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SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Illinois (LifeSiteNews) – An American serviceman fighting his possible discharge from the United States Air Force for resisting the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate is in the process working to raise awareness of the unlawful and potentially fraudulent nature of the mandate.

In August 2021, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin directed the secretaries of all military branches to “immediately begin full [COVID] vaccination of all members of the Armed Forces” and “impose ambitious timelines for implementation.” Nearly 25,000 service members remain unvaccinated, seeking exemptions, according to Liberty Counsel’s April 26, 2022, Navy Seal 1 v. Biden motion to Federal District Court Judge Steven Merryday.

Some have secured exemptions for non-religious reasons, but the military has been largely unwilling to approve religious objections to the shots, all of which were either developed or tested with the use of fetal cells from aborted babies. In December, the military began discharging soldiers for vaccine refusal, provoking several lawsuits.

Last October, USAF Master Sergeant Robert Biermann applied for a religious exemption to the mandate, rooted in a belief that taking the vaccine would violate his “sincerely held beliefs” in “the sacredness of human life and [against] self-harm to the bodily Temple of God,” and in January he applied for a medical exemption on the grounds that he had natural immunity from prior infection, as well as for contraindications in his medical history. Both were denied, as was a February appeal of the religious accommodation decision.

On January 26, he also applied for a medical supply exemption to the mandate on the grounds that while BioNTech’s Comirnaty and Moderna’s Spikevax are the only COVID vaccines to be fully licensed by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), neither is currently available for ordering or distribution according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) or the shot manufacturers’ Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) letters. By contrast, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is still distributed under an EUA.

His request was denied the same day on the grounds that Comirnaty and Pfizer-BioNTech were supposedly the same product. Biermann disputed that claim in a February 18 Inspector General complaint, and says he was told to “relay the matter up my chain of command or to allow them to refer my complaint to” the commander of the Air Force’s 375th Medical Group.

Biermann explains that FDA licensing vs. EUA status is a substantive legal difference, as the two vaccines are labeled and packaged differently, and “mislabeling or misrepresentation” to the contrary “could be considered a violation of” federal law “which prohibits the misbranding of products introduced into interstate commerce.” For support, he cites U.S. District Court Judge Allen Winsor, who wrote last December that “the FDA nowhere claims that EUA vaccine had been licensed as ‘interchangeable’ with Comirnaty.”

On April 11, he was given five calendar days to “begin the COVID-19 vaccination regimen and the influenza vaccine” or “submit a request to separate or retire.”

Three days later, Biermann took the influenza vaccine, and inquired to the Scott Air Force Base Allergy & Immunization Clinic about the availability of Comirnaty. He was told that it and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine “are the same product,” despite their aforementioned differences. He later received clarification that only EUA Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna were available.

He wrote to his superiors that he was “legally and practically unable to fulfill your Order to receive a mandatory COVID-19 vaccine,” explaining his lawful reasons at length.

Biermann detailed the above and more in an April 18 memo shared with LifeSiteNews. In addition to the aforementioned points, the memo notes that the Defense Secretary’s memo directing the mandates stated that “Mandatory vaccination against COVID-19 will only use COVID-19 vaccines that receive full licensure from the Food and Drug Administration.”

He argues that the legal conditions necessary to mandate an EUA vaccine instead have not been met, such as notice of prior consent including side effects and the option to accept or refuse, and that this consent requirement can only be waived by the president, which has not happened.

In his aforementioned ruling, Judge Winsor also wrote that the Department of Defense “acknowledges that the President has not executed a wavier under this section […] so as things now stand, the DOD cannot mandate vaccines that only have an EUA.”

The master sergeant has requested that negative personnel actions against him be stayed pending resolution of the matter, and that he be assisted in obtaining a medical supply exemption as FDA products are unavailable. He, however, was verbally informed that his base clinic does not have the ability to grant medical supply exemptions in their electronic shot record system, the same system military medical technicians update every time a service member receives a shot.

“In closing, I have devoted my entire adult life to the faithful execution of my sworn oath of enlistment — to support and defend the Constitution, and fulfill the orders given me, according to the UCMJ” (Uniform Code of Military Justice), Biermann says. “As a [senior non-commissioned officer], I have not ceased from my aim to exemplify our Air Force Core Values, and promote good order and discipline […] In fact, forcing me to receive an emergency use authorized product, contrary to Federal laws, would constitute an unlawful order.”

This week, Biermann received his first letter of reprimand, to which he is responding with a dozen letters from colleagues attesting to his character. He has submitted an informal complaint under Article 138 of the UCMJ, as well as a request for congressional inquiry into the matter.

While defenders of vaccine mandates are quick to point out that the military has long required soldiers to vaccinate against a range of diseases due to the harsh and exotic locales soldiers are sent to for extended periods of time and the close quarters they typically share with one another, previous vaccines have historically been subjected to far more evaluation and development time before being put into widespread use than the COVID shots received during their accelerated clinical trials.

In late February, during a COVID-19 vaccine hearing held by Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, attorney Thomas Renz presented medical billing data from the Pentagon’s Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) showing that 2021 saw drastic spikes in a variety of diagnoses for serious medical issues over the previous five-year average, including hypertension (2,181%), neurological disorders (1,048%), multiple sclerosis (680%), Guillain-Barre syndrome (551%), breast cancer, (487%), female infertility (472%), pulmonary embolism (468%), migraines (452%), ovarian dysfunction (437%), testicular cancer (369%), and tachycardia (302%).

In a statement to left-wing “fact-checking” outlet PolitiFact, Defense Health Agency’s Armed Forces Surveillance Division spokesperson Peter Graves confirmed the existence of the records but claimed that a conveniently-timed “data corruption” glitch made the pre-2021 numbers appear far lower than the actual numbers of cases for those years, which PolitiFact took at face value and the media has been largely uninterested in investigating further.

“This is the greatest battle we will ever fight in for the cause of freedom,” Master Sergeant Biermann says, recognizing that the stakes are enormous not just for this world but also for the next. “I need to keep the best attitude and testimony through all of this, because people need to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Their eternal state depends upon it.”

If you wish to reach MSgt Biermann, please contact LifeSiteNews via one of the methods listed here.

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