The Patriot Post® · An Open Letter to Trump Regarding COVID Mandate Penalties Against Service Members

Editor’s note: This letter of appeal is from the executive board of STARRS, which monitors CRT/DEI/woke ideology in the military. We have many active-duty friends whose careers have been adversely impacted by the COVID military mandates.

Mr. President:

We are grateful for the precedent set by your unconditional pardon on May 28, 2025, of Lieutenant Mark Bashaw for punishments he received as the result of the military’s COVID mandates. All former and current Service Members harmed by those mandates need and deserve similar justice and grace. Note: For the purposes of this letter the term Service Members is intended to include Coast Guardsmen and Merchant Mariners who were also adversely impacted by the unlawful mandates.

Mandatory COVID shots from 2021 to 2023, as well as the earlier anthrax vaccinations from 1997 to 2003, were formally declared by federal officials to be “unlawful as implemented” and “illegal,” respectively.

All anthrax and COVID-era Service Members adversely impacted by the unlawful mandates have shown patience and faith in a system which abused and abandoned them — and has not provided them with effective and timely remedies through the Boards for Correction of Military Records (BCMR) or equivalent for Merchant Mariners.

To right these wrongs, we respectfully request you order full and unconditional pardons, amnesty and remedies for all Service Members negatively impacted, in any way, by the military’s anthrax and COVID mandates.

Further, based on your unconditional pardon and amnesty, we request you direct the Secretary of Defense and Service Secretaries to remand all previously denied BCMR cases for expedited reconsideration to promptly provide full and fitting relief. Those who have sworn to defend our Nation with their lives deserve full and swift remedies, to restore justice and trust in our institutions as well as to enhance military readiness.

An Executive Order (EO) directing full and unconditional pardons and amnesty, or an amendment to Executive Order No. 14184, Reinstating Service Members Discharged Under the Military’s COVID-19 Vaccination Mandate, will accomplish these objectives and remedy the existing ineffective, untimely, bureaucratic intransigence and resulting injustice.

We sincerely thank you for your leadership in restoring our military readiness and trust in our great country.

Respectfully yours,

Robert D. Bishop, Jr.
Lieutenant General, USAF, Retired
Chairman, Board of Directors

Joseph W. Arbuckle
Major General, USA, Retired
Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors

Ronald J. Scott, Jr., Ph.D.
Colonel, USAF, Retired
President & CEO

The Honorable Michael T. Rose, JD/MBA
Executive Vice President & General Counsel

William Dean Lee
Vice Admiral, USCG, Retired
Advisor

William F. Prince
Colonel, USA, Retired
President, The MacArthur Society of West Point Graduates

Charles Thomas Burbage
Captain, USN, Retired
President, The Calvert Task Group