Ep. 182: Econ Professor and Constitutional Law Attorney Discuss American Rights Being Destroyed with Garrett Smith | Vibe Podcast
Podcast: Play in new window
Garrett Smith is a walking encyclopedia of Constitutional law and U.S. Code that protects your rights, and this is my favorite conversation I’ve had in a long time. In a previous career, I taught university-level American History, Economics, and Political Science. Garrett and I discuss our LAWSUIT against various entities in Utah, states whose Supreme Court has struck down economic shutdowns, and we discuss our intent to get every Utah lawmaker to understand we will never let this happen again. Finally, we talk about what everyone should know about their rights, as well as their responsibility to speak up and stand up. This interview is pure gold.
LINKS AND RESOURCES:
Donate to Support Utah businesses destroyed by the CVD19 reaction
Watch the documentary on Holodomor
Follow and learn more about Garrett Smith
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS WITH GARRETT SMITH:
- [00:14:06]: Tyranny versus Freedom. Robyn shares a Thomas Jefferson quote that resonates with the tyrannical ruling we see today.
- [00:19:52]: Speaking Up. Robyn recounts how she stood up to the Salt Lake County Mayor and urges the audience to do the same with their local government.
- [00:31:30]: Constitutional Awareness. Garrett Smith quotes multiple U.S. Codes that pertain to officials illegally shutting down local businesses.
- [00:42:07]: Government Liability. Garrett Smith explains holding the local governments civilly liable for businesses shutting down.
- [00:45:31]: Taking an Oath. Garrett Smith talks about the government upholding their idea of what the Constitution says.
- [00:55:41]: Take Action for Freedom. Robyn explains her new website and calls for any individuals that love freedom and have a bit of spare time to volunteer.
TRANSCRIPT:
This transcript has been edited for clarity. Robyn: Hey, everyone. Welcome back. I’m your host, Robyn Openshaw. I have [a] very special guest. I want to talk to you about what your rights are. Do you feel like you’ve lost a lot of freedom? Do you wonder about whether [something is] unconstitutional? Whatever your mayor did, whatever your governor did — is it even constitutional for your legislature to spend a hundred billion dollars on contact tracing for people who go door to door? You should know that I and our guests are suing the state of Utah [and] a bunch of entities in the state of Utah because we feel strongly that the rights have been violated of literally millions of Utahns. Especially people who lost their jobs and small businesses that have been destroyed all over our state. I want to welcome one of our two attorneys — the lead attorney working on this — of Integralaw. Garrett Smith, welcome to the show. Garrett Smith: Thanks for having me, Robyn. Robyn: We’re going to talk today about what’s going on. My team and I are trying to work with volunteers to get Utah businesses to sign up to be a plaintiff represented by Garrett. Also, Neil Skousen is [Garrett Smith’s] colleague who cares a lot about what has happened to Utahns and what’s happening in our state and everybody outside our state. Garrett, I’m shopping for rental properties right now because I think cash is going to be pretty useless in a year. I think all these Californians and Washingtonians and Oregonians, they’re all going to come to Utah. I mean Californians have been coming here LDS contingent for 20 years anyway. I think they’re going to start coming here en masse. I’ve had six different people reach out to me in the last week and say, “Tell me about Utah. I’m getting outta here.-” They live in LA or they live somewhere in California. “-I’m getting out of here. I’ve had it. I lost my medical freedom last year.” You have no choice about what your child is injected with. It’s whatever the state says. There’s already big moves to socialism. [In] nowhere but maybe New York do we see as much socialism. Maybe we’ll have Garrett tell us a little about what socialism is or I can. I used to teach economics, political science, and American history. I’m very, very concerned about our loss of freedoms and seeing the state step in and take over areas that they have no business being in in a capitalist society or even a Democratic Republic like we thought we had till March, 2020. Garrett, you’re [a] constitutional law attorney. I know you love the Constitution and are well-grounded in it. Tell us how you and I came to be connected and — I think you could speak for the both of us — why we’re so passionate about this. Garrett Smith: I was seeing the restrictions of liberty. It’s something that I’ve never seen in my lifetime, and as I talk to people who have been around decades longer than me, they’ve also said they’ve never seen it in their lifetime. I don’t think that perhaps anyone living has seen the overreach of federal, state, local governments, and even unelected health officials — which we’ll get to in more detail a little bit later on. As I was seeing what was going on and weighing these things in my mind — and even battling this when this first came out — I would be a liar if I said that I didn’t have some fear and trepidation of what was going on. I thought, “Is this Armageddon? Is this the end of the world? What is going on?” This seems to be such a huge overreaction to what we now see. As the numbers come out — a lot of people will say that’s because we flattened the curve and all these things –whatever that reason, if we look at it, we say, “Wow, we very highly overreacted.” In a lot of ways, it was our government officials that were overreacting as well. The media was playing into it. I couldn’t help but thinking of Animal Farm as we read books by George Orwell. He talks about these things that are going on. I’m just saying, “Wow, the media is really turning into Squealer, right?” This pig that’s telling the other animals what the leader pigs want them to believe — what Napoleon wants to believe. It got me really worried about the future of America. The author of Animal Farm is George Orwell, and he said that if people cannot write well then they cannot speak well. If people cannot speak well, others will do their speaking for them. I think that we’re seeing that in large part across the United States. It could be considered an epidemic or a pandemic of fear, of ignorance, of reliance upon those that are in power. That’s not what America’s built on. Even the Constitution says that these powers are reserved to the States or to the people, right? This is to uphold the rights of the people. What we’re seeing right now is we’re not upholding rights of people, but we’re upholding rights, politicians and government officials to infringe upon our rights. One thing that you brought up, Robyn, was this idea of socialism. What is that? Well, I’ll get into it a little bit because some people wonder what socialism is and how that interplay[s] with communism. Socialism is an economic idea whereas communism is a political structure. Socialism leads to communism because it is taking control of the