The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

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00:01:29.200 Dr. Scott Jensen has practiced family medicine in Carver County, Minnesota for 35 years.

00:01:37.440 This is also where he and his wife, Mary, a small animal veterinarian, raised their three children,

00:01:45.440 Christy, an anesthesiologist, Matt, an estate attorney, and Jackie, a family doctor. Dr. Jensen

00:01:52.380 also served in the Minnesota Senate from 2017 to 2021, and he was vice chair of the Health and Human

00:02:01.360 Services Committee. Good morning, Dr. Jensen.

00:02:04.180 Good morning. It's good to see you, Dr. Peterson.

00:02:08.820 Good to see you. I understand it's three in the morning there. I'm in Rome right now, so

00:02:12.780 I guess this is the best we could do in terms of scheduling. So thank you very much for agreeing to

00:02:18.220 do this today. Well, you're very welcome. I'm actually in Chaska, Minnesota, and I'm right across

00:02:23.920 the street from the Catholic Church, so we do have something in common. Right, right, right. You're

00:02:30.540 symbolically near Rome. Amen.

00:02:33.640 Amen. Yeah. Okay, so let's get into this. Let's first of all start by letting everybody know who

00:02:41.320 you are, and then we'll move into what has happened to you right from the beginning in relationship to

00:02:48.460 your entanglement, let's say, with what's supposed to be your professional governing body,

00:02:54.720 and it's supposed to be professional governing body. And so let's walk through the details of

00:03:04.040 your employment first. So. Well, Dr. Peterson, again, thank you for having me on. I'm a small

00:03:10.680 town kid. I grew up in southern Minnesota in a town named Sleepy Eye. Pretty typical upbringing.

00:03:16.400 It takes a village to raise a child. My mom was my best friend. My dad was my hero. I had three

00:03:21.880 brothers and a sister. I went to the public school and graduated as valedictorian of the

00:03:26.400 class, but that's not such a big deal when you only have 65 kids in your class. I went

00:03:31.140 to the University of Minnesota and was going to be an orthodontist, but when I got into dental

00:03:36.240 school, I found out that I did not have a love affair with teeth. So I left dental school

00:03:40.260 and went to the seminary for a year. And at the time, I'd been dating this really wonderful

00:03:45.120 lady. And so that year in the seminary, I made the decision to ask her to marry me, and we've

00:03:49.480 been together for 45 years. I also made the decision to go into medicine. So I went into

00:03:53.860 family practice, went to the University of Minnesota Med School, did my residency. And my

00:03:58.980 wife is a veterinarian. We have three wonderful children, our two daughters, our physicians.

00:04:03.980 We're not exactly sure what happened to our son, but he's an attorney, but we love him just as much.

00:04:09.160 And we've had one. Well, there's four physicians probably need one attorney.

00:04:13.500 He says that he has to keep the rest of us out of trouble. So that's where we're landing on there.

00:04:18.480 So then I've been practicing medicine for about 37 years in the Chaska Watertown area.

00:04:26.440 And about eight years ago, I was encouraged to run for the Senate in Minnesota. This had not been

00:04:31.960 one of my bucket list items. So I was leery about it. But after a couple of months of being recruited,

00:04:37.420 I made the decision to run for Senate. I ended up winning and receiving more votes than any other

00:04:42.980 Republican Senate candidate in Minnesota. During the first three years of my Senate career,

00:04:50.120 I have to confess that I was disillusioned with the process. I was surprised at how easily

00:04:57.000 gridlock was the order of the day. I felt like really genuine fired up intellectual curiosity just

00:05:05.240 wasn't a part of the equation. And that frustrated me quite a bit. At the same time, my wife was having

00:05:10.460 some health issues and she was going to have a need for multiple surgeries. So I made the decision

00:05:14.760 to not run for re-election. A few months later, COVID hit. COVID hit hard. It hit everybody hard.

00:05:23.480 But I think I, like so many other people, suffered from certain personality traits.

00:05:30.380 I'm somewhat skeptical. And medical school taught us to be skeptical. I've always been sort of addicted

00:05:36.660 to context. And I've always thought that if we don't have the context of what we're seeing,

00:05:42.380 we can't really digest what we're dealing with. And I had access to more information than many people

00:05:47.600 did because I was vice chair of the Health and Human Services Committee in the Senate. And so I was

00:05:53.480 aware of much of what was going on. And then in the early days of April of 2020, when I received

00:05:59.260 an email from the Department of Health with a link to the CDC, advising me as a physician that

00:06:07.080 they were going to adjust the way death certificates were completed,

00:06:12.700 skeptically at that. And I said, what's going on here? And without meaning to be any kind of grand

00:06:19.980 whistleblower, I ended up making comment about this on a local TV program that I'd been on the news for.

00:06:26.980 And that traveled. What did adjust, what did adjust death certificates mean?

00:06:33.640 Basically, in the Minnesota Department of Health communication to the physicians,

00:06:38.140 they said, if you believe that COVID-19 may have contributed to the cause of death,

00:06:46.220 you can go ahead and put it down as the cause of death. And that's not right. The CDC for decades has

00:06:55.200 said that our job as physicians, when we complete a death certificate, is to try to identify the

00:07:02.340 initiating event that started the process of demise for the patient. So, for example, if I have a heart

00:07:10.680 attack tomorrow and a month later I have congestive heart failure and we find that the heart attack was

00:07:16.700 so substantial that I've lost the ability to effectively pump blood, and we learn that I'm not

00:07:21.740 a candidate for transplant and there's no remedies for my situation. And over time I falter and become

00:07:29.640 more and more frail. And perhaps I go on hospice knowing that I have end-stage heart disease. If on my

00:07:37.760 last 48 hours of life on earth I get exposed to COVID-19 without ever being tested or even having any

00:07:47.000 symptoms of symptoms of it. When I die, I died of a heart attack. The underlying cause of death would

00:07:55.140 be coronary artery disease. And that led to a heart attack, which led to congestive heart failure.

00:08:01.240 But it should not say that COVID-19 was the cause of my death. We were being encouraged to go ahead

00:08:07.200 and they said in this document, if you think that COVID-19 was a contributing condition, you can put it

00:08:14.500 down as the cause of death. And I said, no, there's a box too on a death certificate called

00:08:20.100 contributing conditions. That's where you put contributing conditions. If it's emphysema, if it's

00:08:25.740 asthma, influenza, we put it in the contributing conditions box. We were being told with this disease

00:08:33.480 we could put it as a cause of death. I raised a ruckus and said this isn't right. I did not get any

00:08:39.840 response from the Department of Health. Instead, I was asked to be on numerous national TV programs.

00:08:45.780 I was asked to be on the Ingram Angle and subsequently Rush Limbaugh came to my defense

00:08:50.080 and we had Tucker Carlson show on inviting me. But the bottom line is this was April of 2020.

00:08:58.800 And in June of 2020, I received a letter with red letters stamped confidential from the Board of

00:09:06.380 Medical Practice advising me that for the first time in my career, my license was under investigation.

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00:10:48.020 So the CDC suggests to physicians that they alter their death notification practice in the case of

00:11:00.160 COVID, listing, as you pointed out, contributory cause of death as a primary cause of death. And

00:11:10.220 so this begs three questions. The CDC reconstruction of the guidelines. First of all, why in the world

00:11:19.880 would they do that in the case of COVID? Second, who would do that? And third, what does that do

00:11:26.840 to the reliability of the death statistics that are used to calculate the virality and lethality of

00:11:35.100 COVID? Those three questions are, frankly, the critical ones, and they're interrelated. The first

00:11:43.120 one is to why the CDC would do this. It felt to me like there was a movement or a strong motivation

00:11:51.420 to, if you will, elevate the seriousness of the COVID pandemic. I think that it was already elevated

00:12:03.540 substantially, and that troubled me deeply. I raised that question early on. I said,

00:12:08.000 I think we're making an epidemic of fear as much as we're responding from a public policy perspective.

00:12:16.280 So when the CDC did that, it felt to me like they wanted to ensure that they got our attention

00:12:22.000 and that there would be numbers to support that. As to who would do that, I think later on we found

00:12:28.700 out that some of the major characters were people that were indeed in charge of the public policies

00:12:34.180 that were going to govern the world, if you will, for the next three years. Specifically, you had

00:12:39.860 people like Dr. Tony Fauci, you had Dr. Deborah Birx, you had some of these people who had, if you will,

00:12:46.540 high-placed positions from which to speak. They literally had absolute power, and I'm a big believer

00:12:52.560 that absolute power corrupts. And I think the third question is probably the most important one,

00:12:59.860 Dr. Peterson. What impact would this have on the reliability of our federal registrar in terms of

00:13:07.020 cause of death? For instance, every year in America, the United States, we have approximately 650,000

00:13:14.000 people die of heart disease. We have approximately 600,000 people die of cancer. If those deaths are

00:13:21.440 recorded instead of cardiac causes and putting it down as COVID, numerous things happen. One is we

00:13:28.800 might get a false impression that we're making headway on heart disease when we're really not.

00:13:33.740 You might see pharmaceutical companies coming to the fore saying, see, we told you, if you take our

00:13:40.680 drugs, if you prescribe our drugs, put more people on Lipitor, we will reduce the heart cause of deaths.

00:13:47.980 And that would be not true. That would be a corruption of the actual data. There would be all kinds of

00:13:54.380 nefarious opportunities for people to grab a hold of corrupted data and make a case for something that

00:14:01.220 wasn't real. And when I raised that point, I didn't get a legitimate discussion. There was no robust

00:14:10.560 questioning. It was you're spreading conspiracy theories and you're having the audacity to cause

00:14:17.860 or to compare COVID to influenza. And those were a couple of the first allegations.

