Exclusive: Ex-CIA Official Warns America ‘Surrendering Liberty Will Not Cure Coronavirus’

In an interview with Geller Report, Clare Lopez — CIA operations officer for 20 years and founder of Lopez Liberty, LLC — discusses the dangers of letting the Democrats run wild with power-grabs in response to Coronavirus.

“So, I am not concerned about Trump. But the inclination of a people in crisis can tend towards granting the central government powers that it would not otherwise,” stated Lopez, in response to multiplying conservative fears that emergency powers might be abused by the Democrats. 

“I do think there are concerns. The concerns are very valid,” Lopez stated on a phone call with Geller Report, Saturday, Mar. 28, 2020. 

With regard to conservative fears that the Democrats might leverage Coronavirus to justify using FEMA’s “continuity of government” powers, Lopez does not completely discount. 

In her column for Newsmax.com last week, Lopez highlighted lessons from the Obama years vis-a-vis “wasting” a crisis. “‘You never want to let a serious crisis go to waste,’ was the war cry of Rahm Emanuel, another socialist progressive … which is about the collapse of society and seizure of power,” Lopez argues.  [Emphasis added] 

But while the potential for abuse by leftists does exist, Lopez dismisses as paranoid various hypothetical scenarios involving mass citizen arrests or de facto “indefinite detention” using quarantine provisions. 

“That’s not going to happen. We need to calm people down, here. What looks like will happen is that certain hot-spots, New York City, New Orleans, Chicago, maybe Detroit, might be under emergency quarantine orders,” states Lopez. 

“Those [quarantine orders] typically would be issued by the state, the governor, and the governor would have the authority to call up the national guard to prevent looting and preserve public order.”

“But nobody’s going to round anybody up and throw them into detention centers,” Lopez contends, suggesting fears of the kind described are unfounded.

“Let’s knock that idea out completely, from the start. People are stuck at home, they’re spending way too much time on social media and they’re going bonkers.”

Her denunciation of right-wing paranoia notwithstanding, Lopez is definitely not suggesting we dismiss the reality of opportunistic power-grabs by Democrats under the guise of fighting Coronavirus.

In her column for Newsmax.com, Lopez writes:

“We need our government’s help in many ways right now, but government is not the solution. It’s there to help, not to take advantage of this crisis to grow the federal, state, or local bureaucracy even larger. …

“We must not surrender our own individual liberty so much that Bolshevik Bernie loses the race for president, but that we lose the Republic.”

Lopez even gives examples of COVID19-related abuses of power that should be unanimously condemned:

“ … —When we see the Democratic/Marxist Mayor of New Orleans, LaToya Cantrell, sign an order banning the sale and/or transportation of firearms in New Orleans, we must know this is an unconstitutional act.

“—When the Mayor of Champaign, Illinois Mayor Deborah Frank Feinen signs an Executive Order banning all public assembly as well as the sale or purchase of any guns or ammunition, and claiming the right to seize private property, we must know this is a direct violation of the U.S. Constitution.

“—When New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio declares the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic is reason for the federal government to nationalize “crucial factories and industries,” we must know we are looking down the barrel of fascism. …”

Lopez further suggests that it’s up to conservatives to shut down the “feedback loop of fear.” Stop giving Democrat-run corporate media like MSNBC openly promoting “forced quarantines” power over the narrative and our lives, Lopez argues. 

“Turn it off,” Lopez says. “Turn off those channels, like MSNBC. This is not where Trump is going, this is not where the task force is going. They’re just not. So play Scrabble, get out a board game. Turn off those negative feedback loops,” she counsels. 

Lopez argues that American citizens generally and policymakers, should be way more focused on instituting “sunset dates” for the emergency powers used during the Coronavirus crisis.

“The important thing is that, whatever these extraordinary powers are ceded by the citizenry … needs to have a very clear sunset date on it.”

“Sunset dates like this will answer the question, ‘When exactly is the emergency over?’ And at that point, those powers ceded, need to be returned to the people,” she argues forcefully.