free market or of those private industries that are traditionally run through capitalistic society. What I would prefer is the free market rather than capitalism. In some ways capitalism cuts out the little guy because you have to have capital. The more capital you have, the stronger you are. The free market in its true sense is everyone’s got a free fair shot, and we’re not going to arbitrarily say that one business is essential and another is not. We’re going to say that everyone has the freedom to run their business under the Constitution. Let’s let the people decide. If people stop patronizing my business or my law firm because of who I am and the bad job I do, then they should, right? If I do a great job and people refer to me, then they’ll come, right? The free market works that out. I don’t need a government entity, especially an unelected health official to say, “Garrett, your law firm is not essential, so we’re going to shut you down.” That just flies in the face of the American dream — of what America was built upon. These principles are not only in our blood, we could say, and in our passion and in what we have as desires for this nation, but it’s also outlined very clearly in the Constitution. As I saw these rights that were being trampled on and that the numbers that they were claiming weren’t matching up, it got me thinking, “I need to do something. I don’t know what that is. I’m an attorney in Utah. I practice in business law, state planning. I’m a constitutionalist as far as my nature and what I love about our country. What do I do?” I wrote a letter, and I posted it on my website. A few people found it and started posting it on Facebook and other social media, which I’m terrible at. Luckily others found it, and they shared that letter. That’s how Robyn, you came across it. You said, “Hey, maybe we need to talk because you have a platform that can reach out to people and maybe even extend these ideas and these feelings to people and inspire them to say, ‘Enough is enough. We need constitutional liberties.'” Robyn: Yeah. What I started to tell you and didn’t finish is that our biggest challenge so far in reaching out to Utah businesses is that they’re actually scared to sign up to be a plaintiff and be represented by you — for free, for free — in possibly Utah Supreme court. This is the challenge that we’ve had in Utah. This is my sense, right? Garrett may completely disagree, and he can say so, but I find that Utahns — in terms of all the people that I’m dealing with nationwide — are not Michigan. We are more insulated from it. People think that we didn’t shut down. The story is that there are eight states that weren’t completely shut down. While that’s true, Garrett and I are going to talk about how we were shut down, how the governor stood up there and said he cared about jobs, but we’ll talk about what he was doing at the same time. I wanted to tell you that our toughest thing is to get Utahns to not be scared of getting in trouble for signing up in our lawsuit. There’s a part of me that wants to shake them and say, “You cannot be denied the right to conduct business because you sued the people who destroyed your right to run a business.” I think I have a lot of compassion for them too because they’ve seen so many crazy things happen that we don’t even know where we live anymore. There’s so much influx of socialism. You mentioned that socialism is an economic system and communism is a political system. I want to mention what socialism is. Probably everyone will get chills down their spine when I say this. Socialism is when government dictates the terms of business. Okay. The goal of communism is no more private property. We have seen a total takeover. You can call me paranoid for saying this. Garrett studied the Constitution and American history. I was an AP Sterling Scholar in American history. I lived in Washington D.C. I fell madly in love with early America and the price that many paid so that we can have our freedom. I think I’m maybe a little more keenly aware [since] I taught it later at Brigham Young University. I have asked myself every single day of the last three months as I watch how human beings are reacting to this how they’re just like, “I will give you my freedoms. Contact tracers, bring them on. Mandatory vaccine, bring it on.” There is a cost to all of this. We don’t ever get these freedoms back. After 9/11 when we established Homeland Security and TSA, look at the trillions of dollars we spend on that. Is that ever going anywhere? Once you give them the power, once you give them the funding, it never gets rolled back. Garrett Smith: Yeah. The illustration I like to use is once you give up the high ground, it’s an uphill battle the rest of your life. That’s exactly what we’re doing. I love that you brought up that we’re consenting away our rights. This is a concept that I like to talk about specifically with the fourth amendment. We’re talking about contact tracing. We’re talking about cell phones. We’re talking about treatment — the leader of the WHO saying, “We’ll take infected children out of the home.” Robyn: Garrett, they’re going to do it compassionately though. Garrett Smith: Yeah, the benevolent dictator, right? The person who holds all of our rights in a jar and decides which ones to pass out to us. That’s not America. That’s not freedom. The America I know is the America that’s supported by the fifth and 14th amendment that says no life, liberty, or property shall be taken without due process of law. There is no due process of law for these business owners that are facing bankruptcy right now. We hear every day the next big store that’s facing bankruptcy. I think JC Penny came up just a few days ago. As we look at this, I’m a little surprised by the Utah business owners who, as you’re saying, are represented for free to come join in. You don’t have to put any skin in the game. What’s your alternative? Bankruptcy, right? Where are you heading toward? If you’re worried about sticking out, the damage is already done. We’re trying to prevent this from happening to your children and grandchildren. Robyn: Yeah. That’s really what drives me is I’ve had an amazing life, and I could just kind of hunker down, protect it, be prepared, and ride this through, but I won’t. Every single day right now I’m jeopardizing my platforms. My podcast [has] already been D-listed. I don’t know if I told you, but we’ve had multiple of our podcast episodes removed from Spotify. I didn’t know that Spotify was in the censoring game like all of the social media platforms are. They removed our interview with Dr. Mikovits and the David Icke episodes. We don’t know what’s next. My new philosophy is bob and weave. Bob and weave. That’s what we’re apparently going to be doing. I hope that everybody takes notice. I hope you get a notebook and you write down all the ways that you see that that government, even Republican led states, historically red States, very conservative states. Utah’s had a balanced budget it’s whole history. We have massive tyranny here. I posted on my Facebook page a quote I ran into of Thomas Jefferson’s, “When