By J.M. Phelps | Gateway Pundit
Over a month ago, former U.S. Army captain and Special Forces Green Beret John Frankman sent a letter to Republican House Armed Service Committee (HASC) members, petitioning for a series of hearings to be held to address the unlawfulness of the mandate as well as its effect on force readiness.
A 2022 hearing did little to address the accountability that needs to take place nor the longstanding repercussions to recruiting and retention that are still prevalent today.
In the year prior to the letter, Frankman—on behalf of himself and thousands of other service members—had already called upon various congressmen to hold such hearings.
“This is extremely important because we’re talking about the readiness of our military and our ability to defend ourselves,” he explained.
“Even while tens of thousands of service members were forced out and vaccine injuries were sustained, the national security of our country was not enough to make Congress rush to take advantage of the majority power they have in the House,” Frankman lamented.
As he and other service members continued to be ignored, Frankman took a more direct approach with his letter, admitting “it’s been almost a nonresponse.”
He attributed the silence to the prioritization of investigating the attempted assassination attempt of former president Donald Trump and the removal of Joe Biden from the 2024 election. “It would be understandable with everything going on had it not been three years since the mandate went out,” he shared.
“In this period time, they’ve held hearings on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” Frankman pointed out. While both are harmful to the military, in his opinion, he asked, “How many people got kicked out for DEI versus how many were kicked out for the COVID shot?”
“You tell me which one has had the greatest impact to our national security?” Frankman questioned. In recent weeks, it appears some congressmen are receiving his message and may be willing to help. “I’m hopeful and happy to continue to engage with them,” he offered.
Advocating for Service Members
Frankman isn’t alone in his call for congressional action. Take, for example, former senior airman Briana Céspedes, who submitted a religious exemption request to the COVID-19 shot in September 2021.
She was unfairly punished, targeted with threats to her career, and spent more than 140 days in isolation as a result. She now represents and advocates for the thousands of involuntarily separated veterans, hoping senior officials of the Department of Defense will, one day, be held accountable for their actions.
According to her, the fallout from the tyrannical enforcement of the COVID-19 military shot mandate has “affected the entire morale of our military. She noted that “it’s kicked out tens of thousands, and we’re continuing to see low recruitment numbers.”
“Our nation’s security has been affected, so why haven’t we had a hearing in over two years about it?” Céspedes wondered. “Why can’t one single member within HASC call that forward to have specific hearings on this issue?”
“Every member of HASC has been encouraged by email to do this, and some of them were met face to face,” she said. “What we’ve told these congressmen is that we’re at your service, so use us,” she said.
“We have the data, we have the witnesses, and we can assist you, so please give us hearings that are more directed towards military matters.”
Roundtables concerning COVID and Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) data are not enough, she explained.
“Some congressmen appear to be listening to us, but they’re not calling out anything or anyone in a hearing,” Céspedes said. She praised Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) for being “the only member that’s really been willing to put himself out there and really speak up and not let go of the issue, [but added] we’re ready for more than discussion at this point.”
Regarding Rep. Gaetz, she noted, “he tried to put forward an amendment to the NDAA that would include back pay [for service members separated for refusing the shot].”
For service members, the effort was a disappointment, because “it didn’t even get through the House Armed Services Committee.”
“Many are saying we’re going to get change with a new president, but isn’t it Congress’s job to ensure the rights of the people even outside of a Republican president?” Céspedes asked.
“We’re being dismissed to wait for the next administration to do something, even though we have a Republican House, and that’s just a terrible disappointment to the thousands involuntarily separated by an unlawful mandate who continue to live with the repercussions of being kicked out.”
Echoing the words of others on the topic, she wants to see someone held accountable. But like the others, she’s been largely ignored.
Controller of Conscience: God or Government
Even the highest court in the federal judiciary has failed to help address the problem. On April 29, the Supreme Court denied a petition by 38 military chaplains to reinstate Alvarado v. Austin.
The case surrounded the blanket denial of religious accommodation requests to the now-rescinded 2021 military shot mandate.
Emphasizing his views don’t reflect those of the Department of Defense or the Department of the Air Force, the Gateway Pundit spoke to retired Army Col. Brad Lewis, one of the chaplains in the case who was “disheartened” by the Supreme Court’s decision to deny.