00:14:23.760 So let me ask you a nasty question then to play the devil's advocate. So we walked through your career

00:14:34.860 and really very, very briefly your life. And it's a real American fairy tale life, small town,

00:14:41.620 American fairy tale life. And so a skeptic would say, especially a skeptic who's arguing from the

00:14:49.080 other side, let's say, would say, well, you missed the limelight. There we go. Because you were no longer

00:14:57.700 involved in the political scene. And you got a little bit of attention because you complained about a

00:15:03.460 perfectly reasonable request from the CDC to be, what would you say, hyper careful in relationship

00:15:10.600 to the lethality of COVID. Then a bunch of right-wing conspiratorialists like Rush Limbaugh and Tucker

00:15:18.780 Carlson rushed in and you got some attention on the national stage and that went to your head. And so it

00:15:25.660 was in your best interest to cast aspersions on the motivations of people who were only trying to

00:15:32.420 benefit public health. And this is on you, which I presume is the tack that the governing board of

00:15:40.300 your profession essentially took when they came after you with this confidential letter. So how do

00:15:46.500 you, what sort of soul searching did you do when this first came up? And how do you protect yourself

00:15:52.860 against those sorts of insinuations and allegations and even doubts?

00:15:56.840 That's a good question. I think it's important to look a little bit at the timeline. It was in the

00:16:04.420 summer of 2019, which was well in advance of the COVID pandemic, that I had made the announcement

00:16:10.480 that I was done with politics. My wife's health was at an issue and she was going to have multiple

00:16:16.220 surgeries. So I had already announced that I was not running for re-election. So in 2020, when the COVID

00:16:22.720 hit, I was serving my last year as a Senator, I was vice chair of the Health and Human Services

00:16:28.660 Committee. I carried a large insulin bill through and worked with Democrats to get it done. And

00:16:34.980 Governor Walz signed that. At that point in my life, I had made it pretty clear that I was not

00:16:40.780 interested in being in the limelight. I was interested in stepping away from politics and being there for

00:16:46.100 my family. My wife's health was an issue, but I'd also been blessed with five grandchildren within

00:16:52.900 the span of about two or three years. And they were all under the age of, I believe, four at the time,

00:17:00.680 or perhaps even under three. So it was time for me to continue to practice medicine, take care of my

00:17:06.100 wife and be a grandpa. And I was very content with that. So in terms of some underlying deep-seated

00:17:14.420 desire for fame and infamy, I would say that that's almost ridiculous because the slings and

00:17:22.360 arrows I ended up taking were hurtful. I had never been in a situation like this.

00:17:28.820 Well, you also had some limelight, politically speaking, already. The fact that you'd run a political

00:17:36.260 campaign, you'd been out in public, and you had a reasonable share of public attention, but you're

00:17:42.340 also interestingly well-situated because you are a physician of long-standing. And also, you were

00:17:49.560 a senator. And was it vice chairman of the Health Services Committee?

00:17:54.640 Yes. And the other thing...

00:17:56.500 Okay, so you'd think that you would have demonstrated... You'd think that all of that

00:18:00.560 would have demonstrated your qualifications to speak on such matters.

00:18:05.780 Dr. Peterson, when I was a resident, I was named one of the 15 top residents in the country through a

00:18:14.900 Mead Johnson Award program. In the late 1990s, I was awarded a Bush Fellowship to study leadership,

00:18:22.620 computers, and plastic surgery techniques. In 2016, I'd been named the Family Physician of the Year in

00:18:29.880 Minnesota. I've had a wonderful career. I feel at times a little bit like Jimmy Stewart in It's a

00:18:36.520 Wonderful Life. There was no reason for me to put all of that at risk and put myself in a position

00:18:44.680 where people would ridicule me, literally monitor every word I said in order to try to play that

00:18:52.540 gotcha game and hit me with something. It was tough on my wife. During that last year in the Senate,

00:19:00.860 the first year of the pandemic, 2020, it was a painful year. I'm not going to deny it. We had

00:19:07.020 schisms within my own family. We had plenty of tears and angst. And it would have been fun to

00:19:15.760 not have to go through that. People have asked me, they've said, Dr. Jensen,

00:19:20.780 what was that like? How did you know all this was going to happen? And I've told people, I didn't

00:19:27.160 know. Quite frankly, I feel a little bit like Jonah in the Old Testament, where he was asked to do

00:19:33.380 some tough duty in Nineveh. And he said, no, thanks. I'm going to take a cruise on the Mediterranean.

00:19:38.820 That's what I feel like. But then this whale got in the way, swallowed me up and spit me out on this

00:19:44.920 pathway of ridicule and, if you will, focus on everything about my background. And it was tough

00:19:52.960 to go through. Yeah. You know, when I spoke with Jay Bhattacharya recently, he went through a similar

00:20:00.660 experience at Stanford, very similar. He's an outstanding physician and an extremely reputable

00:20:08.740 person. And he expressed some extreme skepticism about the COVID hysteria. And Stanford basically

00:20:18.780 turned its back on him. And he lost 35 pounds in three months. And it just about killed him. I mean,

00:20:25.800 I've talked to probably 100 people now who've been in the situation that you were in,

00:20:31.640 a situation that I've been in a number of times. And virtually all of them were pushed to the limits

00:20:40.420 of their psychological and physical tolerance by that process of cancellation and mobbing and

00:20:47.580 exclusion. You know, and some of the people I know quite well who are as stable personalities as

00:20:55.680 you'd ever hope to encounter were driven right to the edge of madness by this insane mob-inspired

00:21:04.340 persecution. You know, and I actually think that the degree to which that affects you is proportionate

00:21:11.540 to some degree to your moral integrity in that a person who is highly conscientious

00:21:17.500 and hardworking, diligent, detail-oriented, all of that, is also tends to be somewhat guilt-prone

00:21:28.500 in that any accusation of abdication of duty strikes a person like that to the heart because they are

00:21:36.900 in fact dutiful. Now, if you're incompetent and unconscientious and parasitic in your fundamental

00:21:43.180 orientation towards others and someone accuses you of not doing your duty, you don't ever,

00:21:49.100 you have never regarded that as a necessity or a virtue in the first place. And so those

00:21:54.120 criticisms fall on deaf ears. But if you've been gone after, after having, after having checked off

00:22:01.800 all the proper boxes, let's say, both practically and morally, then it can be incredibly damaging.

00:22:08.560 And it also does produce this internal schism in family because, of course, it's easy for people

00:22:14.400 to think, well, you know, if you, or at least for people to fight about the issue of, well, maybe

00:22:20.380 it would have been better had you just never said anything rather than have, having exposed yourself

00:22:28.040 and others within the family to risk. And, you know, there is an argument to be had about that

00:22:34.340 because it's not obvious when you should just shut the hell up and keep on struggling forward

00:22:42.620 because, you know, every bureaucracy has its inadequacies and you can't complain about everything.

00:22:49.540 And when you finally have to stand up and say something, and of course, that is going to

00:22:54.340 cause tensions within families, especially if you're also under other forms of stress.

00:23:01.440 By this time, had your wife recovered from her medical trouble?

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00:24:13.700 Mary had gone through two surgeries and then had a third surgery. She'd had her neck fused. She'd had

00:24:22.500 a new joint put in. And so she was recovering. But while she was recovering, unfortunately,

00:24:29.780 a lot of the conversations the two of us would have at home while she's convalescing seemed to

00:24:35.240 always come back to COVID-19. So it was a challenge. And you're exactly right, Dr. Peterson.

00:24:41.260 Listen, there was a real underlying question for me is, why didn't I just keep my mouth shut?

00:24:50.540 And ultimately, I think what happened was through the recurrent investigations that I was put through,

00:24:58.680 I think that I became somewhat morally protected. I felt like the words of Esther 414,

00:25:10.420 have you considered you're in the position you're in for such a time as this? They really rang true

00:25:15.680 in my life. And I felt a little bit like a pit bull with a pork chop in my mouth. And I wasn't

00:25:21.480 going to let anybody take that pork chop of truth out of my mouth. I had access to information people

00:25:27.980 didn't have. I absolutely was doing my responsible duties. I was doing my due diligence. I was reading

00:25:34.380 two, three, four hours a day trying to keep current on all the issues going on with the Minnesota Senate,

00:25:40.400 the COVID pandemic worldwide, and trying to hold my family together as well. And in the end, I felt that

00:25:46.240 I was absolutely entrusted to be a voice, to watch out for those encroachments on our liberties,

00:25:52.920 to say, no, we're not going to let government expand willy-nilly just because they can.

00:25:58.580 And I found myself getting tenacious. And I remember someone very close to me said,

00:26:05.540 well, why is it so important to be right? And I said, I don't think it's about being right.

00:26:11.520 I think it's about being fearful of what I was seeing. When a rubber band is stretched beyond

00:26:17.580 its capacity, it never returns to its normal shape and configuration. That's what I'm worried

00:26:23.680 about with the United States, Canada, nations across the globe. We've seen something happen

00:26:29.940 over a three-year period that prior to those three years, most of us would say couldn't happen.

00:26:36.820 If it had been put in a movie, we would have said, someone's been watching too much grade B fiction.

00:26:42.040 But the bottom line, it was happening right in front of us, and we were stunned.

00:26:45.820 All right. So you picked up this letter. It had red confidential written over it. And well,

00:26:53.280 so here's a couple of questions about that damn letter. So the first is, you'd think that if,

00:26:59.400 and what's the precise name of the board that sent you the letter? And this is the Governing Board

00:27:05.340 of Physicians in Minnesota. This is the Physicians Regulatory Agency Regarding Licensure, and it's called

00:27:11.460 the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice. The Minnesota Board of Medical Practice, MBMP.