the people fear the government, there’s tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is freedom.” Go ahead and go look that up. [The quote is] by Thomas Jefferson. Post it on your page. It got shared by hundreds and hundreds of people just on my personal page. It’s resonating with some people. “When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is freedom.” The government should fear the people. People elected the government. The government is nothing, has nothing, has no rights unless the people endow them, and the people should be able to end them as well. Before we talk about it, I think it’s pretty exciting that there is another state that did not [shut down]. The Supreme Court has already heard the case. Pennsylvania did not rule to overrule the governor with the lockdown issue. Tell us about Wisconsin and how you read that, Garrett. Garrett Smith: I think that’s a great win for precedent. Really, that’s what we want to do in Utah as well as overturn these broad sweeping executive orders. If we look and we see how it’s been applied, it’s what I call unilateral and arbitrary unilateral because they are calling the shots without any input. As you said, government should only have powers that are delegated by the people. Delegation means that I can take that power back. What we’re finding is they feel like they’ve got a blank check. Literally they do. Look at these stimulus checks. I mean, can we not say how impactful this is, not only for ourselves but for the next generations. For someone to strike down these orders as being unconstitutional is a great win and sets a great precedent. I won’t get into the details of the Utah lawsuit — anything that could prejudice the case because we don’t want anything thrown out. One of the things that I hope in Utah we can do is hold each of these elected officials personally accountable and personally liable. If we get a judgment or we get some sort of order that’s against the state or against Summit County or against this city, then those elected officials that are calling these shots are getting away scot-free, so to speak. They’re not paying anything or they’re not really having an impact other than politically. People could look at them and say, “Yeah, they shouldn’t have done that, so we’re not going to reelect them.” Well that’s okay, but we want to set a precedent that says, “If you do this, you are personally accountable. You have shocked our conscience. Your behavior is so detrimental to what’s been going on that you are going to be held personally accountable.” As we’re moving forward on this, I hope that will resonate and hopefully be a warning against other politicians from saying, “Yeah, we’re just going to do what we want,” or other unelected health officials, “We’re just going to shut this person down because we don’t like them.” When we look at the arbitrary way that this has been applied, it doesn’t apply across the board. In fact, I was talking with Bryan Hyde, another person who loves freedom. He was talking about a friend who said, “Let’s stop referring to businesses as essential or non-essential. Let’s start referring to them as preferred versus non-preferred.” Really, that’s what it comes down to is, is your business preferred by the government or is it non-preferred? For example, if we look at Target, they have become the number one book seller because we have pushed out all of these non-preferred smaller book places from running their businesses. If it was really about social distancing and limiting large gatherings, why are we allowing these huge supermarkets and these huge stores to remain open letting hundreds of people in and closing down a little mom and pops bookshop that may only allow 25 to 50 people in at a time? It just flies in the face of reason and shows that this has been completely arbitrary. Robyn: This is some of what Garrett and I have an issue with what Utah not only has done. In the Summit County here in Park City, we were told in the middle of March that we had the same per capita infection rate as New York City. We were told that so that we would stay scared and shut down. I don’t know anyone in Park City who even knows anybody [that has been infected], and this is a small community. It’s 10,000 people in this county. They not only shut us down and told us that we had the same infection rate per capita as New York city, now it turns out Utah as a state has the lowest infection and death rate of the entire country. We get seven, eight weeks into shutdown. Nope, we’re 9, 10 weeks into it now. I want to talk about who’s the doer of the deed in our county, and I want you to talk about. You called it the unelected health officials and the ridiculous amount of power that they have. Now they’ve set a precedent. They did it and they can do it again this winter if we don’t stand up to them. They shut us down. We are now 9, 10 weeks after the shutdown. Garrett, I don’t know if I’ve told you this or sent you the local news story from the Park Record who will not publish anything I have to say, by the way. I’ve sent them multiple times saying, “Hey, how come Richard Bullough PhD, our health department official, shut down the vast majority of our 7,000 businesses in Summit County?” I actually wrote to all these elected officials. I’m sure they know my name. I’m sure they hate me because I put teeth behind it. I don’t just say, “Hey, county mayor Jenny Wilson in Salt Lake.” She wrote me back a form letter and said, “I’m going to save lives, and I’m going to add a month onto the lockdown.” As if I’m going to pat her on the back. What I did instead is write back and say, “Then I’m going to hold you personally accountable. Then I’m going to sue you.” I want everybody to hear this for one reason. I’ve mentioned this once before, so if you heard this before, I apologize. I want you to hear this message. It’s very important. You speaking up has power. She wrote me back and said, “I’m about to add a month.” She had said it in public. That’s why I wrote her. Keep in mind we didn’t even have six deaths in all of Salt Lake County at the time. She was going to add a month to our lockdown, and this kind of insanity is going on all over the country I wrote her back and said, “Then I’m going to sue you.” I haven’t even met Garrett yet. I had talked to several attorneys. Nobody wanted the case, or they wanted me to go broke running this case. I’m not even a plaintiff. I have an internet business, right? All my 35 employees are still employed. I figured the living have to help the dying. I’m alive. I’m standing. Time for me to help out. It’s not just about my children’s future and yours. It’s also just about all these businesses. If mine’s still in business, I need to help the others. I hadn’t found the attorney yet. I want to make this point. Your voice matters. You can make a difference because guess what Jenny Wilson didn’t do. She did not add a month to the lockdown. Now, is this as big a win as I want it to be? No. Here’s why — they did this phasing thing. What that’s doing is telling all the people who aren’t paying attention to the detail, right? The devil is