More Than Medicine
More Than Medicine
Were There Any State or Federal Laws Violated During Covid Pandenic?
When the COVID pandemic swept across America, Attorney Lauren Martel found herself on the front lines of a different kind of battle – one for constitutional rights and medical freedom. From securing a patient's right to try ivermectin to challenging mask mandates that led to citizens being escorted out of businesses by police, Martel's legal expertise became a shield for those caught in the crossfire of evolving pandemic policies.
"What we really saw during those years is a flip-flop, in that people thought policy was law," explains Martel, revealing how administrative dictates superseded constitutional protections. As a self-described "Holy Spirit-filled attorney," she draws a powerful connection between divine law and American liberties, arguing that both were trampled during what she characterizes as "tyrannical years" of lockdowns and business closures.
The conversation takes listeners through multiple lawsuits Martel filed – from protecting workers seeking religious exemptions from vaccine mandates to defending individuals who couldn't physically exercise while masked. Her first-hand accounts provide a troubling window into how enforcement mechanisms evolved, including the repurposing of local "Livability Departments" into mask police and the public health theater that saw vaccines administered in abandoned car dealerships and fast food parking lots.
Most disturbing are Martel's allegations about hospital protocols during COVID. She and Dr. Jackson discuss how administrative decisions may have prioritized remdesivir and ventilators over potentially life-saving alternatives, with financial incentives potentially influencing treatment decisions. The Attorney doesn't mince words about accountability, citing South Carolina's reputation as "the most corrupt Republican state" while expressing hope that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s leadership might finally bring transparency to vaccine policies.
For those concerned about medical freedom, Martel offers practical advice and encouragement. "I have seen across the board, in schools and employment places, where people have stood up to it, that they have been successful." Ready to discover what rights you might not know you have? Listen now and arm yourself with knowledge that could protect your family's health freedoms.
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Welcome to More Than Medicine, where Jesus is more than enough for the ills that plague our culture and our country. Hosted by author and physician, dr Robert Jackson, and his wife Carlotta and daughter Hannah Miller. So listen up, because the doctor is in.
Dr. Robert Jackson:Welcome to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, dr Robert Jackson, bringing to you biblical insights and stories from the country doctor's rusty, dusty scrapbook. Well, I'm delighted today to have as my guest Lauren Martel. Ms Lauren, if you would introduce yourself and tell my listening audience a little bit about yourself?
Lauren Martel:Thank you so much, dr Jackson. I'm Lauren Martel and I am an attorney living in Bluffton, south Carolina. I've lived in South Carolina since 1990 and have been practicing law here since 1992. So those years tend to add up now and I enjoy it. I worked for a firm for the first few years that I practiced and then I hung my own shingle.
Lauren Martel:So I've sort of been like you're a country doctor, I've been sort of the country or, I guess, island lawyer, so a single soul practitioner. And I am a mom. I'm now a grandmom, I am a wife, I love our country, I love our state and I love our God too. So I am a Holy Spirit-filled attorney. We've witnessed a lot of different things over the years, but particularly during the COVID, you know, pre-covid and then COVID years and now I guess what we call post-COVID years. It's been an interesting time. So that's how I think I got to know you was during that time and we both were called to certain places to try to help people. That and that's where we got to know each other and it's just been such an honor to get to know you over these last few years, dr Jackson.
Dr. Robert Jackson:Well, thank you kindly and it's been my privilege to know you because you've been into the trenches and battled for the rights and privileges of one of my patients that needed a right to try for being prescribed ivermectin while he was in the ICU with COVID. And if it weren't for your efforts I'm not sure the family would have been able to acquire that privilege for their family member who was so, so sick with COVID, and I'm sure that family and myself would be forever grateful for your willingness to go to bat for them. And my listeners will probably remember that story. Probably close to a year ago now we had that patient. Chris Davis came on and told his story. I was very, very grateful when he got to the part about you going to bat for him and persuading the hospital lawyer to allow the family to prescribe ivermectin.
Lauren Martel:Well, actually, for me to go into the hospital and give ivermectin to him, that was a really big deal, ms Lauren, and we were forever grateful for your efforts on their behalf. Well, I think God was guiding each one of our steps. He was a strong, younger man and just a strong spirit, and his family was certainly advocating, and that was one of the things that we noticed during that period of time generally speaking, that people didn't know what to advocate for and it caught so many people off guard because it just was out of the norm and not what we expected. And, as you know, during that period of time, sort of corporate administration and hospital administration changed best practices and then people were sort of finding out as they went along rather than knowing what was happening. So it was a unique time and when I want to talk about the COVID years, I always say, like we just have to confront the undeniable truth that during those we call them you know, basically it was about 2020 to like 2023. I mean, still it's a little bit going on. I mean I've heard nursing homes say they have an outbreak of COVID now. So it's even going on now.