00:27:19.120 Board of Medical Practice. Okay. So you get a letter from the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice. Now,

00:27:25.340 here's some mysteries about that. So the first mystery is, why in the world did they think that

00:27:33.360 you were going to be a credible target? I mean, look, you've got a stellar reputation

00:27:38.220 on the educational front, and you have a stellar reputation as a physician, as attested to by

00:27:44.800 multiple forms of achievement and recognition. Plus, you'd been a senator. And so you'd think that

00:27:52.500 just procedurally, the people who were sitting on this board would have been wise enough to think that

00:28:00.060 barring self-evident malfeasance, you were probably someone best left alone. So that's an interesting

00:28:10.900 question, why they would actually be clueless enough to target you without a smoking pistol.

00:28:17.940 And so, and then the next question is, what exactly did they claim in their first attempt to

00:28:27.140 discipline you? I think in fairness to the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice individuals who serve on

00:28:34.600 that board, their collective perception of what they're to do is that their mission is to investigate

00:28:43.580 all complaints that come forward. So in Minnesota, you can go on the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice

00:28:49.760 webpage, scribble out a complaint. You have no obligation to do any due diligence. Your personality, your

00:28:58.900 vital information about who you are will remain anonymous. The person you accuse has no way of getting

00:29:06.140 your name. You will be protected by anonymity. You will not be identified. So it's relatively easy to make a

00:29:14.300 complaint. You don't have to know the person you're complaining about. You don't have to ever have

00:29:19.000 received a healthcare service from them. But the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice has taken the

00:29:23.600 position, if there's a complaint, we'll investigate it. So I think... Right, but that doesn't mean...

00:29:28.800 But in Canada, tell me if it's the same in the United States. So it's exactly the same situation that

00:29:35.060 you just described with regards to the regulating board of psychologists in Ontario. Anyone anywhere in

00:29:41.900 the world can submit a complaint for any reason. Now, the Ontario Board of Psychologists, College of

00:29:51.600 Psychologists, is legally obliged to investigate every complaint, which means at least to consider the

00:30:01.700 complaint. But they are not obligated to pursue the investigation if they believe that the complaint

00:30:09.700 was frivolous or vexatious. And that's obviously a necessary corollary when the accuser is given the

00:30:18.860 protections that you just described, which is that there is no pressure incumbent upon them to even

00:30:28.460 provide documentation of the validity of their complaint, nor any requirement to have had any

00:30:34.100 even second-person contact with you. So it may be the case that the board members felt that it was

00:30:44.600 necessary for them to consider the complaint. But that does not mean that it was necessary for them to

00:30:50.800 pursue you. They decided to pursue you, and that doesn't follow logically from the mere fact of the

00:30:57.080 complaint. Especially because you had practiced for, you said, 37 years without any complaints and also in

00:31:06.520 an obviously stellar manner. So there's something more going on than the mere proclivity of the

00:31:13.540 Minnesota Board of Medical Practice members to do their duty.

00:31:20.020 The Minnesota Board of Medical Practice, in their first investigation of me, pointed out that there had been

00:31:25.440 allegations that I had spread conspiracy theories and I was providing reckless advice by comparing

00:31:31.940 influenza to COVID, which, by the way, is exactly what Dr. Fauci and other leading speakers to the

00:31:41.500 narrative had done. But I think the pattern of behavior by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice

00:31:47.140 attests to your concerns, Dr. Jordan. Investigation number one came at me with allegations, and I responded

00:31:54.980 and received a letter, it was dismissed. Investigation two was similar. Investigation three, I was never

00:32:03.020 advised that there was a pending investigation or that there were allegations on the table. I was simply

00:32:08.240 sent a letter by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice indicating, oh, by the way, further allegations

00:32:14.660 have come in. They have been dismissed. I was not even provided an opportunity to respond. Investigation

00:32:21.080 four went back to the first two where they investigated me, I responded, they dismissed them. But

00:32:27.960 investigation number five is where it gets interesting. That came into being... Okay, so how many over how

00:32:33.900 many... over what span of time did these five investigations occur? And what did that mean in terms of

00:32:42.640 disruption to your practical life, your psychological state, and the stability of your family and your practice?

00:32:51.080 The recurrent Minnesota Board of Medical Practice investigations had a devastating effect on my

00:32:57.060 life. While I was in the Senate, I felt hamstrung. In my personal life with my family, I felt the tension

00:33:05.000 of differing viewpoints. And as I mentioned earlier, people wondering, why is it so important to Scott

00:33:12.020 Jensen to be right? When I was trying to advocate, this isn't about being right, this is about something

00:33:17.940 being terribly wrong, and that we cannot stand for it. I think this took place from June of 2020

00:33:24.420 to November of 2021. So that's a 15 to 18-month span of time. By then...

00:33:33.940 Do you have any idea how many allegations had been... how many allegations were levied against you that

00:33:40.900 you had to respond individually to? And did you require legal counsel during that entire time? And

00:33:47.400 what sort of expense was that? The first four investigations, I elected to treat them like any

00:33:54.620 regular family doctor in the trenches would do so. So I read the allegations, I responded to the best of my

00:34:00.600 liability. I provided a narrative explanation, and I, if you will, substantiated what I had to say with

00:34:07.660 articles and references. So I did that myself, and that took literally hundreds and hundreds of hours

00:34:13.780 with each investigation. The fifth investigation was put forth in November of 2021. I was in the middle of

00:34:21.900 a governor's election race. I was one of the leading candidates for the Republican Party. And when I

00:34:28.820 received that investigation, I was asked to respond. I did. And that time was the first time I was asked

00:34:36.980 to provide patient records. That made me very nervous, violating patient confidentiality. So I was

00:34:44.420 meticulous to making certain that I de-identified whatever I sent to them. The other thing that went

00:34:52.020 with that was, I made the comment that I had used off-label medications for a handful of patients

00:35:01.280 when asked to do so in exceptional situations. That really seemed to change the nature of what was

00:35:09.360 going on. At that point in time, the Board of Medical Practice came back to me and said,

00:35:13.860 okay, we're not sure that we like where you're at here. We asked for a response. You gave it to us.

00:35:23.040 We've asked for more information as well as patient records. I submitted those. They said to me,

00:35:28.600 we've received your records. And that's where it stopped. And it stopped there for a full year.

00:35:35.620 All the other investigations have been handled.

00:35:37.120 I want to interject here for a minute for any professionals, medical professionals who are

00:35:41.700 listening. So one of the reasons that you do get a lawyer very quickly in these circumstances,

00:35:48.180 despite the expense and the potential self-admission perhaps that, or the apparent, the risk of apparent

00:35:59.380 admission of wrongdoing is that once an investigation of this sort commences and you provide additional

00:36:08.480 information, you open up a whole rat's nest of additional potential avenues for persecution.

00:36:15.980 And so the first time the College of Psychologists came after me, the allegation they ended up nailing me

00:36:24.560 in 2004. This was back in 2017, had virtually no resemblance to the initial complaint. It emerged as

00:36:33.720 a consequence of the need for boards of this type, especially once they've started to go down a

00:36:39.880 particular rabbit hole repeatedly, to convince themselves that they were justified in their initial

00:36:46.780 inquisition by any means whatsoever. And so, you know, if you hadn't done the wrong thing that you

00:36:54.320 were accused of, well, obviously the fact that you'd been subject to four investigations and multiple

00:37:00.320 allegations means that there's fire where there's smoke. And if we can't get you on, you know, the fire

00:37:08.080 on the left side of the furnace, we'll get you on the fire of the right side of the furnace. And a good

00:37:12.680 lawyer can help you provide minimal information to boards of investigation of that sort, so that you're

00:37:20.100 less likely to lay out traps for yourself to step in. And then there's this issue of turning over

00:37:27.640 patient records. You know, by the end of my private practice as a clinical psychologist, I was taking,

00:37:38.340 at best, extraordinary minimal formal notes because I knew that the probability that I would be required

00:37:48.540 at some point to break client confidentiality, which might even be more important for psychologists than

00:37:56.960 for physicians, although it's a toss-up, was virtually certain. I could no longer trust the inviolability

00:38:04.840 of my records to inappropriate and paranoid board of governance screening. And so that's also an awful

00:38:15.220 situation for professionals to find themselves in where the notes they take to ensure that they're

00:38:20.900 on top of their patient's health can now be used as a means of, what would you say, breaking the privacy

00:38:28.640 walls surrounding the patient, which is the issue of critical importance, but also as endless fodder for

00:38:36.460 the continuation of kafka-esque, expensive, punitive, pointless, and punishing investigations, especially

00:38:46.140 those that are politically motivated. So if this happens to you professionals who are watching,

00:38:52.940 I would recommend, and maybe Dr. Jensen can give his opinion on this, you should get yourself a lawyer

00:39:00.160 damn quick. And then I've got a couple of things to say about lawyers, too, is that there is nothing more

00:39:05.660 expensive than a bad, cheap lawyer. So don't just get a good lawyer. Get a, or don't just get a lawyer. Get a good

00:39:13.960 lawyer, because a good lawyer who will be expensive is way less expensive than a bad lawyer who makes mistakes.

00:39:21.760 Oh, Maya. Maya. She loves being cool. 21 degrees is her favorite number. God, she's the coolest,

00:39:31.040 especially at night. So I raise the temp at 10 p.m. because she gets chilly when she sleeps.

00:39:36.500 Maya loves using less energy, and I love Maya. We're basically besties.