Lewis said he immediately sent a letter to all members of the HASC and Senate Committee on Armed Services (SASC), as well as the Speaker of the House, the ranking member of the House and both the Majority and Minority leaders in the Senate.
“The purpose of the letter was to voice my concern, as a chaplain in the Army, that the foundational principle of religious freedom in America is under assault and in danger,” Lewis disclosed.
He specifically called for the letter’s recipients to use their “influence and position to advocate for policies that protect religious liberty in the Armed Forces and hold military leadership accountable for punishing servicemembers who chose to follow their conscience.”
Four months later, Lewis has heard nothing, and no one has been held accountable for the mandate’s unlawful implementation and enforcement.
“I was always under the assumption that the men and women who were elected to Congress were there to represent ‘We the People” and were desirous of hearing from their constituents, in this case an active member of the Armed Services, but I have been proven wrong,” lamented Lewis. “To say I’m disappointed would be an understatement.”
Will Congress hear their plea?
PART 2
In part one of a two-part series, former and active members of the military shared concerns over the lack of attention Congress and senior military leadership have given as they relate to the now rescinded COVID-19 shot mandate and the future of America’s fighting force.
Disappointment in the system is a driving factor for many service members, according to Maj. (ret.) Jeremy “Weed” Sorenson, a former F-16 and A-10 fighter pilot, who now serves as Director of Guard and Reserve Affairs for Uniformed Services Justice & Advocacy Group (USJAG).
He told The Gateway Pundit that he has been pleading with members of HASC and the Department of Defense on behalf of many service members injured in Line of Duty for years.
This experience has often left him feeling like “I’m hitting my head against the wall,” because his efforts are repeatedly ignored or he’s “given lip service” from congressmen or their staffers, he explained.
In one recent example concerning the vaccine injuries sustained by Army Spec. Karolina Stancik while serving in the U.S. Army—on NewsNation with Chris Cuomo—Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) expressed interest in helping military members whose claims have been denied after being injured in Line of Duty.
Cuomo later followed up with Sorenson about the congressman’s public profession (at the 2:27 mark). Although he said he would “look into it,” Sorenson confirmed with The Gateway Pundit that Rep. Gimenez has still done little to nothing.
Sorenson said he works with clients who contemplate suicide because of injuries sustained while in the Line of Duty and “for Congress and the DOD to show no sense of urgency or concern in some of [USJAG’s cases] is absolutely disgusting.”
Suicides during the pandemic totaled over 1,400, dwarfing the number killed during that same period in combat or the number attributed to the COVID virus.
“These are my brothers, and it makes me sick,” Sorenson continued. “The injustices rendered against them must be corrected, and for this to happen, DOD has to stop misleading and lying to congressmen about their issues.”
“There’s much to be investigated and no one seems overly concerned to the point that “even whistleblower complaints are being ignored,” Sorenson said.
“While widespread, systemic mistreatment of injured U.S. military service members, like Stancik, continues to occur, the whole system’s so broken that congressmen and their committees would rather roll over than get the DOD to act.”
Ignoring the Information
The Gateway Pundit also spoke to Lt. Col. (ret.) Ivan Raiklin, a constitutional attorney, former Army Green Beret, and previous instructor at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) who shares similar concerns over congressional inaction.
He noted that the writings about moral injury by Brad Miller, a former Army lieutenant colonel and 101st Airborne battalion commander, have been shared with many HASC members and staff directors.
According to Miller, who was relieved of command in October 2021 for refusing to comply with a mandate, some service members who committed various acts related to the shot mandate did so in violation of their own moral code, and these actions have caused guilt or shame.
In addition, Raiklin noted that a copy of Defending the Constitution Behind Enemy Lines by Navy Cmdr. Robert A. Green, Jr., has also been given to members of HASC.
The book details “the military COVID-19 vaccine mandate, and the resistance to that mandate by service members who could not, in good conscience, go along.”
Cmdr. Green is also responsible for authoring the Declaration of Military Accountability (DMA) which was signed by 231 active service members and veterans from all branches of the military and shared publicly on Jan. 1, 2024.
The declaration pledges to hold military leaders accountable for the illegal conduct and harms caused by the DOD’s now-rescinded COVID-19 shot mandate. The declaration was subsequently entered into the Congressional Record by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) on Jan. 11.
