The Republican congressman representing Florida's Panhandle participated in an X-Space that lasted more than three hours with more than 20,000 individual listeners hosted by the authors and signatories of the Declaration of Military Accountability—a letter signed by more than 200 military personnel and veterans demanding sanctions for the officers who enforced President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
“Many of you see the role I play in trying to ask tough questions and ripen these issues and build coalitions of lawmakers to make more strident demands and definitely direction,” said Rep. Matthew L. "Matt" Gaetz II, who sits on the Armed Services Committee.
— Brad Miller (@BradMiller1010) January 1, 2024
“We’re getting more progress, we educate people, but what was so impactful about this letter today is that it opens up more of the bottom up and the veteran outside in review and fair criticism of these decisions," he said. "I think we should get other policymakers to embrace the themes you've laid out.”
Gaetz said he and his allies in Congress are always looking for new information about the COVID-19 vaccines and the military mandate.
“There’s times where people have changed policies because we've learned something from people on the ground,” he said.
“People don't want to become a federal whistleblower, but maybe they've got a photograph of a slideshow to ask somebody about, maybe they've got a quick video of something that would showcase a violation of law,” he said. “That's the type of information that we're always looking to get so that we can make things right.”
The letter organizers released it Jan. 1 after weeks of drafts and edits, said one of the X-Space co-hosts, John Frankman, a former captain in Special Forces.
Declaration emailed to General Brown at 4 a.m.
The X-Space host Brad Miller, who resigned from the Army in 2022 as a lieutenant colonel and battalion commander after more than 19 years of Army service, said he sent the declaration to Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and 17 others.
“At 4 a.m., Eastern Time, an email was sent by myself to the chairman of joint chiefs and some other senior military officials, making them aware of the Declaration of Military Accountability," Miller said.
The one-page declaration reads in part:
Some service members became part of our ever-growing veteran homeless population, some developed debilitating vaccine injuries, and some even lost their lives. In an apparent attempt to avoid accountability, military leaders are continuing to ignore our communications regarding these injuries and the laws that were broken.
For GEN Milley, ADM Grady, GEN McConville, ADM Gilday, ADM Lescher, Gen Brown, Gen Berger, Gen Smith, VADM Kilby, VADM Nowell, VADM Fuller, LTG Martin, Lt Gen Davis, MG Edmonson, GEN Williams, ADM Fagan, VADM Buck, Lt Gen Clark, MG Francis, LTG Dingle, Lt Gen Miller, RADM Gillingham, and numerous others;
These individuals enabled lawlessness and the unwilling experimentation on service members. The moral and physical injuries they helped inflict are significant. They betrayed the trust of service members and the American people. Their actions caused irreparable harm to the Armed Forces and the institutions for which we have fought and bled.
These leaders refused to resign or take any other action to hold themselves accountable, nor have they attempted to repair the harm their policies and actions have caused. Since there has yet to be any accountability, the undersigned give our word to do everything morally permissible and legally possible to hold our own leadership accountable. We intend to rebuild trust by demonstrating that leaders cannot cast aside constitutional rights or the law for political expediency.
While implementing the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, military leaders broke the law, trampled constitutional rights, denied informed consent, permitted unwilling medical experimentation, and suppressed the free exercise of religion. Service members and families were significantly harmed by these actions. Their suffering continues to be felt financially, emotionally, and physically.
He said the objective was to kick off the new year with a bang and get the jump on the senior leaders, who would not be in the office on New Year's Day.
Another retired Green Beret, Dr. Pete C. Chambers, retired as a lieutenant colonel after a career that included combat tours as a Special Operations flight surgeon, said he had a confrontation with a Texas National Guard major general over the military vaccine mandate and whether it was a lawful order.
“I was a task force surgeon down on the border, Texas National Guard Operation Lone Star; I had about 3,000 troops in the command that I took care of,” the doctor said.
The general told Chambers that he had to stop counseling Guardsmen that it was their choice whether or not to take the vax: “Our numbers look terrible.”
Flynn salutes declaration, concerned for active-duty signatories
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who retired as the commanding general of the Defense Intelligence Agency after 33 years in uniform, told listeners he was most impressed by the declaration’s posture as coming from the ground up.
“It comes from kind of what we call the rank-and-file, and it just sends a bigger, stronger message,” said President Donald J. Trump’s first national security advisor.
“I think the true leaders rise to the occasion within the armed services, whether it's our active flag ranks or maybe we do have some civilians that are in positions, critical positions that will respect what it is that they're hearing,” Flynn said.
“I do have an extraordinary respect for everybody that put their name on the line here because I know that folks that are in service—they going to feel some pain here,” he said.
UPDATE: Kacy joined X! I told her a lot of people were asking, so y’all can follow her here: @KacyJDixon 🙏 Thank you all for your support! https://t.co/fFGmFjv5b0
— Jordan Karr (@JordanLkarr) December 22, 2023
Many of the 231 signatories are now out of uniform, but some are still in active service, such as Navy Commander Robert A. Green Jr., the author of "Defending the Constitution behind Enemy Lines: A Story of Hope for Those Who Love Liberty," who spoke about how the leaders who coerced servicemembers into getting the COVID-19 vaccine knew that vaccines had issues.
“What we've been seeing is that they're trying to dismiss, pretend like nothing never happened: ‘Hey, we all made mistakes. We didn't know what's going on,” he said.
“They did know,” he said. “We showed them thousands of internal memos and emails and complaints and reports, and they were all ignored because so many of our most senior leaders decided that they would rather continue in their career.”
“Part of what I wanted to do with this letter was going on the offensive,” the commander said. “This latest offensive is all about making sure that they know there is risk.”
Organizers launch petition to support the Declaration of Military Accountability
Green said vax opponents started to see success in the federal courts, but when the fiscal year 2023 Pentagon budget ended the vax mandate, judges began dismissing their cases as moot, even though Congress took no other action to right wrongs.
“We have been fighting some of this evil in the ranks in the military, in our nation in a lot of different ways,” he said.
“It did not declare it unlawful, which it was by the way it's implemented. It did not repair the harms done,” he said. “It did not restore anybody to their state before the mandate. It didn't do a lot.”
I join efforts with countless veterans discharged involuntarily, coerced into separation,and injured during the COVID mandate.The DOD leadership has acted shamefully without regard to the law. WE THE VETERANS are declaring publicly our pursuit of restoration to a JUST military. pic.twitter.com/hcyZxoOXRP
— Briana Cespedes (@Bri18Ces) January 1, 2024
The commander said because the declaration is now settled with the 231 signatories, the organizers have established an online petition for people to join the effort.
“We’ve written this petition so that other people can join the 231 people who signed the declaration, and they can throw their support behind it publicly as well,” he said.
“The petition is going to expand to include holding accountable anyone in any of the three branches of our government who have broken the law, who have trampled our rights and have denied us the ability to leave it freedom,” he said.
“We’re going to recall them. We're going to vote them out. We're going to do whatever it takes to win this country back, and so that's the impetus behind what we've done, why we've done this letter out there, why we're doing a petition,” Green said.
“We're going on the offensive because any other option, any country, over to people who want to make it, not America.”
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