By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Testimony in an ongoing federal defamation lawsuit is raising new questions about the legality of the U.S. military’s 2021 COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The testimony also sheds light on how the mandate shaped military policy and the broader federal vaccine policy during the pandemic.

The lawsuit was filed last year by Dr. Terry Adirim, former acting assistant secretary of defense for Health Affairs, against Ivan Raiklin, an attorney and retired U.S. Army Special Forces officer.

The suit involved comments Raiklin made during an October 2024 interview on “The Roseanne Barr Podcast,” when he called out Adirim for signing a memorandum that he alleged led to an “illegal” vaccine mandate for U.S. military service members.

According to the Sept. 14, 2021, memo, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine issued under emergency use authorization (EUA) was “interchangeable” with the fully licensed Pfizer Comirnaty COVID-19 shot, and service members should receive the EUA shot if Comirnaty wasn’t available. Raiklin disputed that the two were legally interchangeable, and said the memo helped enable the military’s subsequent disciplinary actions against service members who refused the EUA shot.

Adirim signed the memo in her role as acting assistant secretary of defense for Health Affairs. The memo followed less than a month after then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin implemented a military-wide COVID-19 vaccine mandate in August 2021 — one day after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Comirnaty.

Adirim remained in her position until December 2021. In 2024, she joined the CIA as director of its Center for Global Health Services. In May 2025, the agency terminated her.

That month, Adirim sued Raiklin, the CIA and its director, John Ratcliffe, alleging that her privacy was violated when Raiklin and others revealed her non-public role at the CIA. She also alleged that public comments Raiklin made linking her to the military’s vaccine mandate, which he called “genocidal” and a form of “mass mutilation,” were defamatory.

In February, a federal judge dismissed most of Adirim’s claims. However, her defamation allegations against Raiklin stand. A hearing is scheduled on Oct. 30 before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, when the court will hear Raiklin’s motion for summary judgment against Adirim.

In an interview with The Defender, Raiklin called Adirim’s lawsuit “a retaliatory action” against him that attempts to challenge his “opinions regarding the mandatory vaccination program instituted for service members.”

‘Closest we have gotten to holding someone accountable’ for COVID harms

Last month, Adirim sat for a deposition, in which Raiklin and his supporters allege that Adirim acknowledged that she authored the 2021 memo and that she disregarded data questioning COVID-19 vaccine safety.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) characterized the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate as “unlawful as implemented.”

For Stephanie Weidle, executive director of Feds for Freedom, a watchdog group supporting Raiklin’s defense, Adirim’s memo served as “that implementation.”

Feds for Freedom President Kevin McAfee said that while Austin’s vaccine mandate, “stating that enforcement could only be conducted using the BLA-approved product, Comirnaty,” was legal, Adirim’s memo “told commanders that either product (EUA or BLA) could be used for enforcement” as “they had the same ‘formulation.’”

“Since Comirnaty was not being manufactured, then commanders would have to use the EUA product instead,” McAfee said. He called this a “direct violation of Secretary Austin’s memorandum and direct violation of the law regarding EUA products.”

McAfee said the case is “the closest we have gotten to holding someone accountable,” as “power was abused” by Adirim and others during the pandemic.

“People were harmed, up to and including death, and justice must be served. This could be the start of that process,” McAfee said.

Weidle said the lawsuit is significant because “not one official who, at the ground zero level, participated in the plan to mandate experimental material on the American people has ever been held accountable in the court of law.”

“Adirim’s deposition gives the public an inside glimpse into the military’s justification for the COVID-19 vaccine mandate and the implementation of it,” Weidle said.

Adirim acknowledged she did not evaluate safety of COVID shots

Raiklin said that the remaining defamation claim against him relies on his October 2024 statements — namely, “three sentences” he spoke on “The Roseanne Barr Podcast.”

His motion for summary judgment seeking to dismiss the claim tests Adirim’s claims “against a completed record” of evidence. “The undisputed material facts demonstrate that my statements will reflect my genuinely held opinions based on my interpretation of data available to me,” he said.

The evidence shows that Adirim was unqualified to determine that the EUA and licensed Pfizer vaccines were “interchangeable,” or that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines wouldn’t harm service members, Raiklin said.

According to Raiklin, Adirim’s statements during her deposition, including her acknowledgement that she authored the Sept. 14, 2021, memo, contradict the defamation claims she made against him in her complaint.

The deposition shows that the memo bypassed legal requirements and that Adirim’s risk-benefit analysis of the COVID-19 vaccine was based on an FDA fact sheet. He said:

“Adirim acknowledged authorship; acknowledged the absence of risk or side-effect language on the ground that ‘that was not the point of the memorandum’; acknowledged a spring 2021 briefing from Walter Reed clinicians reporting myocarditis in young male service members after the second dose; acknowledged that by September 2021 she understood the myocarditis to be related to the vaccine; and acknowledged that she nonetheless recommended the mandate to the secretary. She identified no personal warning to the force.”