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00:39:46.220 thinking of you. With smart controls and zero upfront costs, visit EnbridgeSustainSmartFlow.com

00:39:51.100 to learn more. So, to your point, Dr. Peterson, you're spot on. I think the first four investigations,

00:40:00.860 I had to deal with that age-old question, do I stuff it to the side and try to keep it private,

00:40:07.620 or do I come public with it? And I made the decision on the first investigation at the recommendation of

00:40:14.020 several close friends and colleagues to go public. I was told that if I don't go public with it,

00:40:20.460 literally, I would at some point in time be placed on defense, and I would never be able to get around

00:40:26.820 that. They said, you've got to go on offense, and that's what I did. But I did make, I probably made

00:40:32.520 a mistake with the first four investigations by believing that if I was just responsive, thoughtful,

00:40:40.320 measured, balanced, that they would dismiss these allegations, which is what happened the first four

00:40:45.340 times. But at some point, it changed. And at that point in time, I think I had to give up my normalcy

00:40:54.100 bias. In my brain, I thought, this can't be happening to me. This happens to other people. You read about it

00:41:00.320 in the newspaper. But this doesn't happen to this small-town kid from Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, who's had the

00:41:05.440 life of Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life. And I kept, I think, I was unable to really get my arms

00:41:13.420 around that this was happening to me in real life, real time. And my license, each investigation

00:41:19.900 was more and more at risk. So with the fifth investigation, when it went on for a full year,

00:41:28.040 then the election took place, and I lost. And two months later, I got a letter from the Board of

00:41:34.800 Medical Practice providing additional allegations based on exactly what you said, based on my response

00:41:42.780 to the fifth investigation, including patient records. Now I was being accused of having

00:41:48.080 handwriting that wasn't always as legible as some reviewers would have liked. Now I was being accused

00:41:54.960 of, well, you also did this, and you did this. And by the way, you did this. And at that point in time,

00:42:01.200 they said, we're not accepting your written responses as good. We're now asking for a notice

00:42:10.480 of conference. That meant we're going to meet with you. And at that point in time, I said,

00:42:15.640 I probably need to get an attorney. And I got a good attorney. Mr. Greg Joseph is an attorney in

00:42:21.620 Minnesota who's done a lot of different kinds of law, but has really landed on understanding,

00:42:28.180 I think, the nature of that line between professional conduct as it relates to patient care

00:42:38.520 versus free speech. Now in the United States, I don't believe that that line has been determined

00:42:45.740 with precision. And that's one of the remaining questions regarding my situation is recently we did

00:42:54.720 have that conference with the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice. And I don't mean to get ahead

00:43:01.220 of myself, but 18 allegations were being addressed at one time. They were from soup to nuts. It had to

00:43:08.720 deal with masks. It had to deal with vaccines. It had to deal with comparisons of COVID and influenza.

00:43:16.260 It had to do with how we complete death certificates, how we remunerate hospitals and doctors based on

00:43:22.220 diagnosis codes used. It ran the gamut. But in the end, when the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice

00:43:29.040 says we're dismissing all of the allegations, at that point in time, we still don't know that critical

00:43:35.880 question. Where's the line between professional conduct and free speech? Because I would submit that

00:43:43.720 physicians get to be wrong. If we say on a Monday that this is what we think, perhaps we say something

00:43:52.420 like this. Eggs have cholesterol. You have high cholesterol. You should not eat eggs. And maybe four

00:43:59.940 days later, we come across material that says, gee, eggs aren't so bad. So I tell my patient, you know

00:44:05.940 what? You can eat eggs. Now, is that misinformation? Perhaps. Is it disinformation? Certainly not. But the

00:44:14.500 bottom line is, as a physician, if I make those comments in the exam room, or if I make those

00:44:20.300 comments on stage at a meeting, a rally, or perhaps a church event, either way, I get to make those

00:44:27.940 comments. Well, there's a more ominous element to your story as well that is still implicit in what

00:44:35.660 we've discussed. So I'm going to pull some of that out now. Now, you had been in the Senate and you

00:44:42.900 decided to pull out of the political life. But now you're running for governor. And while you're running

00:44:48.540 for governor, these investigations are happening. So the first thing we should clear up for everyone is

00:44:54.020 that given that you had decided to make an exit from the political stage, why did you decide to

00:44:59.380 return? The next issue is, were you credible as a candidate for governor? And then the third question

00:45:05.960 is, why the hell did the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice presume that it was appropriate ethically

00:45:16.980 to conduct an investigation into the conduct of a physician in the middle of a political campaign

00:45:24.000 because if you can't see how that raises evil specters of possibility, you're not thinking

00:45:31.040 because what it means is that the investigative process, which puts all the power in the hands of

00:45:39.400 the accuser, can obviously be weaponized for political purposes. Now, it is being, and it has been in many

00:45:47.060 cases, and that's going to get much worse before it gets better. But in your situation, it's particularly

00:45:52.260 egregious because you were a physician with an actual credible political career, and you were

00:45:59.140 running for the highest office in your state. So what do you think about the fact that the investigations

00:46:05.200 ramped up while you were running for governor? What do you think that implies for the stability and

00:46:14.540 sanctity of the political process? And what effect do you think the investigations into your conduct and the

00:46:23.360 public element of that had on the outcome of the gubernatorial race?

00:46:30.280 2020, my last year in the Senate, was obviously the first year of the COVID pandemic.

00:46:35.620 The pandemic and the public policies that came with it really were like this powerful magnetic pull

00:46:44.880 for me to not leave the political, if you will, field. I had thousands of people reach out to me and

00:46:54.500 say, Dr. Jensen, you've been a courageous voice offering hope and reasonable analysis of what's going

00:47:01.840 on. You've been deeply embedded in context. You've been a skeptic. You've accessed information. You've

00:47:09.020 done your due diligence. You've taken seriously that you've been entrusted with a voice to speak for

00:47:15.100 thousands and thousands of Minnesotans and people across the globe. That collectively is what really

00:47:21.220 pulled me into the race. I think, again, I'm a faith-based individual, and the words of Esther 414 for

00:47:28.460 such a time as this, joined with the words of Hebrews 414, hold fast to the beliefs you profess,

00:47:36.260 just did not seem to give me an out from politics. So I stepped into that arena with my wife's blessing.

00:47:45.340 Was I a credible candidate? We accomplished more as a conservative candidate running in Minnesota

00:47:53.180 than had been accomplished in decades, in some situations ever. We received more votes than any

00:47:59.780 Republican governor candidate has ever received in Minnesota. We raised more money than any Republican

00:48:06.900 governor has ever raised in the campaign committee itself. We had over 100,000 people join our email

00:48:15.220 team. We had 40,000 unique donations. We had approximately the same percentage of voters

00:48:20.640 in the election that Governor Tim Pawlenty had in 2002 when he won. We went against six other candidates

00:48:29.020 and prevailed in getting the endorsement and then going to the general election. So from that perspective,

00:48:35.980 we created a movement, and that movement was born of energy, conviction, and Americans, everyday Americans

00:48:43.980 that were horrifically concerned about what is going on in our world. So then the question is,

00:48:51.200 okay, you've got the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice holding this gray cloud over his head,

00:48:58.860 over the campaign for literally the majority of the campaign. It had a devastating effect. I knew that

00:49:07.060 everywhere I went, I was being tracked and recorded. I knew every word I said didn't just enter the

00:49:14.640 political speech. It was going to be filed and indexed and forwarded to the Minnesota Board of Medical

00:49:21.340 Practice. There was no relief from the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice. I reached out to them in 2022

00:49:28.220 asking a question. I don't want to do something that's not up to the standard of care. If I prescribe

00:49:35.760 certain off-label drugs, is that problematic for you or not? Is that the standard of care or not?

00:49:42.120 And I was given a short answer from an administrative staffer that said, we don't create

00:49:47.180 the standard of care. We can't tell you that. But if you do it and we get a complaint, we're going

00:49:52.820 to investigate you. They were basically saying, you want to know what the standard of care is? We're

00:49:59.840 not telling you. But if someone says you didn't meet the standard of care, we're coming after you for

00:50:04.620 that. You're right. The standard of care for these investigative boards is, well, we don't really

00:50:11.460 know what we're doing, but we'll sure whack you if we have any suspicions that you do something wrong

00:50:16.360 post hoc. I mean, I've had exactly the same experience with the College of Psychologists in

00:50:22.720 Ontario, trying to get them to clarify their policies around certification of new practicing

00:50:30.040 psychologists, for example. And there isn't a chance in the world that they'll clarify their

00:50:35.240 stance a priori. This is part of the reason you need a lawyer when they come after you.

00:50:39.320 It's because it's not as if the standards are well-defined. And it's certainly not as if

00:50:43.980 the practitioners on these boards are sufficiently credible, either professionally or ethically,

00:50:50.480 to be doing what they're doing. The rules are basically, watch yourself. And if you make a

00:50:56.880 mistake, look the hell out. And the mistakes are defined after the act. And so I'm stressing that

00:51:05.700 for the professionals who are listening, is do not make the mistake that Dr. Jensen made of assuming

00:51:12.520 that you are dealing with a process that's going to treat you reasonably. That is not the situation

00:51:19.260 you're in. You're in a little bit of Kafka hell, and you'll be lucky if you escape from it with your skin

00:51:24.820 intact. And so you can dispense with any niceties about your presumption that this is going to be

00:51:32.960 mere rational discourse between merely rational people. If you're innocent and you have had a

00:51:39.840 stellar reputation and you're being investigated for fundamentally political reasons, you're way

00:51:46.680 outside the rubric of anything that you might have regarded as Jimmy Stewart normality. And the faster

00:51:52.720 you realize that, the easier it's going to be for you. Well said. I think that without question,

00:51:59.660 that tendency for me to say, this can't be happening, that power of what is my bias towards

00:52:06.580 what's normal sort of dictated my behavior until it didn't. And it was the fifth investigation.

00:52:13.480 You know, that's a trauma response, say. You may know this as a physician. One of the hallmarks of

00:52:22.360 traumatic experience is the sense of derealization that accompanies the experience. And derealization

00:52:31.640 is the recurrent sense, partly thought, partly perception, that there's no way this can be happening.