in the details. They’re not paying attention to the fact that there’s no restaurant that’s going to reopen when they’re told that for the next four months you have to stay at 25% of capacity. Do you know why? I happened to know this because I’ve been a business owner for 33 years. They run on slim margins, and they have to be packed on Friday and Saturday night to even hope to break even. Do you even have a hope of breaking even? There has to be a couple of nights that they are packed. Telling them you have to see a 25% capacity is massive government overreach. We’re going to have Garrett tell us a little bit more about the Constitution — what your very specific rights are that we’re both pretty lit up about. Somebody needs to go to bat for these Utah businesses that had been shut down who apparently think it could get worse by applying to be a plaintiff in our lawsuit. Yesterday John and I rode our bikes over to our favorite restaurant here in Park City, Billy Blanco’s. It is owned by the Bill White Group, which is a bunch of restaurants. I think he owns eight or 10 restaurants. He grows his own food up here. He’s a great citizen and he has amazing restaurants. [The restaurant] is amazing. It’s called [Billy Blanco’s Motor City Mexican Restaurant]. There’s motorcycles and old classic cars hanging from the ceilings — not models, actual cars. The attention to detail. This place is amazing. It’s so motor city. All the hand painted art is famous Michiganders — like people from Detroit — like Eminem and a bunch of celebrities [are] all over the walls. Huge, bigger than life size murals. We went over there to ride our bikes just to say, “Are they open yet?” We are now two and a half weeks past the reopening when you have guys that should be able to — if anybody can afford to — reopen. [Bill White] hasn’t reopened his restaurants. Billy Blanco’s is not open. They don’t even have a sign on the door saying when they will open. You call them and it goes straight to voicemail. They aren’t even trying to promote a reopening. That is what Utah is doing. Utah Leads Together is the plan. It’s a lie. That’s not leading — that’s unconstitutional government overreach. This is me saying this. This doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with our lawsuit. [Our governor Herbert and Lieutenant Governor Cox] have stepped back and privately enabled our health departments [to take control]. Our health departments have been the biggest part of the problem in my opinion in Utah. What do you think Garrett? Talk about that unelected health department official’s situation. Garrett Smith: Yeah. Obviously, there is some virus. We’re trying to figure out all the details, and I don’t even want to speak to the medical side of it, but obesity has killed five or six times more per year than this virus depending on which numbers you look at. Does that justify the government saying we can no longer drink soda and eat fast food? Now all of us have to eat broccoli every night. Where do we draw the line? The government isn’t our parent. The government is to secure our liberties of life, liberty, and property. Some people will say they’re saving lives. Well, I don’t think that life at home quarantined is the quality of life that anyone coming to America is thinking of. They’re thinking of the American dream. I manage my risk every day. This is what I would say to business owners. I’m a business owner too. Sure, I did make some transitions. I’ve met with most of my clients virtually because that’s what they prefer. At the beginning, like I said, I was a little scared too. I said, “Oh, I prefer [meeting virtually] too.” As I’m becoming educated and seeing things as they really are, I say, “If you want to meet in person, I am totally up for that.” I was a person who washed my hands before Covid. After every appointment I would wash my hands, and I just think that’s a good practice. [I am] not saying that this thing isn’t real and that we shouldn’t mourn for those that have been lost, but let’s not mourn for loss of liberty and these liberties that will never come back. We have to be able to stand up. These unelected health officials who are unilaterally and arbitrarily shutting businesses down need to be stopped. As a business owner, I would just want to know what my rights are. Like I said, I think that there’s reasonable things you can do to try and help out the greater good, so to speak, or to be a responsible and exercise public virtue. I always say I’m not going to go around licking doorknobs and tempting fate like that. That’s not my purpose, but I’m also going to act responsibly and I’m going to manage my risk. Sure, I’ll do most of my meetings virtually, but if I have a signing with a client who is aged and can’t get out to another notary, I’m going to go to a lockdown county. I did that multiple times. If I get pulled over and I get cited, well now I’ve got a court battle. That’s a risk that I’m willing to take. As a business owner, I manage risk every single day. As an individual, I manage risk. I put this in my letter. I say every time I get in my car, I’m managing my risk. I’m deciding whether I want to be on the road. Today, I could get hit by a drunk driver. I could get hit by a texting driver. I could get hit by a drowsy driver. No matter how well I drive my car, I could still die in my car today. There are 1.25 million vehicle deaths per year which, to my knowledge and to the date of today, is higher than Covid. That doesn’t mean the government comes down and shuts down my ability to drive around because there’s a potential harm that I could face. I have to manage my risk. As a business owner, I would encourage you to exercise your rights, to open up to understand that maybe some self-righteous health department official — or however you want to characterize them — they’re drunk on their power that they have now. They come to shut you down. There are people that will fight for you, that will stand up and fight for your rights. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we can guarantee a win. Because even if it makes it to the Supreme Court of the United States, there’s times where, in my opinion, they didn’t follow the Constitution and they found an answer they wanted to find and then backed it up however they could [with] whatever case law there was. The point is there’s something to be had in the fight. What’s the alternative? For these restaurants to not be open two and a half weeks after these restrictions have been lessened, that means that they see opening up as being less effective as staying shut right now, which is really hard for these restaurant owners. I was just thinking about it. I talked about Target and how they’ve become the number one book seller. I never thought of Target as a book seller. That wasn’t what came to mind when I thought of Target. Let’s look at these small restaurants [that] have in-house seating. They’re losing while these big corporations with drive-throughs seem to be doing just fine. They’re monopolizing the market right now. I have people say, “I want to support the restaurant industry.” They’ll go to McDonald’s