Defender that Stassen’s arguments “mirror what so many people worldwide say and have experienced and investigated.”

The defendants’ legal team did acknowledge that they were “touched” by the suffering of the vaccine-injured plaintiffs. Terhorst said the five living plaintiffs face “immense problems” with their health.

Dijkstra said the presiding judge on the three-judge panel appeared to “support the mainstream narrative,” but “gave the impression that she wanted to understand Stassen’s reasoning.”

Thursday’s hearing stemmed from a lawsuit filed in 2023 by seven people injured by COVID-19 vaccines — including two who have since died — against Gates, Bourla and 15 other defendants, including former Dutch prime minister and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the Dutch state, and several Dutch public health officials and journalists.

According to Dutch attorney Meike Terhorst, who is not connected to the case but attended the hearing, none of the defendants appeared in court.

A ruling is expected as early as December but may be delayed until February 2027.

Expert witnesses barred from testifying in person

During oral arguments, Stassen addressed the court’s refusal to allow his team’s expert witnesses to testify in person. Earlier this week, the court limited the witnesses to video statements presenting their arguments.

Defense attorneys attacked the credentials of some of the witnesses. For instance, they claimed that Sasha Latypova — a former pharmaceutical research and development executive — has only a bachelor’s degree and is unqualified to provide testimony on scientific and medical matters.

Latypova disputed the claims, telling those gathered outside the courthouse that she has a “graduate degree from Dartmouth College and 25 years of pharmaceutical R&D and regulatory experience” — including interacting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, European Medicines Agency and Japanese regulators “on behalf of my clients.”

Catherine Austin Fitts, founder and publisher of the Solari Report and another of the expert witnesses for the plaintiffs, told The Defender that Bourla’s attorneys questioned the credentials of another witness — Mike Yeadon, Ph.D. Fitts said she was “surprised” by their claims.

“Yeadon served as vice-president of Pfizer’s allergy and respiratory research unit and worked for many years at Pfizer. Does Pfizer make it a practice to staff the company with unqualified people in senior positions? Does this explain why Pfizer appointed a veterinarian to be the CEO?” Fitts asked, referring to Bourla.

Terhorst said it is “very strange” for Dutch courts to not allow oral testimony by plaintiffs’ witnesses, as otherwise, “it is not easy to substantiate your claims.”

Despite the limitation, Terhorst said the witnesses bolstered the plaintiffs’ case. “The case is important based on the evidence provided by key witnesses,” she said.

“I think we [gave] a very clear sign to the court that there can be not justice if the court is not willing to look further at this expert evidence, because you can come to a judgment based on truth and a real discussion between the parties,” Stassen said during the press conference.

Vaccine-injured were ‘misled’ about safety of COVID shots

In an interview with journalist Fiona Rose Diamond earlier this week, Stassen said the plaintiffs “felt misled” by the Dutch government and by those who promoted the COVID-19 shots in the media.

“They felt misled by the whole system … And they were misled because they were told that this was a safe and effective vaccine, and in fact, the only way out of [the] crisis,” Stassen said.

At Thursday’s press conference, Stassen added that the plaintiffs sued not just because of their injuries, but because “they want the truth.”

Fitts highlighted the significance of the case, noting that under the Dutch legal system, the vaccine-injured can file lawsuits in response to their injuries — contrasting this with legal restrictions the injured face in the U.S.

“The PREP Act has made it impossible for such lawsuits to be brought in the United States,” Fitts said, referring to the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act of 2005. Under the PREP Act, anyone who produces or administers emergency countermeasures, such as the COVID-19 shots, is shielded from legal liability.

Terhorst noted that the vaccine-injured in the Netherlands face other obstacles.

“Vaccine injury is not even recognized in the Netherlands,” she said. She noted that some vaccine-injured people briefly received treatment under public health programs that the Dutch state earmarked for long COVID patients. However, this treatment was later “terminated.”

Terhorst said lawyers for the Dutch state “said nothing” during the hearing about offering compensation to these victims, including the plaintiffs and their families.

This is one of several obstacles the plaintiffs have faced as this case has progressed. Last year, another attorney for the plaintiffs, Arno van Kessel, was arrested “with considerable force,” as part of a nationwide sweep by Dutch police against alleged members of a “sovereign citizen” movement with a “potential intent to use violence” against the Dutch state.

