Military Readies for Lawsuits | CLIP | Capitol Report

The U.S. military is basically, it looks like it's getting ready to get sued left, right, and center right now. The U.S. military looks like it's battening down the hatches because they're about to get hit by lawsuits from just about every direction because they were violating, it appears, people's rights to religious freedom by, you know, denying people religious exemptions to the COVID-19 mandates and even targeting people in really extreme ways, as I previously the documentary might have seen about this. But some new information is coming out on this, not just with the updates we've had with COVID-19, but with other things as well. Let me show you. Epoch Times is saying this, Pentagon in potential non-compliance with the law, potential non-compliance with laws is a fancy way of saying they're violating the law, potential non-compliance with law in denying religious exemption request to vaccine mandate according to a leaked memo, meaning the military is knowingly violating the law if they're continuing to restrict people from getting religious exemptions for COVID-19. The shots, I shouldn't call them vaccines at this point. It says here the Department of Defense has been in potential non-compliance. It's like military humor right there, potential non-compliance with standards for reviewing and communicating denials of religious accommodation request to the vaccine mandate. The Pentagon's watchdog wrote to the Secretary of Defense in a June memo obtained by the Epoch Times. We got it, folks. The June 2nd memo by Acting Inspector Director Sean W. O'Donnell stated that after reviewing documents of complaints from service members who were denied religious accommodations, the IG's office found a trend of generalized assessments rather than the individualized assessments that is required by federal law and DOD and military service policies. What does that mean? It means they were making blanket policies to restrict religious exemptions, very likely, which again, I'll show you the trailer in a little later probably, but as I exposed in the documentary we did about how the military was discriminating against religion, if anybody wants to apply for religious exemption, that request needs to be looked at individually because in the United States, each person is able to have their own interpretation of religion. The definition of religious liberty in the United States is not like your official Catholic or official Baptist or official whatever you might be. It's not like there's one interpretation of religion in the United States and whatever the institute of religion is, that's what you have to follow. In America, your understanding, your deeply held belief is your religion. And if you deeply believe that you shouldn't get the shot, that's your religion. That's fine. That's protected in the United States. There's people who take it to a joke level, or the atheists, for example, claim they worship like a spaghetti monster and they wear pasta strainers on their head. And there are people who've gotten religious exemptions to wear pasta strainers on their heads, because even if people are joking with it, because of religious liberty in the U.S. and because you can do whatever you want, basically, if you know how to play the game, it's defended. That is something that is respected, because that's how the system is set up in the United States. You can say that your ancient dead grandma, who you believe ascended to heaven, told you personally to not get the shot, and if that's your deeply held belief, well, all power to you, bro. That's the way religious exemptions work in the United States. Now, the military was not playing that game. The military was setting forward blanket restrictions on this, where they were not looking at individual requests. Although I made some ridiculous examples of religious exemptions, a lot of people have very legitimate religious exemption requests when it came to COVID-19 and the shots. And with that, too, again, we spoke with several of them. These people do have sincerely held beliefs, which is the technical term for it, to the extent that people are giving up their retirements. We interviewed people—I spoke with people personally—who believe this so strongly that they're willing to basically, one, be punished, be court-martialed, face punishment, lose their jobs, get a dishonorable discharge that will make it very difficult for them to get future employment, and lose their retirements after spending close to two decades in the military. Do you think someone would risk that with very little hope of basically getting any recognition or anything else and just being punished for it? Do you think anybody would do that if they did not sincerely believe in what they were doing? That's the degree to which many of the people I personally spoke to in the U.S. military believe in what they're doing and refusing to get the shots for COVID-19. And the military was not recognizing that. Now, according to this memo, the military appears to be aware that by not recognizing that, by creating blanket restrictions, that they're not going to recognize exemptions regardless of what individuals say, that that fact is a violation of military law. That is a violation of the law, and the officers who are complying with that were violating the law by extension. Maybe they'll be court-martialed for enforcing that. Frankly, they should be court-martialed for enforcing that. Now, with this, they're saying that it's required by federal law and DOD and military services. They're not allowed to do this. Again, they're not just violating military law, they're violating federal law and even Pentagon law. It's three levels of law they're violating, possibly, by enforcing what they were doing. Now, it says, the purpose of the memo was to inform the Secretary of Defense of potential noncompliance with standards for reviewing and documenting the denial of religious accommodation requests of service members identified through complaints submitted to the IG's office, Inspector General's office. The denial memorandum we reviewed, the memo says, generally did not reflect an individualized analysis demonstrating that the senior military official considered the full range of facts and circumstances relevant to the particular religious accommodation request, the memo stated. The memo provided an example of such cursory treatment. An Air Force general used a one sentence statement to deny an airman's request. He said, I disapprove your request for exemption from vaccinations under the provision of AFI 48-110, paragraph 26B3. The acting Inspector General also noted that the volume and rate of denial decisions were concerning, because it's based on what we were hearing, they were denying just about all of them. But they're saying an average of 50 denials per day were processed over a 90-day period, according to the memo. And it says, assuming a 10-hour workday with no breaks or attention to other matters, the average review period was about 12 minutes for each package, suggesting, again, that it was a blanket denial and not something that considered individual cases, which is a violation of federal law, DOD law, and military law. He says, such a review period seems insufficient to process each request in an individualized manner, and still perform the duties required for their positions. And the acting IG drew attention to DOD instructions on this, and so on. I won't get into all this, because it keeps going on. But the memo signed by, there was a more on this too, including the fact that Lloyd Austin was even alerted of this. You know, Lloyd Austin being appointed by Biden, and when contacted by the Epoch Times about the memo, a spokesperson for the Inspector General's office sent an email saying the memorandum in question is controlled, unclassified information will not be released at this time. But they did not dispute the authenticity of it. Now, why does