drive-through or whatever. That’s not supporting the restaurant industry. That’s supporting the big corporations. There’s a difference here. Robyn, you did history, so I’m sure you’re familiar with [the] Sherman Antitrust [Act] and all these things when they’re trying to break up these monopolies. We are seeing the exact opposite occur right now where the government is facilitating monopolies. They’re taking out the free market. They’re not only letting capitalism reign free; they’re also suppressing the free market. They’re suppressing the little guy, the ones that can’t survive without that in-house seating — without that ability to gather people together. These restaurants, some have been in business for decades and they just can’t stay open anymore. As we look at the effects of these government shutdowns and the unreasonableness of keeping Walmart, Sam’s Club, these big places open that have a ton more people than would fit in this little mom and pops restaurant. It flies in the face of reason and shows that there must be something more at work here. One of the things that we’ve talked about a little bit is we need these businesses to exercise their rights. What are those rights? If we look at the Constitution and we look at the amendments, we have certain rights. The First Amendment talks about the right of assembly, so I can assemble together with who I want. Some people think that relates to religion. We saw down in Mississippi even separating each other in their cars and listening over the radio wasn’t good enough for the police down there. They still said they’d arrest anyone that went there. Well, wait a second. That seems to be a lot safer than going into a grocery store. What’s the difference here? Well, are you targeting religion in that place? What about assembly even in a restaurant or to assemble for business to enter into contracts? We talk about the 5th and the 14th Amendment that apply to deprivation of these rights that no life, liberty or property should be taken away without due process of law. As a constitutionalist, someone who loves the Constitution, sometimes I’ll get people that are the living document people that say, “The Constitution should change over time. It doesn’t work the same way, and you can’t be so purest.” Okay, let’s go to U.S. Code. This is from Title 42 of U.S. Code section 1983, and it talks specifically about civil action for deprivation of rights. It says, “Every person who under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage…” This includes policies made by unelected health officials “…of any state or territory or the District of Columbia subjects or causes to be subjected any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof…” This doesn’t only apply to U.S. citizens. It applies to foreigners that are in the country, even undocumented immigrants and so forth. If any subject them “…to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in the action that law, suit in equity…” and so on and so forth. Robyn: Now put that in English, because those are long sentences. Garrett Smith: Yeah. Let me break that down. If you look at the case law for 1983 actions, it’s specifically relating to state and local governments. There are other acts that you can sue the federal government under as well. This is specific to the States because that’s what we’re dealing with right now. If any state or local official under color of law — meaning under the guise of any power, right? Even if you have a law that says you can do it, if you violate someone’s rights, then you are liable to them. A lot of these have been done in the prisoner scenario. Maybe there’s a law or there’s a policy of a prison that allows solitary confinement. If that’s considered to be cruel and unusual punishment, [it] is a violation of the 8th Amendment to the Constitution incorporated to the States through the 14th. Even if there’s a policy or a color of law that says it’s okay to have solitary confinement, you can still be liable because you can’t violate someone’s constitutional rights. I see this a lot with child protective services. They say, “We can come into your home and we can interview your child without you there and we can blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” They have all these policies that outline what they can do. Then I look at the 4th Amendment and I say, “Well, there’s a right against unreasonable search and seizure.” You don’t have a warrant if you haven’t proved your burden of proof to say that there’s probable cause supported by oath and affirmation describing the search and the things to be seized. All these things are just part of our original document, which isn’t very long by the way. It’s only 4,500 words or so. How many people read it? That’s beside the point. They say that they can come in, so that’s the part of the law that they’ll show to the parent saying, “By law we can come into your home.” As I meet with these parents or as I consult with them about it, I say, “Let’s go to the exceptions. Right here it says that you can say no or in subsection B it says you can move out of state or…” It gives all these exceptions, but that’s not what the officials are quoting. The health official[s] may show up and say, “Under our guidelines that we wrote ourselves, we have ultimate power and authority. You have to close right now.” That doesn’t mean you have to close. That’s color of law. That doesn’t mean that they can take away your rights to the Constitution without due process of law. Understanding that they will use this as a way to bully you into submission and understanding that if you consent away your rights, they don’t have to follow all the laws of the Constitution and protect your liberties. That’s how they get at you is bullying you to consent away your rights. What I’m trying to say is don’t be bullied and don’t consent away your rights. Robyn: Very well put. It’s interesting that you bring up the similarity between this situation we have going on which affects so many of us and another very similar situation that I have in my past been very involved with — which is where you say Child Protective Services can come in. I was very involved sort of accidentally. I wrote an editorial which got picked up by every newspaper in the state and picked up by the AP wire about the Parker Jensen case. I want to say this was 20 years ago. Parker Jensen was a little boy who [was] at the dentist. The dentist said there’s a little thing hanging at the back of his throat, and the dentist cut it out, sent it into a lab in Washington. [When the results] came back, [it was] probable Ewing sarcoma, which is a rare and very deadly cancer. Immediately, just overnight, all of these state resources converged upon the Darren and Barbara Jensen family. I knew a little bit about it just from the media, and I started writing about it. I was very, very upset about it. I ended up going to court with the Jensen family and going to meet with Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who was in their LDS stake in Sandy, Utah. He never bothered to meet them, but he was constantly on national media