Terhorst said van Kessel spent seven months imprisoned in a high-security prison, lost his license to practice law, is not allowed to leave the country and was fitted with an ankle monitor — which was removed Thursday, in parallel with the hearing.

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This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

RT | October 23, 2026

‘Cambridge Analytica’ is by now a byword for the social media Wild West of 2016, when regulations were non-existent and unscrupulous brokers sold personal user data to advertisers and political operatives. RT explores the scandal that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg still can’t dodge.

On October 22, Meta was ordered by a New Mexico judge to pay $25 billion in civil penalties over the collection of personal data from 44 million Facebook users by Cambridge Analytica more than a decade earlier.

The judge concluded that Meta’s misconduct warranted a penalty exceeding $219 billion under state law, but reduced the amount to $25 billion, making it one of the largest fines ever imposed on an American corporation.

Meta, operating at the time as Facebook, knowingly and systematically deceived users about how it managed their personal data and allowed its harvesting by third-party companies like Cambridge Analytica. The jury also found Meta’s senior executive team knew of, and lied about, deceiving users about how it planned to investigate data-harvesting companies after the Cambridge Analytica scandal became public.

To understand how Meta ended up owing an eighth of its annual revenue in just one judgment, it’s necessary to go back to 2013, when Cambridge Analytica emerged from Britain’s shadowy private intelligence sector.

What was Cambridge Analytica?

Cambridge Analytica was founded in 2013 as a subsidiary of SCL Group, a London-based private intelligence firm that has provided data analytics and “behavioural analysis” services to the British Defense Ministry and Foreign Office.

Cambridge Analytica CEO and SCL Group Director Alexander Nix has admitted under oath that his companies worked with American and British intelligence agencies, provided psychological warfare training to several Western militaries, employed multiple staff with security clearances in the UK and US, and hired former Israeli spies.

SCL Group’s work for NATO, Israel, Ukraine, and other governments and militaries was extensive, and Cambridge Analytica drew on its parent company’s experience in military psyops to become one of the world’s most effective election influence operations, according to whistleblower Christopher Wylie. On the other hand, SCL insists that its military and political wings were separate entities. Whichever account is true, Cambridge Analytica had been hired by political candidates in 200 elections by 2018, according to company documents. These included parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic, India, and Italy, the Brexit referendum in the UK, and most infamously, the 2016 presidential election in the US.

What did Cambridge Analytica do in 2016?

Cambridge Analytica was paid nearly $6 million by then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign in the runup to the 2016 election. The company used its unprecedented access to Facebook user data to identify persuadable voters and potential donors, select effective markets for television ads, and target certain Hillary Clinton supporters for “deterrence” – adverts discouraging them from going to the polls on election day.

How did this become a scandal?

Cambridge Analytica did not break any laws to obtain this data. It was scraped from tens of millions of Facebook users who had, unbeknownst to themselves, given a third-party Facebook quiz application access to their messages, their profile data, and that of their friends.

Cambridge Analytica hired a Cambridge University professor, Aleksandr Kogan, to develop a personality quiz app, named ‘This is Your Digital Life’. Between 250,000 and 270,000 American Facebook users took the quiz in 2015, and by accessing their data, but crucially, under Facebook terms, accessing the data of all of their friends on the platform, Cambridge Analytica was able to compile detailed psychological profiles on roughly 87 million users.

Cambridge Analytica employee Christopher Wylie revealed the workings of the scheme to The Observer in 2018, telling the British newspaper that “we exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles, and built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis the entire company was built on.”

Was Cambridge Analytica the only data-scraper doing this?

“Facebook never cared,” Kogan told NBC News in 2018, explaining that “tens of thousands” of developers created apps like his quiz, and sold user data to companies like Cambridge Analytica. Among the developers were CubeYou, which used a “one-click personality test” app to gather information for commercial use, and LocalBlox, which scraped data from 48 million users, which it then sold to marketers.

AggregateIQ, Global Science Research, and Eunoia Technologies all used data gleaned by Kogan for political ends. However, long before these companies existed, Blue State Digital, an American political consultancy, surreptitiously harvested Facebook data, including friends’ data, for use by Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign.

Cambridge Analytica, however, had its work for the Trump campaign exposed at the height of the ‘Russiagate’ hoax, at a time when Democrats and liberal media outlets were convinced that Russia intervened in the election on behalf of Trump. Cambridge Analytica’s data-scraping dovetailed neatly into a narrative of “Facebook bots” and “Russian military hackers” working with the Trump campaign, and the company became a whipping boy for an industry that transcended partisan lines.

US Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee eventually investigated claims that Cambridge Analytica helped the Russian government target political ads at American voters, but both determined that these claims were untrue, and neither investigation found any proof of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Has Facebook been punished?

At the time that the information was collected, Facebook had stopped allowing third-party apps to access friends’ data. However, a loophole allowed apps active on the platform before this change to continue harvesting information through 2015. Within days of Wylie’s revelations hitting the headlines, SCL Group and Cambridge Analytica were suspended from Facebook. Two months later, both companies ceased operations, leaving Facebook to handle the fallout.

Facebook initially went into damage control mode, insisting that “People knowingly provided their information” to Kogan’s app, and that “everyone involved gave their consent.”

However, the US Federal Trade Commission determined that Facebook made its privacy settings deliberately opaque, spreading them out over 20 separate screens and opting users into sharing data with third-parties by default. Facebook settled with the FTC for $5 billion in 2019, setting the stage for a series of similar payouts in the following years.

In 2018, Zuckerberg told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that Facebook was aware that user data had been transferred from Kogan to Cambridge Analytica (this transfer was in breach of its policies) since 2015, but opted not to inform users. He said that Facebook asked Cambridge Analytica to delete the data, but never followed up and made sure the company did. “We considered it a closed case,” he told Congress.

The following year, the US Securities and Exchange Commission accused Facebook of misleading investors by presenting “the risk of misuse of user data as merely hypothetical,” when it knew since 2015 that “a third-party developer had actually misused Facebook user data.” Facebook settled the case with the SEC for $100 million.

In 2022, Meta settled a $725 million class-action lawsuit brought by a group of Facebook users, who alleged that the company violated privacy and consumer protection laws by misrepresenting its data-sharing laws and failing to protect their personal information.

Meta attempted to shut down further legal action over the Cambridge Analytica scandal this August, when it reached an $18 billion settlement with 51 attorneys general across US states, territories, and the District of Columbia. Although the cases concerned the addictive design of Meta’s platforms and their effect on children’s mental health, the settlement included a clause resolving a multistate investigation into Facebook’s sharing of user data with third parties “whether known or unknown,” including Cambridge Analytica.

Even if participating states were to discover new facts about the data sharing, they have now waived their right to sue Meta. New Mexico was one of two states that was not party to this agreement, hence the $25 billion penalty.

Did Cambridge Analytica get Trump elected?

Ten years after the fact, it remains unclear how prominent a role Cambridge Analytica played in Trump’s victory over Clinton. The Trump campaign’s use of Facebook and X (then called Twitter) is widely cited as instrumental in his win, but the campaign’s digital director, Brad Parscale, has since said that he stopped using the company’s data several months before election day, considering it inaccurate.

What about Brexit?

Cambridge Analytica worked with Nigel Farage’s Leave.EU organization in late 2015 and early 2016, and carried out some preliminary data analysis for the campaign. However, the data was never used, and the UK Information Commissioner’s (ICO) office concluded in 2020 that the company had no impact on the referendum. As in the US, the ICO found no links between Cambridge Analytica and Russia, and no evidence that Russia interfered in the vote.

Is Zuckerberg in the clear?

The $25 billion judgement handed down on October 22 may be the largest fine ever imposed on Meta, but it does not mark the end of Zuckerberg’s legal woes. In addition to a Washington DC lawsuit holding him personally responsible for the Cambridge Analytica debacle, Zuckerberg’s company is being sued by investors in California over Facebook’s alleged efforts to conceal the misuse of user data by the company.

Meta will likely settle the latter case, just as it did with the similar SEC case in 2019. However, should Zuckerberg fight the lawsuit, he could find himself in the dock, as the plaintiffs have sought recorded depositions from him, former COO Sheryl Sandberg, and former CFO David Wehner – all of whom could be forced to shed more light on just how much Facebook knew about the scandal, and when.

By Glenn Diesen | October 23, 2026

The very public execution of my professorship and reputation continues in Norway. Today’s media article about me makes three claims that are misleading and/or false.

1) The article dismisses my claim that my research is being criminalized as the journalists merely cite the dismissive comments from the university – no arguments are apparently required.