00:52:40.680 In fact, the more intense that sense and the longer its duration, the better the chance that

00:52:49.720 post-event there will be post-traumatic symptoms. That makes a lot of sense. It does. And I honestly

00:52:56.740 think that while perhaps Scott Jensen was a microcosm of that phenomenon occurring, I think that from a

00:53:04.860 population standpoint, on a macro level, we're seeing the same thing. We're seeing a derealization

00:53:10.220 for Americans across the land saying, well, no, that couldn't be happening. I mean, we're seeing it

00:53:18.020 with physicians. I think physicians over the last three months have come out and said to me,

00:53:23.200 Dr. Jensen, we feel so bad that we haven't stood with you more strongly. We should have been there for

00:53:29.340 you. But we were scared for our jobs. We were scared for our livelihoods. We knew that there

00:53:34.460 would be hell to pay. And so I think there's been a lot of that where you literally have to dispense

00:53:40.920 with your own strong internal sense of what's normal, what's going to happen, what would reasonable

00:53:46.380 people do. And as you said, you've got to say, all bets are off. This is a different place than I've

00:53:51.800 ever been before. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to navigate my way

00:53:56.980 through it by simply being reasonable, providing resources and justification for what I was

00:54:02.240 thinking, because that isn't going to carry the day. One of the things my attorney shared with me,

00:54:07.760 Greg Joseph, Dr. Peterson, was when we first met, and this was to deal with the fifth and the sixth

00:54:14.400 investigations, he said, Scott, you didn't hire me to be a yes man, and I'm not going to be. I'm going

00:54:21.180 to tell you what you've been doing, and I'm going to tell you why it was wrong. And I was all ears.

00:54:26.200 And he said, Scott, you're trying to make a perfect snowball. You're in a snowball fight,

00:54:32.340 and you're trying to make the perfect snowball so that you can win the snowball fight. But let me

00:54:37.580 tell you two things. One, there should be no snowball fight. Two, there is no perfect snowball.

00:54:44.020 You're not going to find the perfect article that's going to convince the medical board that,

00:54:48.820 ah, Dr. Jensen was sane and reasonable and rational and right. You're not going to find that snowball.

00:54:54.360 So quit trying to make it. We should not be in this snowball fight, and we're going to tell the

00:54:59.160 Minnesota Board of Medical Practice exactly that. They don't have jurisdiction over your speech.

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00:55:36.400 Yeah, yeah. Well, that's good. It does sound like you got a good lawyer. And I mean, one of the

00:55:40.500 advantages, and this is also for the professionals who are listening, if you're an agreeable person,

00:55:46.560 and that means you're fundamentally compassionate and caring, you don't like conflict, you like to

00:55:52.860 put other people at ease, you're likely to go along to get along, well, that might have been one of the

00:55:58.620 reasons that you entered especially family medicine, because that's a branch of the profession

00:56:04.480 that tends to attract caring people. Now, the problem with being a caring person is that,

00:56:09.900 of that sort, an agreeable person is that you don't like conflict, you're going to always assume

00:56:16.800 the best of others, and it's going to be difficult for you to say no when you need to say no. And what

00:56:23.180 no means, by the way, just so that everyone who is listening is clear, no when you say it to someone

00:56:29.640 means if you don't stop doing that, something you do not like will happen to you with 100%

00:56:39.020 certainty. That's what no means if you dare utter it. And so, if you're an agreeable person, that's

00:56:47.540 difficult. And so, if you're an agreeable physician, and you want people to like you, and you don't like

00:56:53.640 conflict, and you're caring, you need a disagreeable lawyer. Because a disagreeable lawyer has been

00:57:00.700 through this sort of thing many, many times, and has the thick skin for it, but is also perfectly

00:57:06.500 capable, willing, and might even enjoy saying no when the circumstances demand it. And a good litigator

00:57:14.020 in particular, litigators tend to be quite disagreeable. But a defense attorney can, and

00:57:20.080 attorneys in general tend to be relatively disagreeable, especially if they're effective. So, there's

00:57:25.540 definitely a time when you need someone of the temperament that your lawyer appears to be. And

00:57:35.620 it's useful to develop that side of your character, too, that part that can bite back when bitten.

00:57:43.100 You know, not too, not more than necessary, but certainly not less than necessary. And so,

00:57:49.240 so what, you have to dispense with your presumption that you're in a territory where rationality

00:57:56.260 prevails, and you have to dispense with the presumption that the people who are coming after

00:58:02.940 you, or the forces that are arrayed against you, are of the sort that's aiming up, let's say.

00:58:11.320 Okay, so you have physicians. Now, physicians are what, coming to you behind the scenes,

00:58:15.400 and saying that they wish they would support you? Are these friends? These are colleagues?

00:58:20.580 And did anybody actually speak out from the medical community in your support?

00:58:29.400 The great majority of the voices of the medical community were opposed to me. I was roundly

00:58:35.920 criticized. There were ad hoc groups of physicians getting together, holding press conferences,

00:58:41.320 ridiculing me. The Minnesota Medical Association has been not friendly to my physician. But quietly,

00:58:49.840 behind the scenes, physicians have reached out to me. And these are not friends. These are

00:58:53.500 colleagues, many of whom I've never met. I've received numerous letters, even in the last two weeks,

00:59:00.220 from physicians saying, we've been watching from afar. We have got to stay quiet. We don't dare come out.

00:59:07.900 But we so appreciate what you've done. We respect your character, your integrity,

00:59:14.820 the thoughtful, measured manner in which you've dealt with these slings and arrows. And we want

00:59:19.160 you to know we appreciate it, respect it. Oftentimes, within the notes, there's almost an underlying

00:59:25.620 sense of confession, almost an effort to seek absolution. And I've oftentimes responded to my

00:59:35.340 colleagues and said, I get where you're at. I was in a different place. I'm not young. I'm 68. I think

00:59:41.820 these partisan activists who decided to weaponize the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice to shut me

00:59:48.520 up, they didn't know me. They may have seen me as that person who was always going to be approval

00:59:53.800 seeking and that. But I think I do have the ability, perhaps I'm a little slow on the draw,

00:59:58.540 but I do have the ability to say, no, that's the line in the sand. We'll go no further. And I did do

01:00:05.200 that. And I think when I did that, I did it in part because I have a shield of success in my career.

01:00:14.780 I'm 68. I'm not dependent on their approval, nor am I dependent on the Minnesota Board of Medical

01:00:22.020 Practice for my raison d'etre, my reason for being. I know exactly why I'm here. And that's not going to

01:00:28.320 stop or change. I'm not going to flinch. And so I found it rewarding to have so many colleagues,

01:00:34.240 nurses, first responders reach out and say, hey, doc, thanks. Appreciate it very much. Would have loved

01:00:39.860 to have been there standing right by your side, but I just couldn't do it. And I get that.

01:00:44.040 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So this, okay. So this fifth investigation

01:00:48.420 is occurring while you're running for governor and you think it had a devastating effect,

01:00:55.920 well, it had devastating effect on you as part and parcel of this ongoing process.

01:01:00.940 Do you think it had a determining effect on the election?

01:01:06.120 That's an interesting question. Whether or not the investigation had not been going on,

01:01:12.100 let me say that again. I think the deep-seated nature of being investigated by the Minnesota

01:01:22.880 Board of Medical Practice was utilized by my opponents repeatedly. I was accused of participating

01:01:30.540 in the big lie by some journal nationally. This was used against me over and over again,

01:01:38.500 and it forced me to take positions on issues in a way that I would have liked to have not had to.

01:01:47.500 It made me, in some situations, go farther right in order to convince a certain group of people

01:01:55.000 that, no, I'm not some whack job. I'm a credible, thoughtful physician who's had a wonderful career,

01:02:01.740 and you should ignore these slings and arrows. Last night, I got an email just before midnight

01:02:09.840 that was from a journalist who's going to be interviewing me. And she said, what do you think

01:02:16.580 about these kinds of documents that are circulating on social media that just denigrates your character?

01:02:23.180 And so I looked at some of the documents, and there's a two-page index document totally eviscerating

01:02:32.380 me saying that this is a quack doctor, and it's from the opposing party, and it was boom, boom, boom,

01:02:39.280 boom, boom. And this was used during the campaign, and some of the substance of it did relate back to

01:02:46.880 the fact that I was being investigated by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice on some of these

01:02:51.480 same issues. So did it have a determining factor? Well, so it's also, you know, even when I,

01:02:58.300 and this has happened to me repeatedly, you know, because I've interviewed a lot of people

01:03:01.980 who've been pilloried and canceled, you know, and when I was ill a while back, and when I sort of

01:03:11.280 re-emerged into the podcast sphere after a couple of years, the first person I interviewed was Abigail

01:03:17.820 Schreier, and she'd just written a book called Irreversible Damage about this absolutely god-awful

01:03:24.060 catastrophe on the trans front that physicians and psychologists are collaborating and producing,

01:03:31.120 and much to our shame, let's say. And, you know, Abigail had been pilloried by all the usual suspects,

01:03:40.740 and tarred and feathered, and with the brush of disgust and contempt. And, you know, even though

01:03:49.560 I've been through this and known many people who've been through it, every time I pick another one of the

01:03:55.180 deplorable people to interview, like you, there's a part of me that goes along with that unthinking mob

01:04:04.200 mentality, such that once the accusation has been made, I'm forced to confront my suspicion that,

01:04:14.200 well, where there's smoke, there must be fire, you know, that, well, Dr. Jensen, I mean, you haven't

01:04:19.900 been investigated just once, and not even twice. You've been investigated, what is it, seven times now?

01:04:26.580 Six times.

01:04:27.400 Is it seven? Six times. And so, you're really telling me that you're guilty of all charges in

01:04:37.840 six separate investigations over multiple years? Well, it's a hell of a lot easier to believe that,

01:04:44.680 no, you know, even though maybe you're technically innocent on some of the charges, there's something

01:04:50.860 you're up to, and it's easy to put you in the basket of people who shouldn't be validated, at least.