speaking up against them. Barbara and Darren Jensen’s son was told he had cancer. He never did. That young man is now a father of three. Never had treatment because the parents were like, “We want a second opinion,” and state of Utah blocked them. The reason I bring this up is that somebody put something online about what I had done with the Parker Jensen case and then I got involved with another Utah family. [I] went and met with Attorney General Shurtleff. I was a bulldog and I reached out to him 17 times before I actually got an audience with him. I took a Salt Lake Tribune reporter in with me. First thing he did is kick her out. Keep in mind, I once was a psychologist. I once was a case worker. I’ve worked inside the system. You do not want to be inside the system, and you do not want to have to depend on the CPS 24-year-old caseworker to determine these high stakes decisions for your family. I said back then after studying this out and seeing the way that CPS — not just in Utah, all over the country; CPS here is probably better than some — [is managed]. You have more rights as an accused murderer in our country than you do if your child is diagnosed with chemotherapy and you want to assess all the options. This family was treated like they had no rights. This family was treated like they were in a third world country where there’s a police state. It was absolutely unconscionable what happened to them. Basically, they didn’t win in court. The case kind of fell apart when the doctors, the Attorney General’s office, and the guardian ad litem office kind of all came together. They all just made this big rush to judgment. They said, “We’re going to take your child into custody if you don’t put him in chemotherapy by Monday.” The [family said], “We got on a plane and we went to Texas. The state of Utah blocked us from getting a real second opinion. [The] only second opinion we’ve been able to get is LDS Hospital rubber stamping the opinion of Primary Children’s.” It was the most terrible story. Well, families reached out to me over the years. I don’t know how they found me on the internet. I talked to so many different families. It’s a very similar situation because basically a lowly caseworker could take custody of a child away from a family, and all these other government entities stepped in and basically formed a wall. There are lots of families all over the United States who have lost custody of their child because they say, “I don’t know that I want to do 11 months of life-threatening chemotherapy. I’m not sure that’s the right approach. I’d like to get a second opinion. I’d like a modified version of that, please. I don’t want the whole menu.” It’s a very similar situation [to] what we’re in. I just want you to talk a little bit. If you feel like the lay person should be the one talking about this rather than the person who has to represent our lawsuit, you don’t have to [talk]. Our health officials have run all over the state. We never see them. We never get to address them face to face. Richard Bullough PhD here in Park City — I have been writing that man emails for two months. He doesn’t even write me back. He’s never written me back once. He’s never written anybody else back that I’m aware of who I’ve [told] to reach out to this guy. Like I said, the Park Record would not publish an editorial or a letter to the editor saying, “Who is this man who has shut our county down.?” He and the county council — none of them wrote me back either. Guess what? These people continue to get their full-time paycheck the whole time. My friends in Park City — their businesses are dying. Their thriving businesses that they spent years investing in — in many cases at a loss — are barely breaking even. Finally, our economy was really thriving. We have a health department official who we didn’t elect, who doesn’t even have to stand in front of us and be accountable or get reelected, who not only shut us down, but when the governor gave the green light for the Utah Leads Together Reopening has gone to the governor and said, “We want Park City shut down longer. Where are all of our rights in this? We watch the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class being wiped out here. Garrett Smith: Right? I would say this is a great case in point of what we need to do — assert our rights. Let’s take for example, I get pulled over. I use this example because I think a lot of us can relate to this. Most of us have been pulled over. Maybe some more than others. I get pulled over and let’s say that the officer says, “I would like to search your car. Can I search your car?” If I say yes, he doesn’t need a warrant because I’ve consented away my right. Right. At this point the governor has told us to shut down. Park City has shut people down and told them not to open their businesses, but they don’t have a right to do that under the Constitution. In fact, they’re civilly liable. I didn’t get into Title 18 section 242. There are also criminal penalties for shutting [down] or depriving someone of their rights under the Constitution. Not only should these officials be looking at potential civil penalties and being held personally liable for monetary damages, they should also look at criminal penalties, which ranges from misdemeanor, up to a year in jail, up to a thousand dollars, and up to the death penalty. It literally says in our U.S. Code that you can be killed for violating someone’s rights. That would be something that is extreme, of course — denying someone of their own life. It ranges to say that this is something serious. This is something that’s not only protected by the Constitution but by our U.S. Code, and there’s case law to back it up as well. If we get back to what’s going on in Park City, for example, I would advise those businesses to open up. You have a constitutional right to do that. If they come and shut you down, then they are liable not only for civil and criminal penalties, but they may also not get reelected if it’s someone who’s elected. That’s the point I was getting to. Maybe they’re dismissed because they’re an unelected official. It may not only have civil and criminal penalties, but also political ramifications. That’s what we need right now. We need people standing up because if we’re consenting away our rights, then they have possible deniability. They can say, “Well, you chose not to open. I just told you to close down. I didn’t force you to close. I never came in and shut you down literally.” If that’s not the case, then I’m going to open up, and I’m not going to consent away my rights by saying, “Yeah, go ahead and search my car.” I’m going to assert those rights and say, “I have a right to run my business and that’s what I’m going to do.” We need people with courage to step up and to exercise their freedoms and not consent away. If I go back to that example, what if I start saying to the police officer, “I’ve got a fourth amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure,” like “No way. You can’t search my car.” I don’t think that that’s very effective, right? That just gets someone mad at you. Then I may be on the