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Aug. 30, 2022 - RFK Jr. The Defender
15:19
Military Mandates with Cpl Catherine Arnett

Lance Corporal Catherine Arnett discusses her stand against military mandates with RFK Jr in this episode.

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Hey, everybody.
My guest today is Lance Corporal Catherine Arnett, who is a Marine Corps who is serving now in Japan.
We have been following her case on the Defender, and I'm happy to have you back with us.
Catherine Arnett filed for religious exemption Back to the COVID-19 vaccine, and she found herself in a crisis.
She now faces a court-martial.
The last time we talked to you, your court-martial was scheduled for August, I think, 3rd and 4th, and you have now rescheduled it to August 23rd and 24th.
Yes, sir.
And I just wanted to check back in with you because we We're so supportive of you, Catherine, for your courage on not only in serving our country, but also standing up for higher principles despite enormous, enormous pressures out to tell our audience what happened from the beginning.
Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you, Robert.
From the beginning, it all started of September 12th of 2021.
Last year, whenever they were starting to round up all the unvaccinated people and tell us, hey, eventually it's going to be mandatory, so you might as well get it now.
You can put in religious exemptions if you like.
Lo and behold, to our discovery, a few months later, they were all getting blanket denied, stamps of Disapproval that basically had canned verbiage and everything like that.
Let me go back a little further.
When did you join the Marine Corps?
I joined in 2018, September of 2018, before the pandemic, before any of this all happened.
Where are you from originally?
I'm originally from Fort Worth, Texas.
I was born in St.
Louis, but I lived in Texas for the majority of my life, from age 4 to 20.
And so you did your basic training...
In Parris Island.
And you must have taken vaccines at that point?
Yes.
Yes.
And did you have any reaction?
No adverse physical reactions on my body.
Mentally, I suppose I was not fond of vaccines.
They made me lightheaded and faint, but nothing that adversely affected my body.
And what is the basis for your religious exemption?
It's of the Catholic faith and with the grievance with the abortion fetal cells.
The fetal cells that come from Harvested human beings.
And we're not sure what part of that makes it into the vaccines, but everybody acknowledges that the vaccines are developed using those human fetal cells.
Okay, so then continue your story.
At first, they told you it was going to be optional, that religious exemptions were available, and then it became clear that, yes, the applications are available, but the actual exemptions are not.
They're all blanket denied.
Yes, that's the best way to say it, Robert.
September of last year, I submitted my initial religious exemption.
And then October, I got it denied.
November, I submitted an appeal to that denial.
And then January of this year, 2022, I received the final exemption.
Appeal denial, if you will.
So that started my separation paperwork, which I wrote up to all my higher-ups, all my commanding officers on base, as high as I could on this immediate base, that I cannot acquiesce to these separation orders because if the mandate is illegal, then, you know, any adverse consequences are therefore going to be illegal.
So nobody helped me.
Nobody was patient with me.
Nobody saw my line of Reasoning or logic with waiting for the civilian courts to overturn the vaccine mandate for the Marine Corps.
And I was pretty much left to my own devices.
And do you have an attorney?
I do.
I do.
He's great.
His name's Captain McGee.
He just got in from North Carolina here to Japan yesterday.
And he's the attorney that I requested in lieu of the original one I was assigned.
So have you already met with him?
No, we meet this morning, and we have a hearing this morning.
Okay, just to point it out, it's 7 a.m.
your time.
It's about 3 a.m.
California time.
Let me ask you this first.
What is your life like?
Is there hostility to you, towards you, from above?
And, you know, how about your colleagues and non-commissioned officers and the others?
Are you finding support anywhere, or is it mainly hostility?
Short answer, yes.
Yes to all of that.
Hostility, isolation, loneliness definitely characterizes a lot of what I'm going through right now.
The hostility is a little bit more blatant, I suppose, from the officer side, from the higher-ups up there.
I can imagine that they're quite upset about a little enlisted situation.
A little Marine like me, challenging the 05s and above, especially on this.
On the non-commissioned officer side, the enlisted, it's a little bit more friendly, but because I've been transferred from my parent squadron and temporarily assigned to a different squadron, I've essentially been...
Dare I say exiled from my original point of work, my normal office, and there's not too much support from back where I originally worked.
So the friends that you had in your original squadron, you don't see them anymore anyway?
Not too often.
I have not seen them often.
I haven't seen them lately.
Tell us what your future is like now.
You're actually being court-martialed for refusing to get onto the airplane, right?
To go back to the United States?
Yes, I'm being court-martialed for basically bringing up the fact that, hey, this is unlawful.
I can't You know, comply with these orders because y'all aren't being patient with me.
You're not giving justice its time.
And sure, the cogs of justice spin slowly.
But eventually, this is all going to be overturned.
And I've just been trying to be retained, right, while that happens.
Because the logistical side of processing out and then with all the bills that a lot of People on Capitol Hill are trying to pass with reinstating members.
I'm just like, the logistics of that are going to be a nightmare.
I'd just rather stay in and, you know, have leadership who could try to help me out.
But yeah, that's the basis of my court-martial.
It's for Article 87, missing movement, and Article 92, not getting a COVID test.
But that's false because I showed up to get a COVID test, but they didn't have any safe, non-toxic alternatives.
Yeah.
Okay, so are you in touch with any of the other soldiers and military personnel who are resisting vaccination?