Raiklin said, “It’s good that we’ve gotten to the subcommittee level in exposure, but we haven’t gotten to the overall committee level to address the root of the problem.”
For him, “This is the opportunity we’re fighting for…to share our stories with entire country so they fully understand how the mandate was totally unlawful and illegally implemented to the military.”
Raiklin applauds representatives Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Majorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Jim Banks (R-IN), Corey Mills (R-FL), and senators Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) for being receptive to the idea and for certain accountability efforts that many of them have supported.
However, for some representatives like HASC chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) and House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), who remain largely silent on the issue and have ignored his messages and the countless messages of others, he considers them “ineffective, toxic, feckless, stone-cold coward, uncritical thinking simps.”
And he hopes his words will anger them into action. “If not,” he said, “they’re absolutely, with no doubt in my mind, complicit in a cover-up.”
It Takes a Team
Efforts to reach Congress and senior military leadership are expanding. For Lt. Col. Carolyn Rocco, who has served over 20 years in the Air Force, she recognized immediately there was “a level of tomfoolery that accompanied the COVID shot mandate after it was being pushed less than a year from the start of production.”
She voiced her concerns about the legal, moral, medical, and ethical violations, but “they all fell on deaf ears,” she told The Gateway Pundit.
According to her, “The mandate was rescinded, not because the DOD realized their wrongdoings, but because they were forced by Congress via the 2023 NDAA.”
In an effort “to educate those in D.C.,” Lt. Col. Rocco said that she, Maj. Brennan Schilperoort, and others began sending a copy of Green’s book as well as whistleblower documentation to various government offices and officials.
Maj. Schilperoort has served over 16 years in the Air Force and said that when he learned about Austin’s mandate in late 2021, he tried to reach out to Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-AR), Rep. French Hill’s (R-AR), and Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-FL) offices as a whistleblower, attempting to explain that the DOD was denying service members their constitutional right to oppose the mandate.
“They did nothing at the time,” Maj. Schilperoort lamented. “Many people today still don’t even know that the COVID-19 vax mandate was illegal, and if they do, most don’t know why.”
“By mid-2022,” Maj. Schilperoort said, “it was readily apparent that top military leaders were not going to uphold their oaths to the Constitution on their own, so a small group of whistleblowers within the DOD’s lower ranks came forward with their complaint, but they too were ignored.”
This Whistleblower Report effort, also authored by Navy Commander Robert A. Green Jr., was directed to all members of the HASC and SASC regardless of political party.
It was ignored by every single one of them except Sen. Ron Johnson. Sen. Johnson, to his credit, immediately sent a Congressional Inquiry to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin demanding answers about what the Whistleblower Report contained, but was subsequently ignored.
“Frustrated, disheartened, and with no other options,” Maj. Schilperoort noted that on Jan. 1, the Declaration of Military Accountability was sent to each member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A subsequent military accountability petition was created, and others have joined their effort, garnering over 36,000 signatures to date.
In their continued fight against unlawfulness of the mandate, Lt. Col. Rocco and Maj. Schilperoort have spent thousands of dollars on shipping Green’s book as well as the Declaration of Military Accountability to over 120 members of Congress, including members of HASC, SASC, and the House Oversight Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. They also sent the book and the Declaration of Military Accountability to nearly 200 top military commanders.
Restoration and Accountability
The author spoke to dozens of service members who are equally concerned and have joined the call for restoration and accountability. Service members are not the only ones who acknowledge the need to correct the harms that were perpetrated on good service members.
In a recent speech, presidential candidate Donald Trump committed to rehiring and providing backpay to all service members who were kicked out of the military over the COVID mandate.
As for accountability, President Trump has committed to firing the leaders involved in perpetrating harmful policies like the recent transgender policies in the military and the embarrassing Afghanistan withdrawal.
For service members looking for accountability for the COVID mandate policies in the military, these are definitely steps in the right direction, according to many who serve or have served the nation.
For service members, accountability is a non-partisan requirement, and those who signed the Declaration of Military Accountability are committed to pursuing accountability regardless of who wins in November or the timeframe required.
All the active service members interviewed, including Lt. Col. Carolyn Rocco and Maj. Brennan Schilperoort, emphasized that their views are their own and that they don’t speak for the Department of Defense or any branch of service.
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