Lauren Martel:But those first few years, our state, like many others, saw its fundamental freedoms trampled under the guise of public health.
Lauren Martel:Guise of public health, and what should have been a time of reasoned response and trust in the people became an era of government overreach, unconstitutional mandates and blatant disregard for the liberties enshrined in both our us constitution and south carolina law.
Lauren Martel:And I'm even going to add today it occurred to me that god's law was broken. You know when the general question is you know what laws were broken, you know what ordinance were broken generally speaking, our country. You know you have God's law, which allows the inalienable rights which our Constitution acknowledges, and then you have your Constitution, and then it goes down through the sort of hierarchy of the state constitution, state statutory law, common law in some cases, and then lower courts and ordinances, and then policy quote unquote policy. And what we really saw during those years is a flip-flop, in that people really thought policy was law. But I'm going to add that not only were South Carolina laws violated, but God's law was certainly violated during those tyrannical years where there were lockdowns and business closures, and not just in the medical field, but we recall small businesses, which were the backbone of our local economy, were forced to close their doors while corporate giants thrived.
Lauren Martel:That's right Government officials, let me ask you this now.
Dr. Robert Jackson:Part of the reason I invited you on was because I wanted to ask a specific question, and the specific question that I want to ask you is were there any state or federal laws violated during the COVID pandemic and, if so, why are these violations not being prosecuted? That's a two-part question and that's why I wanted to invite you on. So I want my listeners hear me every week, and so you're an expert on this, and I wanted to let you answer those two questions.
Lauren Martel:Yes, and there is multiple things that were violated and of course in the law we have civil law and then we have criminal law. I think we're going to see both of those bubble up with causes of action that will arise from certain behaviors that occurred during these COVID years. Generally speaking, we saw violations of free speech and censorship. We saw an unprecedented assault on free speech as citizens were silenced and deplatformed and demoralized. Some of those people filed lawsuits. We saw the suspension of our religious freedoms where churches were ordered to close their doors while certain other corporations and liquor stores and abortion clinics and they differentiated essential versus non-essential people and businesses and the government has no authority to dictate how people can worship or even what businesses were essential or not. There were harmful school closures and masking mandates.
Lauren Martel:I filed lawsuits on all of those type cases actually during the COVID years, lawsuits that were filed that were on the basis of federal law, which were a violation of civil liberties, where certain people that worked in a particular case that I worked on in a nuclear power plant, for the gentleman did not want to take the vaccines, all for for religious reasons and one gentleman also had medical reason why he previously had myocarditis and didn't want to take the vaccine, we filed a federal lawsuit to enjoin them from losing their jobs. So those types of usual exemptions or reasons to be exempted from this universal mandate to have everybody vaccinated with an experimental drug was certainly a clear violation. I also back then filed a lawsuit against Planet Fitness, of all things. They ended up resolving it and settling it. But Planet Fitness had a no exceptions rule where the people who were going there would have to wear masks to work out.
Lauren Martel:And there was one particular person and she spoke about this during the COVID year. She authorized me to talk about this case. She was refusing to wear a mask, or at least not even refusing in a horrible way, but just kindly saying look, I cannot work out and wear a mask. And they were got the police involved and escorted her and cited her with a no trespassing. You know, and one of the ways that you can get people, they sort of the corporate is trying to get people for trespassing if they weren't wearing masks and just have them escorted with the police. But it was quite a horrifying experience for her and and actually you know again, when you really drilled down on it, they were violating her rights rather than her trespassing. Does that make sense?
Dr. Robert Jackson:Yeah, I understand that fully.
Lauren Martel:I mean there were children wearing masks in school like all the time, and these masks would get dirty and I'd have parents that would call me and say, look, my child needs a mask exemption.
Lauren Martel:They're sick all the time, they have sinus problems.
Lauren Martel:So you know, with these harmful school closures and these masking mandates in the school, that really created some legal issues as well.
Lauren Martel:There was another case where in Charleston the enforcement of masks took it up a little level to this agency that was called the Livability Department and normally they were just kind of like a little enforcement of local, you know, if you had too much trash out in your property or something like that, well, they took it upon themselves to become mask you know enforcers and they sort of cornered a mom in a Target back then and really started harassing her and I remember she called me right as this was happening and I told her you know, her children were with her. It was really sort of a mess and, you know, said just relax, you know they can't really do anything. I know that you're being, you're afraid, you know, and concerned, and this is what so many people felt. Now, not a lot of people stood up to it back then, or people just bowed down to the idol of public health and safety Be safe, stay safe, blah blah blah, and so in that situation she just had the strength to say you know you cannot do anything.
