The radicalisation of Bev Turner

#HARTleaks shows the role the HART group had in taking the GB News presenter down the rabbit hole

Bev Turner is a TV and radio presenter who prior to the pandemic, the closest she had come to controversy was accusing several former employers of sexism. The pandemic appears to have radicalised Turner, it appears she bought entirely into the counter narrative of the disinformation ecosystem as she moved from anti-lockdown into anti-vax messaging and through to QAnon level conspiracy theories.

Turner first began to look to HART for her expert advice on 24 March 2021, via Charlotte Gracias who she was already in contact with.

Gracias is herself completely embedded in conspiracy culture.

A keen fan of chemtrails conspiracies, Gracias has claimed governments were using cloud seeding to flood farms and drive farmers out of business so they can bring in "vaccinated mRNA food.” She also thought the weather was being manipulated for use as a weapon, and that floods in Dubai were a deliberate weather attack in retaliation for their "relationship with Iran".

A Putin fan, when Russia invaded Russia Gracias claimed extremist groups from across the world were “converging in Ukraine” to support the “Neo-Nazis”.

Bev Turner demonstrates the same thinking seen repeatedly in the HARTleaks, beginning with a premise eg, children shouldn't be vaccinated against covid, before then seeking out “evidence” to validate her view.

HART were quick to provide Turner with a range of resources they'd written.

Besides being a HART member Liz Evans was on the board of the European chapter of RFK Jr's anti-vax Children’s Health Defense, and founded the UK Medical Freedom Alliance.

1 June, as a guest on ITV's This Morning show Turner sparked controversy when she urged younger people to refuse the vaccine when offered it, claiming there were no benefits. The confrontational outburst led to her being banned from the programme.

By July Covid19Assembly were preparing their legal challenge against MHRA approval for 12-15 year olds and Bev Turner was to be the campaign’s public face. 22 July Stephen Jackson of Law or Fiction sought HART's help in providing risk comparisons likely to increase parental vax hesitancy.

Alongside Francis Hoar (Pandata, Covid19Assembly), Jackson was part of the contrarian legal group that mounted legal challenges on most elements of the pandemic response.

If you haven't read previous articles covering Covid19Assembly, it's a combination of the usual characters.

Founded in August 2020, all of Covid19Assembly's contrarian experts were members of Pandata, founded in April 2020 in South Africa by Nick Hudson, who now claims there was no pandemic.

Legal challenge against MHRA approval for children

Covid19Assembly began crowdfunding to challenge MHRA approval for children's covid vaccines on 23 July 2021, raising £113,216 in total.

2nd August the first legal letter was sent regarding judicial review of the MHRA decision. This is how Covid19Assembly described their expert team.

“We have assembled a world class group of experts doctors and scientists, including renowned Canadian pathologist Dr Roger Hodkinson MA, MB, FRCPC, FCAP, the US specialist in mRNA vaccines Dr Robert Malone MD, MS, South African-born medical doctor and research design analyst residing in the UK Dr Tess Lawrie MBBCh DFSRH PhD, British paediatrician Dr Ros Jones MD FRCPCH and many others. We now need, without delay, to fund preparations for Judicial Review of the MHRA’s decision.”

All the experts were linked to Pandata, Lawrie and Jones were part of the HART working group.

The spurious legal challenge was destined to fail, but every step of the legal challenge was an opportunity to promote disinformation and call for further donations.

2 September the Injunction application was made to court. The QCs were Jacqueline Perry and Francis Hoar.

7 September, Courts reject need for an urgent hearing.

10 September, courts reject appeal

15 September, Covid19Assembly applied a third time

17 September, Courts refused to allow Covid19Assembly into court before 28 September, this was appealed.

20 September Court of Appeal lists hearing for 22 September.

24 September appeal knocks back date to 28 September.

1 October, Court adjourned to a further hearing where it was refused.

21 October, application renewed to be heard by a different judge.

19 November, Covid19Assembly announce they have changed the application to focus on the CMO's decision to approve vaccines for 12-15 year olds.

Most reading this update will be aware of concerns for a significant increase in mortality rates in young people since the Covid-19 vaccines have been rolled out to them. The Claimants continue to seek from the Office for National Statistics to disclose anonymous information to show for each death recent whether an individual had had none, one or two doses and the number of days after which death followed.

This is the sort of information which the government and JCVI would be thought to be "clamouring for", to use a phrase of the Judge at the last hearing in this matter. However, for reasons unknown, the Court has so far not responded to the Claimant's application for an order for disclosure.

Covid19Assembly also began legal proceedings against the roll out of covid vaccines for 5-11 year olds, although these had been approved directly by the JCVI, as had a second dose for 12-15 year olds.

The back and forth with the courts on these cases continues until July 2022 with both cases being thrown out in the same week. On 31 July, Covid19Assembly announced it would not be appealing again.

In their statement Covid19Assembly didn't consider the possibility their efforts failed because their crack team of experts were actually crackpots.

When the Courts will permit no challenge to a government response (because it is supported by government-appointed-experts for a government-declared pandemic and government-declared emergency), and when those government-appointed experts are elevated beyond scrutiny, a huge gap – a chasm - in protection of the citizens against government is created. The temptation of government ministers to declare further pandemics and emergencies is obvious and will surely not be resisted. The government hardly needs to legislate to avoid judicial interference via judicial review proceedings when the Court chooses to shut its eyes and close its ears.

These battles may not have ended as we wished, but others will be fought. Perhaps the most pressing battle is in the Court of public opinion. The Courts do not exist in a political vacuum and when media reporting of public opinion is forced to shift, we may expect the Courts to follow.

Dissolved

However, what Covid19Assembly failed to mention on their website or crowd funding page was that they had ceased to legally exist in April. Having been iIncorporated on 05/11/20, and never having filed any accounts, they were struck off by Companies House and dissolved on 19/04/22. Covid19 Assembly later claimed it let itself be struck off by Companies House because the group had "accidentally registered" itself as the wrong type of company, and had "decided to do it properly".

Covid19 Assembly became a trading name of Global Crisis Research Limited. But having said they were going to "do it properly" this time, the same thing has now happened to the Covid19 Assembly's successor company, Global Crisis Research Limited. It was…

Incorporated on 15/07/21. Never filed any accounts. Struck off and dissolved on 29/08/23.

Covid19Assembly had been collecting donations to conduct an audit of covid deaths certificates, the audit hadn’t been conducted when Covid19Assembly dissolved. Toby Young said the funding collected had been transfered to the new, now dissolved company.

This was a reoccurring trend for Covid19Assembly and Global Crisis Research director David Fleming, over a 25 year period he had set up over a dozen companies that had been dissolved without ever publishing a single account.

Meanwhile Fleming had already registered yet another company, Not Our Future, on 22/08/22. This publicly launched a few months later, promising to "halt the Great Reset". Signatories included a who's who of conspiracy theorists and covid contrarians.

In November 2022 a few months after Covid19Assembly ended its legal challenges, Bev Turner was rewarded with her own show Bev Turner Today on GB News. From a cast that contains many tinfoil hats, Turner has become one of the channel's most outrageous conspiracy theorists examples include referring to heatwaves as weather fear porn and climate lockdown, and suggesting covid had been designed to be milder in certain ethnicities such as Ashkenazi Jews.

GB News has recently given Turner her own Washington based show.