next police brutality news report because I was being a jerk. I’m not saying to establish this feeling of conflict. We really want to have cooperation with these police officers. Believe me, these police officers don’t want to shut businesses down either. These are great men and women who are keepers of the peace. They have to go and enforce this unconstitutional law or policy or whatever we call it. We say it’s under color of law, so it looks like a law. I would have a conversation with the police officer to say, “I appreciate what you’re doing, and I know that you’re doing your job, but can I show you what U.S. Code says about this. You personally as a police officer could be criminally and civilly liable for violating my rights.” I just want you to know that you don’t have to follow that unelected health official’s guidance here because we have a U.S. Code and a Constitution that says that this is the law of the land and this is the Supreme law of the land. If I were talking to them as someone who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution when I was sworn into the Utah and Idaho bars — I took that oath multiple times — I would look at them and say, “You have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution as well. “What Constitution do you want to uphold? One that supports liberty, one that supports rights or one that says an unelected health official can destroy all the small businesses in Utah. Which one do you want to support? “This isn’t a threat, but I want you to know that you don’t have to follow that because this law says you don’t. If you do, then I may hold you civilly liable and you may be prosecuted for it as well. I want you to be aware of your consequences before you make a decision.” Robyn: I think it’s a really important point to tell business owners, “You never had to shut your business down.” Now, could they get a fine thrown at them? Could they get arrested? Like that woman, Shelley, the salon owner in Dallas. We’ll be seeing a lot more stories like that. She was one of the first ones to be that assertive and that clear on her rights. She was just very grounded. I think there’s corruption in the judicial system. The judge literally said, “If you don’t say you’re sorry and say that you’re selfish, then I’m going to send you to jail.” She said, “It’s not selfish to want to be able to feed my children.” I would like to point out that not only do the business owners need to realize that they have the right to reopen, what they were told was a rule, not a law. It was an unconstitutional rule. We are not going to have a hard time making our case. Do we know that we’re going to win? No. I don’t know if we have corrupt judges in Utah. Pennsylvania does. The Supreme Court of Wisconsin upheld the Constitution of their state and of their country. That’s, like you said, a big win for precedent. I also want to point out that one of my goals in getting involved in spearheading this lawsuit against many officials in Utah. In the next six months before the next election, I want everybody running for office to sign on a piece of paper that they promise this will never happen to us again. Not on our watch, kind of a thing. I want them up on stages at these public events that are going on. I don’t want those who are elected officials already elected. Our governor is on his last term. He’s not running again in November. I don’t know why he’s not braver. This Republican governor is supposed to stand for freedom. I don’t know if he’s been in government too long or what. Lieutenant Governor Spencer Cox is running for office this year, and Governor Herbert has endorsed him. He’s been a huge part of empowering the health department officials from illegally shutting down tens of thousands of Utah businesses. These guys ran around and just quietly told every dentist, every doctor, every salon [not to open. They] imposed all these draconian rules. As long as we accept this, we’re saying we’re tacitly accepting. We are complicit if we go “Well, okay. I guess we have to wear a mask every time we get our hair done. I guess we have to follow these 18 rules, or we might go to jail.” That’s not okay. I’ve owned businesses now for 35 years, this kind of business for 33 years. It’s not as easy as people think. There are some libertarian groups here in Utah — they keep telling me we have to get these businesses to go open up. Listen, yes and no. Yes, I will defend them. I will defend them to the death. I mean I may be a keyboard warrior, but that’s what I’m good at – communicating and writing. If there is a time to do more than that, this is my word, I will do more. I will do whatever it takes. I’ve already told my kids, “Whatever happens to your mom, I’m choosing liberty. It might not be pretty for me. Just know that that’s what I cared about is your future.” I can’t remember who was it who said this, maybe Garrett. They’ve said the fourth branch of government — you’ve got the executive, legislative, judicial is the media. You aren’t paying attention if you haven’t noticed that our media is an arm — is an extension — of this socialist takeover. Our media has made people so scared and has gotten people believing in this fiction that if everybody doesn’t wear a mask and everybody doesn’t stay home and everybody doesn’t voluntarily agree to long term unemployment, that we must want old people to die. That is a fiction. That is a fiction that was created by your media who is completely silent on the area of human rights, and that’s why you got to have independent media like yours truly bringing people brave attorneys like Garrett on here. Garrett Smith: [It is interesting that they are] silent on human rights because there’s some human rights that they will pound, pound, pound, but they’re right now they’re choosing to remain silent. Robyn: Right? Abortion, LGBTQA, race issues. Yes. The rights that all of us are supposed to have, like the Constitution — don’t go to the ACLU and bother trying to find their lawyers to do this class action lawsuit and put a lot of their own time in for free like Garrett Smith is doing. Forget about that. That is not at all their agenda. I want to point out that it’s tough for a business owner. Let’s use a restaurant as an example. I agree with all the libertarians and all those who love justice and freedom saying, “Business owners go out there and just open.” Here’s the thing, the media — that fourth branch of government, that fourth illegal branch of government, the most powerful entity in the world — has made people so scared of this virus that if you owned a restaurant and you opened it up illegally, you might find your windows broken the next morning. I think I texted you last night, Garrett, that somebody has put a petition out there that for one of the, the group that , you and I know both of them that they’ve been putting on these rallies and every week or two it’s in a different place around the state and it kind of has a different theme each time. They have a concert coming up where they’re taking a stand for freedom. They’re not flaunting it. They’re not saying ignore the social distancing, don’t