Lauren Martel:They finally left and nothing came of that. Now they were trying to give her a ticket and they were trying and this is again another money generating fees and fines that aren't really appropriate and are an overreach. And when I looked into that, that was an interesting study because that was an example where policy and ordinances were being violated. And if people actually looked at the exceptions in those ordinances, they were there and if enough people would have stood up back then and just said, no, we really would have been in a different place if the people who have the power would have stood against it, and I personally was at a meeting back then. Um, and the police came to the meeting and I happened to have a copy of the ordinance with me and I thought it was a joke that the police officer was there and he's like I hear this is an anti-mask meeting or something. We said, no, we're just here, uh, peacefully gathering to discuss things. He dug a little deeper and I had the ordinance and I showed him the exceptions and he called some superior and then left.
Lauren Martel:That was me having to stand in it and it was a little bit, I remember, surreal. But that caused me to study ordinances and state law and the thing is that they were trying to pretend like they could make those a crime and bring the police in. But you can't have individual counties having different ordinances on criminal stuff. The criminal statutes in South Carolina, generally speaking, are in Title 16 of our state code of laws and there can be certain ordinances. But if there are ordinances that conflict with the state law, the state law trumps over that. Does that make sense?
Dr. Robert Jackson:That's right, they're uniform across the state.
Lauren Martel:Yes, yes, and an example of that is like when they had those gambling places or something like that, you couldn't make gambling legal in Myrtle Beach. And then you know, and then have it be a crime other places, it was either a crime across the state or you know it couldn't. You couldn't just pick and choose. So that was some research I did back then and you know, I certainly think that all of those ordinances violated the standard state law and then the constitutional law and the federal law.
Dr. Robert Jackson:Well, let me ask you specifically about hospitals. You know that was my venue and I had lots of employees at hospitals around the state who either felt threatened by the mask mandates and the vaccine mandates and either they were released from their jobs or they left their jobs because of vaccine and masking mandates. Do you think there were state or federal laws violated in that instance?
Lauren Martel:Absolutely, absolutely, and you know the good news is that we're really going to see the truth come out and also, with even these mandatory testings and the amount of money that was made by the people who put these policies in place is going to be, you know, appalling. I think, when people start to see this, think, when people start to see this, but, um, I am a local council on a fairly larger case that was filed out of greenville and the federal court um dealing with that specific issue and um, it deals with the shriners hospitals and um, that's where there's an allegation that the hospital was a state actor, meaning some state money and you know, came into them and when they were performing under the state-run CDC COVID-19 vaccine program, where they were acting pursuant to a state-enforced, established enforced policy requiring certain people that worked at the hospitals employees, similar to what you're saying about the people that you knew to inject what we're now alleging and we knew back then, but people weren't calling it this we need to use language that describes the truth. We need to use language that describes what it is and it's an unlicensed investigational new drug that was forced into the bodies under threat of penalty, mandated those, those plaintiffs, to surrender the 14th amendment, rights which were guaranteed to them, um, by the federal government in the south carolina, um, you know, constitution. So that's what the 14th amendment guarantees us is one, you know, the right to enjoy the benefits of your property to the exercise of, you know, statutory entitlements.
Lauren Martel:Three, the the right to refuse public disclosure of private health and identifiable information. And think about how many people, you know we're just wandering around, going to a Wendy's parking lot or a back alley or a school parking lot, talking about their health, and the health providers were disclosing it right out there, in the public too. You know people were taking vaccines right there in the middle of a public forum. We would never do that, you know. Normally, like you wouldn't go down a back alley and take a random shot, you know, nobody would think that.
Dr. Robert Jackson:And they were doing that in the parking lot of an abandoned car dealership in Spartanburg.
Lauren Martel:I'm going to call them kickbacks, or you know the corporate money that was allocated during this time. You notice how CVS, or you know a lot of these places that are big and I mean I shop at some of these places too, so I'm not calling any particular one out, but but these are some of the ones that the big corporate names would be CVS or Walgreens or like Kroger. You know. It says you know food and pharmacies at the same place. It's like the food and the pharmacies right there both make you know it's just a sickness culture. And and then you know places like we saw it here in our local area, like a Wendy's, so sort of a place that's sort of somewhat deteriorating or needs money. They they certainly got money for having to be able to use their parking lots right there as vaccine and COVID testing places Now?
Dr. Robert Jackson:have these kind of lawsuits been successfully what's the word I'm looking for pursued in the court system in other states?