01:04:58.820 And, you know, it's partly because there's a lot of people, and if anyone is disgraced,

01:05:05.560 it's easy to put them in the basket of people you shouldn't interact with. And that means this

01:05:11.400 accusatory power that we've put in the hands of anonymous trolls,

01:05:16.740 and allowing them to take the grip of the controls of boards with as much power as the Minnesota Board

01:05:25.680 of Medical Practice is, what, it's a power that's extraordinarily

01:05:34.300 deep and far-reaching, and can easily destroy people's lives.

01:05:42.640 And there's something that's truly awful about that, and it's not surprising that people move

01:05:50.020 away from you once you've been tarred by that brush.

01:05:53.920 During the course of the campaign, a large thrust of my opponent's strategy was to paint me as extreme.

01:06:02.700 And you're spotlighting that exactly correctly. I think that human nature is such that when something

01:06:11.060 adverse happens to someone else, the human mind looks for some justification. Well, that person

01:06:19.680 maybe did this, or maybe that person could have done this and didn't, or maybe that person had it

01:06:26.220 coming. And that kind of underlying subconscious part of all of us does color the way we look at that

01:06:38.300 person. So I had that. Now, we'll even do that to ourselves.

01:06:42.880 We do. We do it to our loved ones. We do it to friends. We look for that justification,

01:06:49.560 because when we find it, or if we can conjure it up, then we can say, that's why it didn't happen to me.

01:06:57.720 And so when I was running for governor, I think there was a tremendous skepticism thrown around my

01:07:05.760 character. Could that have been determining in terms of the outcome? Absolutely. One of the things I've

01:07:12.160 heard from people after the governor's race was they said, Doc, the real you never got transmitted

01:07:19.960 to the everyday masses of voters who never had a chance to meet you. They don't really know who you

01:07:27.620 are. They see you as this demonized villain that the Democrats had said, he's a part of the big lie.

01:07:37.100 And I think you're absolutely right. Human nature is to look for the justification as to why someone

01:07:42.360 else is suffering and you're not. And generally, there'll be some overhanging residue that even as

01:07:50.940 we try to thoughtfully look at the situation, we cannot escape that residual, well, maybe he or she had it

01:07:59.460 coming.

01:08:00.980 Yeah, yeah. In some manner. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's an easy default position. It's very difficult to fight

01:08:06.500 over that and to, well, that's why the presumption of innocence in the legal systems in civilized

01:08:12.740 countries is such a complete bloody miracle. Because I also noticed as a clinician, you know, that I was

01:08:18.640 often dealing with people who had been accused in one way or another, often by themselves of some

01:08:25.000 malfeasance. And I always took the case that my role as a counselor was to begin with the presumption

01:08:33.000 of innocence and to investigate based on that presumption, but also to help my client, even in regards

01:08:43.440 to themselves, to start with the presumption of innocence. So if someone was feeling very

01:08:48.460 guilty and was depressed, for example, which is a very, that's a situation where the adversary is within

01:08:54.720 and is eating you, eating your soul, so to speak, you have to mount a strong defense. And, you know, that means

01:09:03.200 that you should take a very careful look at your weaknesses and your transgressions, but you should do that

01:09:10.580 from the presumption, from the initial presumption of innocence. And so, and that's a hard thing to learn, too,

01:09:17.400 when you're being prosecuted in the manner that you've been prosecuted, because in order to withstand that

01:09:23.460 without falling prey to the trauma associated with derealization, you have to get your ducks in order so that

01:09:33.560 you can justify to yourself your own claims of innocence. And that means you also have to learn to do that without a

01:09:41.400 kind of careless self-righteousness, and also without that proclivity to move toward more extreme views,

01:09:49.140 which does also lurk as a temptation under such circumstances.

01:09:55.120 I recall vividly when I used to do work with chemical dependency patients, one of the steps of

01:10:02.240 the AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, was to take that ruthless inventory of ourselves. And I think

01:10:11.120 you're absolutely right. That ability to take a ruthless inventory of your shortcomings

01:10:17.580 comes in conflict with the need to presume that you yourself are innocent. So oftentimes,

01:10:25.800 the guilt is deep. It's hard to remove. And I think when I went through the trauma of my 30-year-old

01:10:35.260 brother committing suicide, one of the things that troubled me most in the aftermath was that as a

01:10:43.260 physician, I wasn't evidently able to help him navigate a path through that guilt inventory

01:10:54.920 kind of process that his life was taking him on. And so in the end, some element of justification

01:11:04.760 within him said, it's okay for me to end this because I'm not making my way, and the world would

01:11:13.060 be better. I would be better not here. And I'll never forget that, that that indeed is the case,

01:11:19.660 that we don't always presume that we're innocent. We're doing that ruthless inventory,

01:11:24.380 even if we want to cut ourselves some slack. It's tough.

01:11:28.780 Yeah, yeah. It's a very, it's a very, and that's especially, I would say, true again for a

01:11:34.060 conscientious person because you're going to take yourself, there's going to be a tendency to take

01:11:39.200 yourself to task very harshly. And that can easily be weaponized by people who don't have that

01:11:46.220 proclivity and would like to use it against you. The woke, guilt-mongering left have become

01:11:51.160 absolutely expert at this, much to the chagrin and danger of competent and hardworking people

01:11:58.380 everywhere. Okay, so now you're in your fifth set of investigations with 18 allegations in the middle

01:12:05.860 of a gubernatorial race. And despite the fact that there's 18, they're all dismissed. And yet,

01:12:14.140 they investigate you a sixth time. So let's go to the sixth time.

01:12:21.180 The fifth investigation started in November of 2021 and was literally put on hold during the

01:12:28.560 course of the campaign. So that was present for about 12 months of the campaign. When it was

01:12:34.200 resurrected in January of this year, a sixth investigation was initiated with additional

01:12:42.220 allegations being put forward. That was literally combined into a fifth and sixth investigation

01:12:49.920 together, which culminated in our meeting last week with the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice.

01:12:56.560 And it was at that meeting where the fifth and sixth combined investigations with its commensurate

01:13:02.320 18 allegations were completely dismissed. It was very brief. The letter I just received a couple of

01:13:08.980 days ago was, these allegations have all been dismissed. This case is closed.

01:13:15.140 Okay, so let me ask you some questions about that. So now, how many allegations in total

01:13:21.220 do you suppose have been levied against you by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice?

01:13:30.020 It was difficult to tell. They've said- Yeah, right.

01:13:33.280 Yeah, because one, two, three, four, five, and six. And it seemed that with the sixth investigative

01:13:40.180 letter, they were dredging up allegations that had already been addressed and dismissed.

01:13:47.320 So as I read through the document, it says there's 18 allegations. I could find nine real clearly.

01:13:55.060 Then I could find some other comments that may have represented an allegation.

01:14:00.980 But I never saw a list of, these are the 18 allegations that Dr. Jensen has been accused of.

01:14:08.740 So it was a little bit- So that makes the Kafkaesque nightmare perfect, because now you don't even know

01:14:14.140 what precisely it is that you're accused of. That makes defense a lot more difficult.

01:14:20.760 So- I said that during my- And of course, that's the point.

01:14:22.820 Yeah. During our conference, I was asked something about a conspiracy theory. And I said,

01:14:31.140 could I please know what conspiracy theory I am purported to have advanced? Someone would ask me

01:14:38.140 a question about an off-label medication. And I can say, can I please know which medication we're

01:14:44.920 talking about? Someone would say that, well, your writing wasn't very legible on this chart note.

01:14:49.420 Can you please show me which word you couldn't read? It was extremely difficult. In fact, during the

01:14:56.620 course of the conference, I did at one point in time say, this feels like goulash. I don't know

01:15:04.120 what to respond to because the generalities are so vague. How can I possibly know what you want me to

01:15:11.300 say? I said, I've given thousands and thousands of speeches, comments on the Senate floor during the

01:15:17.860 campaign, in podcasts, on videos, and someone says, you did this. Show me. Just show me. Perhaps one of

01:15:28.020 the most compelling things I did at the end of the board of medical practice conference, I looked at my

01:15:33.180 accusers and I just sort of shrugged my shoulders and I said, I did nothing wrong. And I stopped.

01:15:44.020 Why do you think that was effective? Well, my attorney was nervous about it because he felt that

01:15:52.720 the tenor of the meeting was moving towards a desire to resolve the issue and not have it be

01:16:01.580 disagreeable or contentious. And when I made that comment, he told me later on, he said, Scott, he said,

01:16:07.700 you made me flinch. I was concerned that that was going to be too bold a statement, too in your face.

01:16:15.340 I did nothing wrong. But he said, I think it worked out perfectly because I think it did give

01:16:20.600 the board of medical practice members a clear sense that I do care about the standard of care. I do care

01:16:30.100 about not doing things wrong. And I don't think I did anything wrong. Earlier in the meeting,

01:16:35.800 I had made the challenge to the board. I said, I think it's critically important that people

01:16:40.300 understand the difference between misinformation and disinformation. I said, disinformation is the

01:16:46.520 deliberate attempt to mislead with false or deceptive information. Misinformation is simply

01:16:53.760 someone's truth on a Monday being demonstrated on a Friday that it's not the situation.

01:16:59.100 Well, I think that the terms misinformation and disinformation are unerring markers that the

01:17:08.820 person who is using them has already become entirely confused about what constitutes the

01:17:15.360 manner in which the world operates. I mean, first of all, who's to say who's wrong about what when the

01:17:23.380 issues are contentious? There's not some board of overseers that has unerring insight into what

01:17:30.100 constitutes the appropriate facts at hand. The world would be a very straightforward place if it

01:17:35.600 was that simple. And I've seen the rise of these terms misinformation and disinformation over the last

01:17:42.040 two or three years and watch that with dawning horror because the whole semantic substructure of that

01:17:50.480 classification system is based on the presupposition that the dividing line between fact and fiction

01:17:57.300 or fact, fiction, and lie is obvious to anyone with the proper objective stance. And the question

01:18:06.060 is always begged, well, just who is this wizard that can see so clearly through all the merc,

01:18:12.660 especially not post hoc. And as soon as you even allow those terms to exist, misinformation and

01:18:19.440 disinformation, you're already going to find yourself in an extraordinarily dark place.