In her deposition, Adirim first claimed that the EUA and fully licensed versions of the Pfizer vaccine were “the same exact vaccine.”

However, when confronted with language from the FDA’s Aug. 23, 2021, reissued EUA authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine — which stated that the EUA and fully licensed versions of the shots “are legally distinct with certain differences that do not impact safety or effectiveness” — Adirim acknowledged the two are “legally distinct.”

McAfee said the distinction between the EUA and fully licensed versions isn’t trivial.

“In this case, the defense secretary gave the order to only require the use of a BLA-approved product for enforcement. Her memorandum told commanders that they could use either product for enforcement. That was telling commanders to use an EUA product to illegally force compliance,” McAfee said.

Raiklin said four legal authorities “govern the administration of an emergency-use product to members of the armed forces.” These include two federal statutes, a DOD instruction and a DOD directive.

In November 2021, a federal judge rejected the DOD’s claim that the Pfizer-BioNTech EUA COVID-19 vaccine is interchangeable with Pfizer’s fully licensed Comirnaty vaccine.

Responding to a question during her deposition about her qualifications to evaluate the safety and efficacy of vaccines, Adirim said she was “qualified to trust the agency, the regulatory agency that told the nation that it was safe and effective.”

“She admitted in her deposition that she did no research herself, nor did she instruct her staff to investigate,” Weidle said.

Lawsuit revealed investigation into 2,500 military deaths linked to COVID shot

Weidle said that Adirim’s memorandum wasn’t an inconsequential bureaucratic document — it had a tremendous impact on military readiness.

“Commanders used Adirim’s memorandum to override service members who objected that the product being offered was authorized only for emergency use and therefore could not be compelled,” Weidle said. “They told troops the only available vaccine, the EUA product, was mandatory. Refuse it, and they would be separated.”

Approximately 8,500 military service members were ultimately separated because they refused the vaccine. Weidle said that around 80,000 more service members “left either because the culture in the military during COVID was so poor, because of health issues or for other reasons. This created a national security threat.”

“Hundreds of thousands of trained and certified service members make up the various combat formations. When chunks of personnel are haphazardly removed, that formation has to undergo retraining and recertification in order to become ready for deployment again (readiness),” McAfee said.

McAfee added that those separated often did not receive an honorary discharge certification. For other service members, consequences included “withholding promotions, training, isolation from others.”

For thousands of service members who were vaccinated, serious adverse events or death followed.

Deposition exposed investigation into COVID vaccine-related deaths in military

In a deposition last month as part of the lawsuit, Dr. Theresa Long, a longtime Army doctor board-certified in aerospace medicine, testified that she is investigating whether COVID-19 shots caused the deaths of over 2,500 military service members.

As part of this investigation, Long identified around 55,000 reports of adverse events related to COVID-19 vaccination. The reports had been submitted to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

Long is investigating on behalf of the DOD and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in her new capacity as senior medical military adviser to U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

McAfee said that the military mandate affected the broader public, as the military “is often the ‘first run’ trial for things.”

“After the military COVID vaccine mandate started, the civilian COVID vaccine rollout was basically a continuation of the process. The same principles held true. Civilians were told that they would lose their job if they didn’t get the jab … Travel and training was restricted to only vaccinated civilian employees,” McAfee said.

In May, CIA whistleblower James Erdman III, co-founder of Feds for Freedom, told the U.S. Senate that Dr. Anthony Fauci intentionally helped cover up evidence showing that COVID-19 emerged from a Chinese laboratory that worked with U.S.-funded scientists.

Weidle suggested that Adirim should also face questions from Congress.

“Members of Congress are still asking how COVID originated, what was the extent of COVID-19 vaccine side effects, and the national security impact of firing such a large swath of military personnel over vaccine refusal,” she said. “If the goal is to find and deal with the source of the problem — not only the most senior officials — they should subpoena Adirim,” Weidle said.

Related articles in The Defender

• New Adviser to RFK Jr. Investigating 2,500 COVID Vaccine Deaths in Military
• ‘Unwinding the Mess’: DOD Launches Task Forces to Investigate Military COVID Vaccine Mandates
• Federal Judge Rejects DOD Claim That Pfizer EUA and Comirnaty Vaccines Are ‘Interchangeable’
• Military Wants Service Members Ousted for Refusing COVID Vaccine to Reenlist — Here’s Why They Aren’t
• Trump Orders Military to Reinstate Members Booted for Refusing COVID Vaccines
• Liability-Free COVID Vaccine Makers Seek Additional ‘Free Pass’ From FDA

The post New Evidence Raises Questions About Whether Military’s COVID Vaccine Mandate Was Legal appeared first on Children’s Health Defense.

 

IPAK-EDU is grateful to The Defender as this piece was originally published there and is included in this news feed with mutual agreement. Read More