You know, we're helping out with a lot of special forces, Navy SEALs, and many, many other groups that are resisting.
Are you talking to any of those groups?
Yes, sir, I am.
The groups on Discord, the groups on Signal and Telegram have been phenomenal.
It's great to stay in touch with them, even if it is over phone.
Definitely brings a sense of community with it that doesn't really exist here on this base.
For people like myself, there are a few and scattered, unvaccinated active duty service members, but most of them have been discharged.
But yes, keeping in touch with the people who do reach out, especially like higher enlisted and even higher up officers who reach out and are giving me messages of support in the world.
So, yeah.
And what are your daily duties?
What is your daily life like?
As of right now, my daily duties is to show up at work.
I kind of twiddle my thumbs because I have had all of my work permissions revoked by my parent, by my former parent squadron.
And because there's conflict of interest with the new squadron that I'm at and the managerial squadron that oversees all operations with giving permissions to work, I've asked for my permissions back, but I pretty much should show up for accountability.
And I try to stay as busy as I can.
And I walk around asking if anybody needs help with like the DTS or Citibank systems, but I've kind of been learning how other things operate at the new squadron that I'm at, which is interesting to learn, but I have to kind of make my own schedule with staying busy at this point because I have no official assigned duties because they've all been taken away from me.
How do you envision your future?
If all the civilian court stuff goes well and happens in time, I'd love to be retained.
Just be reinstated to all my work permissions and work DTS and Citibank.
And DTS is the defense travel system that sends uniformed personnel all over the world.
Citibank is the credit card that we're contracted with.
I'd love to keep doing that until I hit corporal or sergeant and I wanted to be a drill instructor.
But that depends how retainment things go and how all these courts and lawfulness and stuff happens and turns out, works out for the uniformed people like myself who are unvaccinated.
Prior to this crisis, did you envision an entire career in the military and the Marines?
I don't think I envisioned an entire career, but I did have people ask me, like, how long are you going to stay in?
Are you going to be, like, a careerist?
I'd hope if I did end up doing a career in it, I would do it the right way, and I wouldn't use it for personal gain, I guess.
Like, I've seen a lot of things going on here.
With the vaccine and whatnot, I'd want to do it the right way and really vouch for my Marines and the people under me and stand up for the right things.
I'm not sure what would have happened after drill instructor career, but again, hopefully good things happen for us.
What keeps you going, Katherine?
Definitely my faith.
My faith, my Catholic faith.
Jesus Christ definitely keeps me going.
And leadership.
I have a capacity where I coach a lot and I love coaching and that leadership and motivation from that definitely inspires me and keeps me going.
And just future prospects of standing up for the right thing now and leading future Marines to look at mandates, look at what's going on and being like, no, I don't want to acquiesce to that.
I don't want to inject things into my body that I don't know what it is or just really scrutinize things from higher up and take a stand for what's right.
Thank you so much for your courage and, again, for your integrity.
And we are rooting for you.
We're praying for you.
And this week, as you go to court, we will be praying extra hard.
Lance Corporal Catherine Arnett, thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Robert.
It was an honor and a privilege.
Hi, everybody.
I'm really happy to bring this update to Lance Corporal Arnett's podcast.
U.S. District Judge Stephen Merida issued a blistering rebuke.
The Department of Defense and the Marine Corps for refusing to grant religious accommodations requests to Marine service members.
This is the very decision that Lance Corporal Arnett was waiting for, was hoping for.
I think it will exceed all of our expectations.
As you may know, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin maintained that the mandate was necessary for military preparedness.
He ordered that non-compliance could result in discharge from the service, court-martial, and other disciplinary procedures and consequences, which is exactly what Anne Scorpio Arnett was going through during her ideal.
Judge Mary Day's 48-page ruling We're good to go.
Ordering the Marine Corps to refrain from enforcing against any member of the class any order, requirement, or rule to accept COVID-19 vaccinations, ordering them to separate or discharge from the Marine Corps, or to force them to get vaccinations.
The class includes everybody on active duty who has filed suits or who has suffered a rejection of their religious exemption application.
This would include Le Corp.
Barnett.
In his order, Judge Merida points out that there were 3,733 Marines who requested religious exemptions, accommodations, and only 11 were granted to those, and only to those who had already put in for retirement.
He then asked, is it more likely than not, in nearly all 3,733 cases, that no reasonable accommodation was available?
He also rebuked and chastised the Department of Defense for a policy of retribution to the Marines who had asked for religious exemptions, including charging them additional monthly rent for non-compliance, giving them two days' notice to be discharged.
He said that to resort to a two-day warning of discharge and suddenly charging daily rent of more than $100 to remain in the military housing while packing one's family and searching for civilian housing suggests retribution and retaliation.
Judge Perry Weathers said that when the generals refuse to comply with the Constitution, it's up to the courts to mandate that kind of compliance.
Quote, when Congress acts to preserve liberty, especially to a liberty, religious liberty, historically and constitutionally fundamental to the United States, the courts, the intended preserve of liberty, must not evade or equivocate, must not, so to speak, sacrifice the fundamental must not evade or equivocate, must not, so to speak, sacrifice the fundamental right of thousands of privates to free exercise in order to gratify the preference of
So congratulations to Lance Corporal Arnett and to all of the Marines who stood up for their freedom.
Who stood up for our Constitution, who showed such courage in resisting this kind of tyranny.
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