01:18:24.960 And so, so, um, do you think, have you received anything approximating an apology? And do you think

01:18:34.360 that, or a hint of culpability on the part of the people who are sitting on this board? And do you think

01:18:43.440 that there's any chance that there's any chance that they'll leave you alone?

01:18:48.600 I've not received any kind of apologetic overture from the board, and I don't expect to. I believe

01:18:55.640 that those members believe that they are carrying out the mission of their regulatory agency to the

01:19:01.860 best of their ability. As you indicated earlier, oftentimes-

01:19:06.460 Why do you believe that? Look, man, they've gone after you. Look, if they'd gone after you once,

01:19:13.180 and you defended yourself, and then they came after you again, and you defended yourself,

01:19:19.220 and that was all cleared up, I would say, hey, they might've been a little on the overzealous side,

01:19:27.360 but twice, that's within the realm of forgivable, willful blindness. Three times, that's a pattern.

01:19:38.780 Six times, that's not a pattern. That's absolute 100% proof. And so, if they're still believing that

01:19:48.240 what they were doing was undertaking their sworn duties as appropriately behaving members of the

01:19:56.220 Minnesota Board of Medical Practice, they have their heads in the sand. Because six, man, six is too

01:20:03.440 many. Three is too many. But six is definitely too many. So, that's why I was wondering also about any

01:20:11.820 nature of public statement. Because you would presume, if you still thought you were in the domain of the

01:20:17.620 VA, it was vaguely rational, that what the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice would do, would put out a

01:20:26.060 press release saying, Dr. Jensen has been the subject of numerous investigations now extending over

01:20:33.380 numerous years, including a variety of allegations. Some uncountable number, apparently, but let's say

01:20:42.640 2018. He has demonstrated his innocence in all cases. And we would like to ensure that everyone

01:20:51.340 knows that and the case is closed. Now, that's minimally professional responsible, as far as I'm

01:20:58.520 concerned. Minimally. Because you've been dragged through quite a lovely form of hell. Maybe you lost an

01:21:05.160 election because of it. And, you know, in some sense, that's too bad for you. But in a much deeper sense,

01:21:10.800 that's too bad for the citizens of Minnesota, whose electoral process was hijacked by an

01:21:16.740 inappropriate investigation. And that's not forgivable. And as far as I'm concerned, that's

01:21:22.480 on them. And so, I don't think that it's reasonable to presume that after the sixth failed investigation,

01:21:31.940 especially in a high-stakes situation like this, that what the board members were doing was just

01:21:38.580 within the realm of their appropriate, what would you say, domain of professional responsibility.

01:21:46.860 It's like, three times, guys, you're pushing it. Six times, you're way beyond the pale. Especially

01:21:53.060 when there's as much political context muddying up the circumstance as there is in your specific.

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01:22:30.720 Chase.

01:22:32.380 So, I would love to receive a letter, as you just mentioned, but I think that through this process,

01:22:39.200 I've perhaps moved a little bit from a naive optimist into somewhat more of a cynic when it

01:22:45.440 comes to regulatory agencies. I think that what I went through is something that virtually anybody

01:22:53.000 could go through. If it happened to me, it could happen to you. If you're subject to any regulatory

01:22:58.480 agency, I don't care if you own a hair salon, a restaurant, a pub, a dental clinic, if you're subject

01:23:05.060 to a regulatory agency, what we have seen is they are able to be weaponized. The Board of Medical

01:23:11.640 Practice does not believe that they were weaponized. I indicated to them, I don't think the individuals

01:23:17.440 were, but I think the agency collectively was. I think that, frankly—

01:23:23.100 How did they justify their claim that they weren't weaponized? How in the world could they be wrong

01:23:28.320 18 times? 18 is a lot of times to be wrong. You know, that's a pattern, too. So, how did they claim

01:23:37.340 that they weren't weaponized?

01:23:38.640 I think there's an underlying sense within many regulatory agencies, and perhaps the Minnesota

01:23:46.640 Board of Medical Practice is one, is that, as you said earlier, anybody that has 18 allegations

01:23:53.160 against him, there's got to be some element of he should be discredited. And during the course of our

01:24:01.680 meeting, there was a point in time where I was uncomfortable, where I said, are you going to

01:24:07.800 discredit anybody that doesn't perceive the situation as yourself? And I mentioned people

01:24:14.260 like Dr. Peter McCullough and Dr. Bhutacharya and Dr. Harvey Reich. And there was an absolute

01:24:22.080 willingness to dismiss those people as either discredited and irrelevant or whatever. I mean,

01:24:30.260 I remember the first time—

01:24:31.160 Yeah, well, there's nothing—no one less credible than Jay Bhattacharya, after all. I mean,

01:24:35.860 all you have to do is look at his record as an academic to understand very deeply how much

01:24:41.400 credibility he lacks.

01:24:42.320 I was proud of the fact that I believe I was one of the first physicians to sign on to the Great

01:24:50.020 Barrington Declaration way back in 2020, I believe it was. I thought that it was a brilliant document

01:24:58.920 identifying the strengths and weaknesses of what public health could do. The lockdowns weren't

01:25:05.120 working, the locking in of the nursing home patients to die horrific lonely deaths, the locking out of

01:25:11.020 students. All of this was problematic at a deep level. So when we saw this document come out and

01:25:17.660 say, listen, we know where this virus wants to hit. We know who's particularly vulnerable. Let's provide

01:25:25.920 laser-focused protection for those people and recognize that we have an economy to maintain.

01:25:32.480 We have a mental health responsibility. We cannot damage our children for decades to come.

01:25:39.080 And yet all of that was thrown aside in part because there's this contest going on where my

01:25:45.840 experts are more important than yours. My champions are more soundly rational than yours. There's this

01:25:53.920 constant victory.

01:25:55.420 So with the Great Barrington Declaration, which is something that Bhattacharya initiated, we now have

01:26:03.600 a total signature volume of a million people. It's 936,000.

01:26:14.360 47,000 of those are medical practitioners. So when you go in front of the Minnesota Board of Medical

01:26:21.800 Practice, you can say, well,

01:26:26.440 47,000 medical practitioners worldwide tend to agree that my misinformation was accurate.

01:26:39.200 And so on what grounds do you stand? And the answer is, well, the answer I get from places like the

01:26:46.460 Ontario College of Psychologists is we don't have to answer questions like that, which is... So at the

01:26:52.080 moment, I'm, as you know, I'm in a situation that's pretty similar to yours, although it didn't destroy

01:26:59.060 my political career. It certainly did in my clinical career. That's for sure. Much to the chagrin and

01:27:06.760 damage of my clients, by the way, some of whom I'd had... What? I had a relationship with that spanned

01:27:17.020 years and sometimes decades, which all burned up in an instant. And they're hauling me in front of

01:27:24.500 their... They've threatened to haul me in front of an interview because I told them to go to hell

01:27:30.660 with their insistence that I be re-educated interminably by their experts according to their

01:27:39.840 standards for a duration they choose. And so now I'm supposed to face the same sort of

01:27:45.820 in-person examining board that just grilled you over the coals, but they're delaying and delaying and

01:27:54.740 delaying because, well, why not? I suppose. I think they're suffering from the extreme delusion that

01:28:05.800 if they leave this hornet's nest alone, the hornets will leave, but that's definitely not going to happen.

01:28:14.540 So I've been calling on them publicly in Canada rather repeatedly to get on with the Inquisition, but

01:28:21.520 at the moment they're hiding behind a variety of bureaucratic idiocies to make the case that they have the

01:28:30.340 right to delay the investigation beyond the statutory limitations for it that they've even imposed upon

01:28:37.520 themselves, right? Because there's a 150-day period within which, if I understand correctly, within which

01:28:43.580 these are supposed to be, you know, brought to something approximating a conclusion once they've been

01:28:49.100 initiated so that you're not hung out to dry forever. But, you know, there's always a reason for

01:28:54.800 bureaucrats to get around their own bureaucratic limitations, and that's certainly happening in

01:29:00.340 the Canadian situation. But did they give you the sense that you better continue to step lightly,

01:29:10.320 Dr. Jensen, because with your reprehensible history of six investigations, it's only a matter of time

01:29:16.540 until you say something else cataclysmically inappropriate and we haul you in front of ourselves

01:29:22.800 again? Or do you think maybe they've gone back into their lair to find someone else to torment?

01:29:33.860 I think there was a clear understanding that there were a couple things that were really problematic

01:29:39.880 for them, and that if I would once again engage in that kind of activity, I would very likely appear

01:29:51.240 before them again. I think specifically... So what would those be? Yeah. I think specifically

01:29:57.780 utilizing off-label medications for the treatment of COVID-19. Physicians do that all the time.

01:30:05.780 Physicians do that all the time. I pointed that out to them. I pointed that out that many pediatricians

01:30:10.960 would have more than 50% of their prescriptions would be off-label. But specifically, the off-label use

01:30:16.780 of ivermectin was very problematic for them. And I think... And how dangerous is ivermectin if you look

01:30:23.400 at the VAERS reports? If you look at the history of the medication, the FDA data, and the VAERS data,

01:30:32.260 I think ivermectin for a five-day course is extremely safe. Now, whether or not... Looks like it's about as safe

01:30:40.420 as water, right? I don't think you... I think you'd have to scour the medical literature long and hard

01:30:46.480 before you found a drug with as low a proportion of side effects to benefit as ivermectin. There's

01:30:54.440 been millions of doses given, and the side effect reporting is so remarkably low that it's a kind of

01:31:03.540 miracle. So if you're going to administer agent off-label, it's hard for me to see how you could

01:31:11.720 do something that would bring about less likely harm than ivermectin. Do you think that's a reasonable

01:31:18.600 position? I think ivermectin is very safe. I think a lot of people don't realize that it's available

01:31:24.320 over the counter in topical forms. I think there's a medicine called Sklice that people can purchase on

01:31:30.240 their own, but I think that the Board of Medical Practice made it clear that this was a big deal.