Lauren Martel:Yes, and we're starting to see more success. And go back to the gentleman that didn't want to take the vaccine back in 2021, I believe that was. We were successful with that too, because at the federal level there was a restraining order that enjoined enforcing the mandate, so they kept their jobs and did not have to take the vaccine, but they were just so strong to be able to do you know what I mean. It took lawsuits, it took pushing back, against, against this and like anything, like a bully on the playground. Sometimes it's just taking a stand and standing up against it and you realize they don't have as much power as you think they are or what you're fighting for the job versus and you and I have talked about this before.
Lauren Martel:But in order to get the vaccine, they picked people to you know vulnerabilities, so college kids, it was socializing and they got all that. Or they made it kind of like they did a real branding campaign, you know. I think Columbia, usc even had, you know, like some sort of garnet and vax or something. You know what I mean. They started branding it like it's cool to get vaccinated. You see commercials on TV.
Dr. Robert Jackson:They're still doing that constantly. They're still pushing the vaccine. Despite all the information out there about how unsafe and ineffective the vaccine is, they're constantly pushing the vaccine on the radio and on television. That's just bizarre to me.
Lauren Martel:Well, that's right, and these lawsuits are not. Instead of even calling it a vaccine, they're saying you know, it's an unwanted investigational drug that has a variety of different you know ingredients in it that no one particular person that I know of could even exactly identify. That's right. The whole way the chain of custody of those vaccines came in was really suspect too.
Lauren Martel:Very suspect, you know came out, rolled out, went in through sort of like the federal government. You know you've got to think about, with chain of custody and these type of things, how important it is during transport to have it kept at a certain temperature.
Dr. Robert Jackson:You know what I mean. Well, let me ask you this, and then it would come in. Well, these are civil lawsuits that are probably seeking financial punitive damages. Are there any criminal? What's the word? I'm looking for criminal activity that should be prosecuted by, say, the attorney general or somebody like that. That's my question.
Lauren Martel:That's a great question and absolutely I mean actually, after what I witnessed and observed during those years, I ran against an incumbent for state attorney general and that was an eye-opening experience and he needed to be, you know have somebody run against him, and so that is the crux of the problem.
Lauren Martel:The attorney general's office and even the governor's office and our leadership in South Carolina, I believe, truly have failed us and continue to fail us in this area, because we, you need law enforcement when there's something being done that's wrong, a violation of antitrust, the corporate practice of medicine.
Lauren Martel:You know, in that situation, what they did. And when I say the corporate practice of medicine, the hospital administration created a one-size-fits-all treatment plan which was give people remdesivir, which was a pharmaceutical drug that was not very healthy for people and that could actually cause people's organs to start failing, causing them to swell up with fluids, and then, instead of treating them the way they normally used to treat them, to swell up with fluids and then, instead of treating them the way they normally used to treat people swelling up with fluids, they'd put them on their backs and ventilate them, and it wasn't much longer than they die. You know of COVID and they call it COVID. It may have even been comorbidity or something else, but they'd put it on COVID, on that, on the death certificates. And then you know, know, what was the worst part of that? Dr Jackson Tell me, the hospitals were monetarily incentivized to do this practice.
Lauren Martel:I understand that, which is against the Hippocratic oath first do no harm. I mean, I recall talking to someone who said in their particular hospital it was almost an 88% failure rate of the particular protocols that they were using. And then you saw what happened when you were able to go in with a different type of treatment, the right to try a different protocol. I guess back then we called it the FLCCA protocol or whatever protocol.
Lauren Martel:I guess back then we called it the FLCCA protocol or whatever was a symphony of ivermectin and, and, and that person survives. There you go. That's your evidence right there. So so if you have a do-nothing Attorney General and it wasn't just the hospital overreach and these, you know, financially incentivized and then if you can prove that it's intentional, it might go from a civil to a criminal situation. The Attorney General's office parallels both. It can do antitrust violations, it has a huge ability to look into these things, but it did not have the political will. I recall our Attorney General back then promoting the vaccine, even with his own children, promoting, masking, promoting, promoting be safe, put plexiglass up, um. Promoting churches, shutting down things like this and um. And basically that deprived people of their rights to be informed, to make other choices, and doctors. It deprived them of the right to practice medicine the way they normally have, and in America. That's what we need to go back to.
Dr. Robert Jackson:So we're not people. They need to. They need to, and you know.