With regard to Pres. Trump’s disturbing warning at last week’s press conference that extending economic inactivity and lock-downs much longer will result in “death,” Lopez sides with the president.

Trump originally told reporters:

“We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself. … 

“We can’t do that. There’s a tremendous cost to our country. You have 160 million jobs in this country now, the most ever by far. 

“The number of jobs, almost 160 million. So, we can’t turn that off and think it’s going to be wonderful.”

Trump continued: 

“There will be tremendous repercussions, there will be tremendous death from that, death. You’re talking about death, probably more death from that than anything that we’re talking about with respect to the virus.” [Emphasis added]

“They should be able to get back to work,” Lopez contends, mirroring the president’s sentiments. “I agree more with the president, that within a certain period of time, probably over the next couple of weeks, that there’s a lot of the country that is really going to be perfectly safe and important to open back up for business.”

Lopez clarifies that re-opening businesses is definitely not safe in all areas of the United States. 

“Certain critical hot-spots, maybe even certain states, will need to remain quarantined, stay-at-home orders will need to be enforced for those areas.”

“But what Trump is saying, is that selectively, in a lot of the rest of the country … why should they remain shut down?” Lopez asks rhetorically.

“States that are critical to maintaining the economy and ensuring the economy overall in critical sectors like energy, production and manufacturing that they don’t collapse beyond the potential of bringing them back — they should be able to get back to work,” Lopez remarks forcefully.

Other notable conservative pundits are in agreement with Lopez’s outlook on the dangers of government expansion amidst Coronavirus response, like Andrew McCarthy’s insightful post at National Review. 

McCarthy’s article challenges the fallacious assumption that more economic activity is somehow synonymous with more infection / death to Coronavirus.

“It is not sustainable for government to combat the disease by ordering communal and commercial activity to cease, then trying to compensate increasingly destitute citizens by borrowing and printing money to throw at them,” McCarthy declares.

MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD: A DIFFERENT KIND OF “VIRUS.”

Geller Report’s longstanding information war against radical Islam is without equal in public discourse today.

Lopez is one of the former CIA professionals who used to train American agents to fight Islamic radicals overseas and at home.

Tragically, Lopez was also one of the martyrs of the Obama administration’s so-called, “Great Purge,” which gave the Muslim Brotherhood huge influence over U.S. foreign policy.

Bearing all that in mind, we asked Lopez the following two questions:

1. What, if anything, changed in terms of Islamic influence over White House policy under Pres. Trump?
2. Were officers of the Muslim Brotherhood removed from their positions of influence in U.S. government and normalcy restored?

While her overall view of Pres. Trump is definitely one of praise and affirmation, Lopez did raise serious concerns about structurally pervasive issues of Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist influence over U.S. foreign policy. 

“The Trump admin has a complete blind spot as it regards the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States,” Lopez states. “It’s a mixed bag. Domestically, Trump has nobody who can advise him on the Islamic threats to the country — that’s a gaping whole,” she continues.

“Training has not resumed, what we call the ‘Great Purge’ of a lot of that training, the instructors, the experts, their course material, has not been reversed.” 

“You’ve got Vice Pres. Pence bringing the top Muslim Brotherhood official in America to the White House, Osama Jamal, general secretary of the United States Council for Muslim Organizations (USCMO),” she says, adding, “Pence is a good, good man, and I’m sure he has no idea what he just did, or who Jamal is.”

“The influence is so powerful, so endemic, that there’s no good advice, no accurate information getting to the president, the vice president, or the National Security Council,” Lopez alarmingly concludes.

Despite the fact Barack Obama is no longer president, Lopez says that things are about the same, or worse, citing active “recruitment” efforts by the Muslim Brotherhood. 

“The Muslim Brotherhood has made inroads, but they also recruits, literally recruits within the US Government, in particular, the State Dept., e.g. Sam Brownback, who is a fully recruited asset of the Muslim Brotherhood,” states Lopez.