01:31:36.300 I think they also made it very clear that what they perceive the standard of care to be,

01:31:41.260 they often talked about the minimum standard of care. They asked me, what do you think the minimum

01:31:46.260 standard of care is? And I said, I've never really thought about the minimum standard of care because

01:31:51.020 that's never what I've aspired to provide. I've always thought that I wanted to provide the best

01:31:55.840 quality of care. And I think that that's what I've done. So in terms of going forward,

01:32:02.660 your question is extremely pertinent. Is there going to be a seventh investigation?

01:32:08.500 Is someone from the public going to say, we're going to keep making Dr. Scott Jensen's life a living

01:32:15.480 hell until he shuts up? I'm going to guess that's going to happen. That's why I keep coming back to the

01:32:22.040 point. We do not have a clearly defined line that we need to have between my rights of First Amendment

01:32:33.200 speech and the Minnesota Board's obligation to make certain that my professional conduct as it pertains

01:32:43.740 to the practice of medicine is above the minimum standard of care. To me, that's what needs to happen

01:32:51.240 yet. And so I don't think we could possibly be done with this issue in America. I think we need the

01:32:58.820 courts to weigh in and say, listen, if states have put together statute language that violates the

01:33:07.560 Constitution, it's unconstitutional. If regulatory agencies are stepping beyond their bounds thinking

01:33:16.920 that they get to do this and this and this, and it's unconstitutional, it needs to be declared that.

01:33:23.000 Because if there's one thing that COVID-19 has done, it has put a spotlight on regulatory agencies

01:33:29.040 that can go after you, me, the hair salon person, the pub owner, the restaurant runner, everybody.

01:33:37.240 We are all at risk. Frankly, Dr. Peterson, that's why I wrote my book, We've Been Played.

01:33:43.380 Because I said, we need to make certain that we're seeing what's going on in our world.

01:33:48.240 The world of big tech and big pharma and big government colluding and having a similar mission,

01:33:55.600 it's happening right in front of our eyes. And I'm saying that people like you and me,

01:34:00.740 we have an obligation to expose that. We saw big government protect big pharma. We saw big pharma

01:34:07.440 in big tech scratching each other's back. We saw the DOD in the United States provided more money to

01:34:16.020 Pfizer in 2022 than they did to Boeing. The Department of Defense spends more money paying

01:34:24.380 Pfizer than they spend Boeing, which is going to make weaponry and aircraft that will protect our

01:34:32.500 nation. We've gone upside down and we need to stop this. Well, Dr. Jensen, that's a pretty good

01:34:41.160 place to end, I would say. Yeah, well, and for all of you professionals who are listening,

01:34:47.040 you're living in a fool's paradise if you don't think this is coming down the pikes for you.

01:34:52.460 And what do I mean by that? It's like, you know, you might not be investigated, although I wouldn't

01:34:58.500 rule that out. I would say, if I was advising a young professional now, I would say, you better

01:35:07.820 make the presumption and prepare for the likelihood that at some point, someone with the delightful

01:35:18.780 intrinsic nature of an Eastern European KGB informer of the 1970s is going to target

01:35:28.480 you for some resentful reason and the board of regulators of your profession is going to make

01:35:37.840 your life hell. So you better bloody well prepare for that, because that's coming along. But I would

01:35:43.940 also say that even if you're not unfortunate enough to have that happen, and you will be,

01:35:50.760 but even if you're not, you're in a situation now where as a licensed professional, you're going to

01:35:58.000 have to live in a certain amount of fear with regards to the freedom of your tongue. And that's

01:36:04.180 going to make you much less secure and happy person publicly. It's going to make you a much worse

01:36:11.140 professional. Because if you can no longer say what you think as a professional, with the attendant

01:36:18.440 risk of being wrong, you're no longer of any use to your patients or clients or customers. And so

01:36:27.780 that's a pretty damn dismal outcome. The right outcome here is for the weaponized boards of regulatory

01:36:37.680 practice to be scuttled. Because they've been corrupted beyond repair. They've been weaponized partly by

01:36:48.420 easy access to the complaint process electronically. They've failed to update themselves with the

01:36:54.980 times. They put all the hands in the power of idiot, vengeful accusers. And they pose a far greater

01:37:03.560 threat to the public than they do a defense. And the legislators who are listening, especially on the

01:37:10.720 Republican side, the more conservative side, should wake up and understand that this is a catastrophe.

01:37:16.880 Because it's not just Dr. Jensen. It's all physicians. It's all psychologists. It's all

01:37:23.000 teachers. It's all lawyers, even more ominously, because the equivalent boards that regulate legal

01:37:30.160 practice are perhaps even worse. And that's really saying something. And so we're not in Kansas anymore.

01:37:38.720 And it's not 1947 with Jimmy Stewart. I don't know where the hell we are, but that's not it. And all of

01:37:48.400 you professionals who are listening, it would be better for you in the medium and long run that you

01:37:56.760 wake up and smell the coffee. And that when someone like Dr. Jensen with his stellar record is being

01:38:02.860 attacked by your idiot boards of regulation, that silence is not in your best interest.

01:38:10.620 And so, well, one of the things I've shared with many audiences is I've said the words of Martin

01:38:17.340 Niemoller in the mid-1940s when he wrote, when they came for the trade unionists, I didn't speak

01:38:23.700 up because I wasn't a trade unionist. When they came for the communists, I didn't speak up because I

01:38:28.360 wasn't a communist. When they came for the Jews, I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. And when they

01:38:33.620 came for me, there was nobody left to speak up. I don't know that there's any essay or poem written

01:38:40.600 that could be more compelling than that, is we have to speak up. We have to stand at your side. We have to

01:38:48.440 stand at my side. We have to recognize that we're not in Kansas anymore, that we should not be

01:38:56.340 threatened with the idea of being sent to a re-education camp simply because we express

01:39:03.080 our heartfelt perspective on a given situation. Amen to that. So, well, we'll see how the

01:39:11.620 College Inquisition in Ontario rolls itself out. They came after me with 13 allegations in the last

01:39:21.000 round. And, you know, I mounted my defense, which has been an extraordinarily expensive undertaking and

01:39:29.460 has all the complexities that you described. But they seem to be at a little bit of a stalemate at

01:39:34.960 the moment in relationship to their continued persecution. And as far as I'm concerned, this is

01:39:41.560 a no holds barred, all out war. And so I'm actually looking forward to being brought in front of the

01:39:48.520 disciplinary committee because, as I understand it, they videotape it. And I'm going to put the

01:39:54.960 videotape on YouTube after I'm done. And we'll see who inquires into the conduct of who.

01:40:03.380 So, Dr. Peterson, to that point, when the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice introduced themselves at

01:40:10.540 our meeting last week, they advised me that it was going to be recorded. So I asked if I could have a

01:40:16.300 copy of the recording and I was told I would not be able to have a copy of the recording

01:40:20.180 unless our proceedings advanced along a pathway whereby legal statute would allow me to have a

01:40:29.760 copy. But otherwise, I would not have a copy of that. And I thought that was interesting. I thought

01:40:34.940 that it was interesting that they were going to record it. I would not get a copy unless potentially

01:40:39.680 we went to another step where I would formally and make a legal request for that. So I did find that

01:40:46.600 interesting as well. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it should be the case that these it's it's necessarily it's

01:40:53.860 necessary now for these to be these especially the final stages of these inquisitions to be a matter of

01:41:01.000 public record. And in my case, one way or another, they're going to be a matter of public record.

01:41:08.040 So I requested that anyway, we're meeting. I requested that our meeting not be zoom. I wanted

01:41:14.680 it face to face. I wanted it Facebook live streamed and I wanted it open to the public and I wanted to

01:41:20.780 copy the recording. And the only one I got was I did get a face to face meeting. Right, right,

01:41:28.080 right. Well, congratulations on your newfound freedom, so to speak. It's, it's good to see that

01:41:37.340 you've managed to come through this more or less intact and that you're not, you know, down for the

01:41:44.480 count. Because plenty of people, I've really been struck to my soul, I would say, watching what this has

01:41:54.200 done to people, the people that I've encountered who've been dragged through the mud in this manner.

01:42:00.220 It's, there's almost nothing you can do to someone who's strived hard to put forward a credible

01:42:08.300 professional career and made the sacrifices necessary to ensure that that occurs than to denigrate their

01:42:16.560 reputation and to accuse them of professional malfeasance. It's an unbelievably effective weapon.

01:42:23.200 And when wielded properly, it wreaks tremendous havoc on people's lives, of course, including the

01:42:29.960 lives of the people who are being served by that professional, upon whose reputation at minimum,

01:42:38.000 a Paul has now been cast and faith, what shaken, even under the best circumstances. And so it's good to

01:42:47.260 see that you're bloody but unbowed, so to speak. And I hope the bastards leave you the hell alone from

01:42:53.580 here on in, but they probably won't. So forearmed is for, what is it? Forewarned is forearmed. And so I

01:43:02.920 guess you've been through this enough now to know what to do the next time that the snake comes around

01:43:07.800 inject some more venom. Good talking to you today, sir.

01:43:14.120 Thank you. I appreciate it very much. I do.

01:43:18.560 Hello, everyone. I would encourage you to continue listening to my conversation with my guest

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349. Tyranny Through Weaponized Bureaucracy ｜ Dr. Scott Jensen

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