Remarks made at the “SECOND SOVEREIGNTY SUMMIT” July 29, 2024.
https://sovereigntysummit.org/the-sovereignty-summit-2/
MAT STAVER, B.A., M.A., J.D., Chairman, Senior Pastor, Founder And Chairman Of Liberty Counsel; Chairman Of Liberty Counsel Action, Faith And Liberty, Freedom Federation, And Salt & Light Council
TRANSCRIPT:
Mat Staver, B.A., M.A., J.D.: [00:57:21] Thank you. Good to be with you, of course. And it was good to see you just recently, a few days ago, at the events in Orlando. And, thank you for all you’re doing. Thank you for the Sovereignty Coalition. I just want to give a brief discussion about my concern. I think it’s a concern that we all share. During COVID, Liberty Counsel was very involved beginning in 2020, representing places of worship that were subjects of the draconian, unconstitutional lockdowns and the governments just rubber stamp these not only here in America, but around the world. A distinction between essential and non-essential activities. They had a long list. We’ve seen all of those lists at various iterations, but places of worship are always on the non-essential list, whereas abortion clinics or big box centers or lots of other things so essential to buy potted plants and garden hoses at big box centers that they were considered essential. All of their activities in those big box stores were considered essential. But worship meeting in person, um, where you would actually be able to counsel people, give them comfort during a time where there was a lot of uncertainty, insecurity, fear, and all different things that surrounded them that were considered nonessential. You really understand what they think of people of faith globally, certainly here in the United States. We litigated those issues, and we went to the Supreme Court in December of 2020. We won 5 to 4 involving California churches. We represented about 100 and some different churches in California.
In a case with Harvest Rock Church and Harvest International Ministries, which actually has a global series of ministries around the world with different churches that are associated with that organization, and lots of them in California. And then we went back down to the lower court and lost again, lost again 2 to 1 at the Court of Appeals, and then went back up to the Supreme Court with the same case, and in February of 2021, we won 6 to 3 at that time. And that was the beginning of the end of all of these lockdowns around the country. Then, in 2021, when the Biden administration began to impose the mandates first on the T38 workers in the federal government, those individuals were the very first ones, then the military. And you had some of the airlines, United Airlines and others began leading the way. And then, the healthcare industry began pushing the mandates because the percentage of people that were going to get the COVID shots underestimated by the Biden administration wanted to have a certain percentage. And by the July 4th weekend, that percentage was far below what he wanted. And so, he mandated this. That resulted in litigation that’s frankly still ongoing. We represented people in the United States military. We got a class-wide injunction against the Department of Defense on behalf of the United States Marines. We represented all branches of the military. We found people who had served for almost 20 years. They were a few months away from serving 20 years, and that was the magic number.
To be able to get vested for all of your benefits just a few months away. We had some, frankly, that were only a few months away that were actually in the reserves at this point. So they only had maybe 1 or 2 more times to put on their uniform between the time of the mandate, which was August of 2021 and the end of the year of December 2021, and they would have been vested and nothing, they would have been fine, but they were threatened with termination. We not only saw them threatened with termination, but with dishonorable discharge. Fortunately, Congress got involved and they passed a rule, a law that said you could not be dishonorably discharged, but you could be discharged without honor, which is the second most severe discharge of someone serving in the services. Consequently, whether you’re discharged dishonorably or without honor, consequences are pretty significant, both on your record, certainly on your morale, because you’ve served the country. Many of these people went to various wars. They came back without their friends and colleagues. Some of those were injured themselves. They still serve and they were subject to discipline and discharge. Not only that, but they would be also subject to paying back all of their educational benefits. Some of these individuals became doctors and other professions during the service. They would have to pay back all their educational benefits if they didn’t get the shot, and in addition, they would have to pay back some of their training.
So for some of the pilots, depending upon what aircraft you’re trained on, that could be tens of millions of dollars of training costs. So all of these were threatened. We unfortunately did not represent these individuals, but we represented chaplains and others who knew these individuals that actually counseled with these individuals. We had people in December of 2021 that committed suicide because of the pressure that they were under, they felt betrayed. We had high-ranking military officers on our conference calls that wept, that said that they were prepared to fight the enemy, but they were never prepared to fight the enemy within. That they had given their lives for our country and now the country was turning against them. So we had so much heartache. We’ve had health care workers that were considered heroes and they were terminated. For example, in Maine, that litigation is still going on in New York. It’s still going on. We still have some other litigation going on. Fortunately, all of the military cases we won, we got the first class-action lawsuit settlement in the entire country, the first and only one at $10.3 million against a health care industry up in Illinois. But we also are still, believe it or not, even to this day, we are still fighting for students to be able to finish their schooling, and we are still fighting for people who have been approved on organ transplant list to be a recipient of a particular organ, their donor, some of those donors are relatives or friends, have also been approved as a donor.
And we’re still fighting, although many of those battles have subsided, we’ve won most of them. To be able to get those individuals to have, um, to be back on the transplant list because they have been removed. We had one individual who was on the transplant list and was removed by the time they got back on, it was too late and the person died. So there are significant consequences. However, we have been able to win time and time again in the courts. We have seen firsthand the horror and the death and the emotional turmoil and the destruction and damage that these lockdowns in our own government with misinformation, fear and these um, executive orders, both from the current administration as well as a number of the different states have caused on people. So our concern is very significant, particularly with the ears and the pandemic proposed pandemic treaty to take what we have experienced in the United States and rid it large, expand it, blow it up large on an international scale. So now that we have one Marxist entity in a foreign jurisdiction, be able to issue these kinds of mandates globally and impose those on our country and on our individual states, and then the recourse won’t be in our federal judicial system using our constitutional guarantees, but will be before an international body, consequences of which are enormous fines.
We’ve seen before in the past with regards to the cool laws, the country of origin labeling laws where Congress passed laws regarding origin of meat. Mexico and Canada filed suit because we had signed on to an agreement regarding trade, and consequently we lost those. We would have had to pay billions of dollars in damages. So my concern is the concern of all of you is that indeed, uh, having this in an international body of the WHO is very significant to our freedom because we’re not going to have the kind of redress in our courts or under our United States Constitution that we currently have. Now, almost all of these mandates have been struck down as unconstitutional in one form or another. All of that would change if this were under an international body. And I’ll just conclude, Frank, with this, that, you know, right now, just recently the WHO is coming up with a meeting on Infodemic. And they wanted to press the Infodemic idea. I mean, think about that. We’re not talking about just misinformation or disinformation. We’re talking about accurate information that is too much of accurate information. So in other words, this disease of information needs to be stopped, like the spread of a virus. And it can include what they call misinformation and disinformation. But it can also include truth. As long as you’re giving too much truth so that people can make a decision that is contrary to the narrative that the WHO wants to push. I mean, that’s a startling situation.