A U.S. Navy officer filed a whistleblower complaint last month alleging the U.S. Navy’s own inspector general, Vice Adml. John Fuller, helped cover up criminal behavior as the military enforced its COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The complaint was first revealed this week.
On Aug. 15, nine officers from the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Air Force and U.S. Coast Guard submitted a whistleblower report alleging misconduct across the military over how the various branches handled the COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
Part of the Aug. 15 complaint centers around the claim that the military continued to use emergency use authorization (EUA) versions of COVID-19 vaccines despite claiming all vaccine mandates would only use vaccines that have the full licensure of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA approved a Pfizer vaccine called Comirnaty, but the whistleblowers argued this FDA-approved vaccine is not actually available in the U.S. Their complaint states the military worked around this lack of FDA licensed vaccines by simply affixing fraudulent Comirnaty labels to EUA vaccine versions, which they argue is a federal crime.
The nine officers also alleged violations of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) throughout the military’s handling of vaccine religious accommodation requests.
In a subsequent Aug. 26 whistleblower complaint, a Senior Naval Officer alleged Fuller dismissed and refused to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by Admiral Christopher Grady, Vice Admiral James Kilby, Vice Admiral John Nowell, and Rear Admiral Joseph DiGuardo while enforcing the vaccine mandates. This Navy whistleblower is supported by a non-profit organization called the Truth For Health Foundation.
The Aug. 26 complaint argues Fuller had an obligation to investigate credible allegations, defined as ones “that if proven, would constitute…a violation of a provision of criminal law.” The complaint states that a Navy regulation requires the Navy inspector general to investigate credible allegations if they are not already being investigated or assigned to another investigating authority by the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General (DoD OIG).
The complaint states that after receiving the complaints “the DoD OIG dismissed these cases. A Naval Inspector General memorandum dated 22 Dec 2021, enclosure (5), attempts to place responsibility for the subsequent case closures on the DoD OIG dismissal of these credible allegations. However, Vice Admiral Fuller had an obligation and a duty to investigate these credible allegations since the DoD OIG did not investigate nor assign the investigation to another organization.”
The whistleblower complaint also notes that a federal judge has granted a preliminary injunction in a class-action lawsuit against the Navy. The complaint notes the judge in that case, Judge Reed O’Connor said “the Navy has not conducted individualized assessment of class members’ religious accommodation requests, which demonstrates ‘a pattern of disregard for RFRA rights.'”
The Truth For Health Foundation said it filed its complaint against the Navy inspector general with Acting Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Manpower & Reserve Affairs Robert Hogue. The organization said they filed with Hogue but that he “is implicated in some of the same crimes subsequently covered up by Vice Admiral Fuller.”
Hogue’s office did not respond to an American Military News request for comment at the time of this article’s publication.
