The Free Press Foundation announced that Garrett Ziegler has been awarded the Press Freedom Prize, 2024 “in recognition of your courage, investigative resourcefulness and dedication to public service in the spirit of the American Free Press."
Mr. Ziegler is the Founder of the Marco Polo research group that published the encyclopedic Report on the Biden Laptop that provided original reference material for hundreds of international media reports on one of the top news stories of geopolitical significance in this era.
"Joe Biden is still officially the president of the United States, but everyone now speaks of him in the past tense," said Larry Ward, president of Free Press Foundation. "Garrett Ziegler's dogged research brought to light and documented disturbing evidence that was denied to American voters in 2020 by the actions of key U.S. intelligence and security officials and that call into question his qualifications for high office."
Noted Robert Morton, CEO of Free Press Foundation: "Garrett Ziegler is not a journalist, but he and his team have done the 'shoe leather' investigative reporting that today's 'news professionals' did not."
Morton added: "Most corporate and social media platforms are not interested in major influence scandals tying a sitting Democrat president with foreign powers including communist China that regards the United States as its number one enemy. Privately-owned independent media in many cases lack the funding to conduct independent reporting and are relegated to aggregating reports that are far from being the whole story. Garrett Ziegler raised the funding and recruited the investigators not to make money but to simply nail down one of the most important news stories in American history."
In his introduction to the volume, written two years ago, Ziegler states the following:
For the past thirteen months, Marco Polo — a nonprofit research group comprised of six men from across the U.S. dedicated to exposing corruption & blackmail — has been writing a comprehensive Report on the Biden Laptop & the crimes thereon. Our motives & budget were transparent; Thousands of Americans financed its production. We neither sought nor received any institutional/corporate backing. ....
It has been sent to members of the U.S. House & U.S. Senate, U.S. attorneys for the jurisdictions in which the Bidens (& their associates) committed crimes, state & local law enforcement and — for good measure — every contact on the Biden Laptop, which includes all of Hunter's classmates at Archmere Academy & a portion of the current White House staff.
The Report is simple but dense: 640+ pages. 2,020 footnotes. Broken up neatly into seven sections with the biggest focus being Business-Related Crimes. We believe that it is the deepest digital colonoscopy ever performed on a sitting U.S. first family.
Hunter Biden sued Ziegler in September 2023 for alleged computer fraud, and U.S. District Judge for the Central District of California Hernán D. Vera was assigned the case, WorldTribune.com reported on Jan. 26. The lawsuit is still pending with a hearing date next set for Nov. 12.Vera, nominated by Joe Biden in September 2021 and confirmed in 2023, donated to Biden’s campaign on multiple occasions, Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show.
“Ultimately what this case is about is an effort to censor an investigative reporter and it’s an effort to silence them and shut them up, but there’s a First Amendment right for investigative reporters,” Bob Tyler, President and General Counsel of Advocates for Faith and Freedom, and one of the attorneys representing Ziegler, told The Daily Caller.
Vera donated on numerous occasions to the Biden presidential campaign when he was a principal for Bird Marella PC, a boutique law firm specializing in litigation and white collar defense, according to the FEC records.
In September 2020, Vera donated to Biden for President three times, with two of those donations going through the Biden Victory Fund, the campaign’s joint fundraising committee. His first donation to the Biden campaign through the Biden Victory Fund came a month prior.
Throughout his time at Bird Marella, Vera donated to various Democrat candidates including California Rep. Adam Schiff and 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Vera was previously the CEO of Public Counsel, a leftist pro bono law firm.
The FBI, IRS and numerous media outlets have verified the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop archive compiled by Ziegler. Federal authorities verified the computer data prior to the New York Post’s reporting on the laptop archive ahead of the 2020 presidential election, IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley testified in May 2023.
“My client has done an incredible public service to the citizens of the great United States, and that is by making this available to the public and the fact that it’s been made available to the public has forced the Department of Justice, in my opinion, has forced the Department of Justice to act. It’s even helped Congress to have the fortitude to act,” Tyler added.
Ziegler served in the Trump White House under Trade Advisor Peter Navarro as a policy analyst and Associate Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy (OTMP). He and Navarro were among the last to leave the White House in January 2021 and worked together in the weeks following the 2020 election during their personal time on The Navarro Report (three parts) December 2020-January 2021.
In his introduction to that report, Navarro wrote that he published it "in his personal capacity to shed light on potentially illegal activity that may have occurred during the 2020 Presidential Election."
Ziegler graduated from Saint Louis University in May 2018, with a B.S. in Economics, Magna Cum Laude.
He went to work at the White House and served in the OTMP from February 2019 to January 2021. He is married and the proud father of three young children.
The Free Press Foundation supports the resurgence of high quality, independent news operations throughout the United States and the work of news professionals who uphold the standards of the American Free Press.
Related: Press Freedom Prize, 2023 awarded to John T. McNabb II, August 28, 2023
Related: Media entrepreneur is awarded the 2022 Press Freedom Prize, August 9, 2022
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