It is not possible for an academic anymore to analyse the policies of rival powers by assessing their security concerns, as it will be smeared by the government, the government’s NGOs and the media as “legitimizing” the enemy and supporting their narratives. The current Defence Minister singled me out with the accusation of spreading propaganda and criticised two podcasters for even speaking with me (as I have already been cancelled by the media in Norway). How was this accusation by the Defence Minister substantiated? I had argued that NATO expansion triggered the war in Ukraine, which the Defence Minister denounced as dangerous “Russian propaganda”, with no need to substantiate his vile accusation. I can cite a sea of evidence and also refer to statements by American and European political leaders, ambassadors, intelligence chiefs, and others to make my case. However, the purpose is not to engage in debate, but to smear, censor, and cancel. By going after an individual academic for challenging official truths, the government has already claimed a monopoly on the truth. Academics should have their arguments scrutinised and criticised, but these are severe personal attacks from the government without the possibility of even defending myself. How is this not criminalising the research of an academic?

I cannot even speak at any events in Norway without the event being cancelled. The last event I agreed to speak at was because I shared the stage with the former CIA officer John Kiriakou. A newspaper had the event at a church cancelled, and when the backup location did not also cancel, the journalist simply printed in the paper that it had been cancelled so people would not show up. Is this normal? I must use my allotted holiday days to attend conferences because any event I attend can be presented as “controversial,” and then the NGOs and journalists will go after the reputation of the university. Is this normal? Every newspaper article about me merely refers to me as “controversial” or “pro-Russian” without ever assigning meaning to these labels or presenting my argument.

I have argued, much like former CIA director Burns, that if the West attempts to pull Ukraine into the NATO orbit, then there would be war and Ukraine would be destroyed. This is considered a “pro-Russian” argument. Arguing that we should respect the will of most Ukrainians who want negotiations to end the war is also considered a “pro-Russian” argument, while in contrast, boycotting diplomacy, deporting Ukrainian refugees, and calling for the conscription of Ukrainian women is “pro-Ukrainian”.

2) To avoid addressing any of my arguments, the journalists go on to uncritically cite personal attacks against me, pointing out that I have been called a propagandist by the Norwegian Helsinki Committee. This is a “non-governmental organisation” financed by the government and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which was set up by Reagan and the CIA director in 1983 to manipulate the civil society of other states. The Norwegian Helsinki Committee has been relentless in its smears on social media to have me fired, writing hit pieces in the media, pushing to cancel my speaking events, writing a letter to my university, and even posting a picture of my house on social media. This is a governmental “human rights organisation” that cites human rights concerns to build the case for war.

3) Lastly, to further avoid addressing my actual arguments, they simply cite the fact that arguments I made at a debate last year have been “wholly or partially debunked” by a fact-check. The state-run media (NRK) invited the state-run military defence institute (FFI) to fact-check three of my claims. What claims did they “debunk”?

My first claim was that only 20% of Ukrainians wanted NATO membership between 1991 and the regime change in February 2014. The fact-checker argued that the number went up by the middle of 2014 (after Russia responded by seizing Crimea), which is a completely meaningless comment intended to muddy the waters, as my argument was about the previous era.

My second claim was that Zelensky had argued in an interview with The Economist in March 2022 that there were some Western countries that would like a long war with Russia to weaken a strategic rival, even if it would result in the destruction of Ukraine. The fact-checker argued that not all Western countries wanted a long war and that it was not an official policy. I never claimed it was an official policy, as it was primarily the US and UK pushing for a long war.

My third claim was that the US and UK sabotaged the Istanbul peace agreement in April 2022. The fact-checker claimed this was incorrect and suggested that it could only be based on one statement by David Arakhamia. The fact-checker did not want to mention that both mediators also confirmed it: Turkey’s foreign minister and the former Israeli prime minister both said that Russia and Ukraine were close to a deal, but the US and UK saw an opportunity to weaken Russia by fighting with Ukrainians. Zelensky’s former adviser Arestovych confirmed it, and the Ukrainian ambassador Chaly, who participated in the negotiations, confirmed that Putin was willing to do almost anything to end the war. The former head of the German armed forces confirmed that Boris Johnson sabotaged it, and Boris Johnson himself wrote articles warning about a “bad peace” and arguing for “strategic patience.” I am being fact-checked by war propagandists.

Unfortunately, none of my arguments matter because in Norway there is no debate and no interest in any arguments. Reality means nothing anymore as war narratives must be defended against inconvenient truths. I used to be naïve and think that the endless smears were caused by misunderstanding, as I had simply not been able to convey my arguments properly. However, the endless articles with smears and labels are deliberate lies and deceptions.