Lauren Martel:I think I think there's some good news on the horizon. I mean I followed him, I've read some of his books and and I've researched his work and even gone to some of the seminars that they have for the Children's Defense Fund. But I do follow Robert Kennedy Jr. I think it is good that he is up in the federal health and human resources, but one man alone, and even his team, can't do it alone. I mean, in South Carolina we have so much. I mean just ABC News just came out that South Carolina is the most corrupt Republican state and from my observation that's where we I mean we may deserve that title. Look at, like Monkey Island, right? I mean Drauci was performing experiments at the emc facility and then there's an island right off of buford that's, that's called monkey island.
Lauren Martel:that's where they do all their testing that from our state, fauci up until 2022 that's during the covid years was right off the coast of where I live, doing God knows what right. That's right and nobody could go on there, and he was renting the island and even DNR wasn't even really going on there. So that is where we've lost territory and as Americans, and as South Carolinians especially, we have the spirit for freedom. So I do believe that people are going to be empowered and I hope your listeners are empowered to just get to know your rights, get informed, be proactive about it. During the COVID years, a lot of people were caught flat-footed. They'd get into the hospitals and they didn't have you know who was going to be their power of attorney and you know that created some issues when times of the essence and you want to have an advocate. But we hope that we won't go back to exactly that. But don't underestimate. You know what can possibly happen. We've seen so many things that you know shocked us Caught us by surprise.
Dr. Robert Jackson:Yeah, shocked us and caught us by surprise. Well, I encourage my listeners pray for Robert Kennedy and his staff and the changes that they're making, because everybody's going to be against him and his staff the medical establishment, pharmaceutical companies, the entrenched establishment in health and human services, the FDA and the CDC Every one of them is going to be against him. But he's looking out for our interest and we need to pray for him, just like we pray for President Trump and Elon Musk, because they're trying to look out for us to make America healthy again, to make America great again. And, lauren, I want you to know we appreciate you, we appreciate your efforts to look out for us in South Carolina, to look out for the little people and defend our constitutional rights. I thank you for coming on to More Than Medicine. I'd love to have you back again. You're a fountain of information and we'll invite you back again. Do you have any final statements?
Lauren Martel:Well, I was going to say that I think there's some new information they've been researching on and it's just that the mercury and the sort of aluminum and other preservatives that are in the vaccines, I think that Robert Kennedy Jr and his teams are going to come out with that these things do break the blood-brain barrier.
Lauren Martel:I think they are going to make an approximate causal relationship between vaccines and childhood injuries and how autism is on the rise and fertility. All these things I do believe the research is going to start coming out. You know, when the tobacco litigation was so big and that sort of corrected and got, you know, I mean people are still smoking and worse, even vaping now. But you know, just I'm not judging, but those things you know. If you can stop doing them, that's good. But the thing is, is that tobacco litigation was huge, I believe vaccine litigation although we've always said kind of rolled over that we can't sue, we can't sue. I believe that going through VAERS they made it so difficult that Robert Kennedy Jr is trying to alleviate that indemnification that they've given them.
Lauren Martel:I mean, think about how unfree that is and how terrible that is for product liability, that they indemnified themselves and they gave people vaccines that nobody even knew what was in them and then said you can't come back and sue us at all, so I do believe that those are going to be lifted in some ways at all, you know. So I do believe that those are going to be lifted in some ways. And also they used to be able to say, hey, you can't prove that, even though somebody's child might have gone in and gotten a shot and then like a week later, was non-responsive, or you know was different.
Dr. Robert Jackson:I think he will. I think he'll undo the damage of the Vaccine Injury Act that Ronald Reagan signed that protects the pharmaceutical companies, and once that happens, the floodgate of lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies will be opened. And then the information will come out and people will begin to understand how really dangerous the pediatric vaccines are the pediatric vaccines are.
Lauren Martel:And the last thing that I'll say is just in the meantime, just to encourage your listeners and our fellow South Carolinians to be proactive on that and not wait until those things happen. Just if you do your own research, feel like you can have the strength to request a religious exemption or a medical exemption for your child, or for yourself or for one of your family members, and be strong, because I have seen across the board, in schools and employment places, where people have stood up to it, that they have been successful.
Dr. Robert Jackson:That's good, all right, thank you, ma'am. Thank you, ms Lauren.
Lauren Martel:Thank you, have a blessed day.
Dr. Robert Jackson:My guest today is Lauren Martel. She's a lawyer from down in Bluffton, South Carolina. You're listening to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, Dr Robert Jackson. We'll be back again next week. Until then, may the Lord bless you real good.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this edition of More Than Medicine. For more information about the Jackson Family Ministry, dr Jackson's books, or to schedule a speaking engagement, go to their Facebook page, instagram or their webpage at jacksonfamilyministrycom. This podcast is produced by Bob Slone Audio Production at bobslone. com.