wear your masks. They’re not saying any of that. They’re having a concert. As of last night, this petition that someone is out there circulating had 1800 signatures of people telling Kaysville City and the mayor, who has agreed to this cause — she must love freedom — saying “We want that thing shut down.” Keep in mind, these are people who weren’t even going to go to the concert. They’re literally saying, “I want to give up all of our freedom. I want everyone’s freedom canceled because there’s a 0.1 to 8% chance — if you look at the worldwide incidents — 0.128% chance that I might get a virus at some point, so I want to cancel all of human life that involves human beings engaging with each other.” John and I already emailed and said we are for the concert. We are for people gathering in a park in the summer like people have done since the dawn of time. My main point is we can tell the business owners that, but if you’re going to reopen your restaurant, please understand as a business owner what you’re asking me to do if I owned a restaurant — I used to own one — is go spend thousands of dollars on food to potentially have my own clientele turn on me and say that they won’t come and frequent my restaurant and maybe even commit acts of vandalism. I want to call on any citizen of my state or anywhere else. Because a lot of the reason we are participating in this lawsuit is we hope for a win that helps everybody else around the country. Garrett Smith is an amazing high integrity human being. This other attorney who’s joining us, I haven’t met him yet, but Neil Skousen has an amazing family history. The Skousens are well known in Utah for being constitutional scholars. It sounds like he’s really carrying on his uncle Cleon Skousen’s legacy. I just want to point out that as citizens we have to support vocally with our dollars and with our feet. We have to support these businesses. We have to encourage them to open. We have to say, “If you open your restaurant, I will come and have dinner there with my family ,and I will tell everyone on social media about it because this is a small business.” Tangie’s Cafe in American Fork opened a couple of weeks ago, and I actually think it was legal for them to open. They’re one of the first ones to do so. McDonald’s, huge public company. It’s a bunch of guys around a boardroom. It’s a bunch of fat cats who are all worth tens of millions of dollars deciding how they can squeeze more profit out of every hamburger. Don’t care about your health at all. Don’t care about being good citizens. I’m talking about these dying small businesses. I don’t know how our restaurants will even open again. I’m just wondering. Historic Park City main street was thriving. There are 10 art galleries there. It’s become this art Mecca in the United States. Just amazing local artists. They canceled Silly Sunday market for the whole summer and fall. It’s only May right now, [yet they] canceled it for the whole summer and fall. [Silly Sunday] brings in tourists. Park City main street. I’m just imagining it in a year from now. I don’t think most Parkites understand this. They don’t understand that we have 10 times more restaurants than we as locals can support even if we really care about voting with our dollars and voting with our feet. We rely on tourism. I’m just imagining it will all be boarded up and weeds growing everywhere. What is happening to our state? As consumers, as the non-business owners, please speak up. Please look for every single way you possibly can to speak up. We’re building this software. I don’t know if I told you about this, Garrett, but we’re building a software where with one click you can tell your governor and Lieutenant Governor what you think about their shutdown. You don’t even have to know all the issues to write the letter. I wrote the letter for you, and I wrote a whole bunch of them so that they’re getting different letters. They’re not just all getting one letter. Our new website is takeactionforfreedom.com. If the campaign you want isn’t there, just sign up on our mailing list because we are building campaigns right and left. We just got started with this super expensive software, but I’m really excited about it. We’re excited to support. Garrett, what else do you want to say about constitutional rights we’re guaranteed? I love that you have this encyclopedic recall of the different sections of U.S. Code and the Constitution. What rights do we have that you haven’t touched on? I love that you touched on the antitrust laws that are being violated right and left. I mean what Tony Fauci and the CDC did in engaging with foreign entities illegally — they actually lost in the Supreme Court over this, but then they went and did it again. They patented the virus; they patented the vaccine. They were doing human trials at the beginning of March when supposedly we had just barely had our very first case. You talked about the Sherman act. The Sherman act and the Clayton Act are supposed to keep us from having these unfair trade practices. Garrett Smith: We could talk for hours about all these things because it’s in Article 1 section 8 of the Constitution that that talks about. Some of those restrictions are what Congress has the power to do. It talks about trademarking and things of that nature. Then they use that necessary and proper clause to, they call it the rubber band clause cause what else is necessary and proper. Let’s just say that we can do all these other things as well. No, they were specific. They limited it to Article 1 section 8. We shouldn’t go beyond that. There are these numerous laws, these numerous amendments that we can look to. If I could just echo what you’re saying about the necessity for the people to speak up. There are a few ways that freedom of speech can be taken away. It can be done by private companies as we’ve seen with Facebook and YouTube. They’ll take down what they don’t want to see. That’s not a violation of the Constitution per se because the Constitution just restricts government action. It should spark something and other people to say we need to come up with an alternative to Facebook or an alternative to YouTube because they’re censoring everything. The public at large may not understand what that means. I’ll use this as an example, not my Facebook, because I don’t post anything. I never get on Facebook. If I did and I just removed everything that they said, I would be very unpersuaded by their arguments because they’re scared to engage in a conversation. What would be more persuasive is to say, “I acknowledge what you’re saying, and here’s my response counter points, and then you counter point and let’s have a discussion back and forth.” That’s freedom of speech at its best. That’s deliberation at its best. When we’re only told one thing, then that really is freedom of speech being taken away. Once again, we’re consenting away our rights. It isn’t that we don’t have freedom of speech right now because I can go out and say whatever I want on news media or on Facebook or on YouTube. Private companies may take it and now I don’t have that anymore, but I am being conditioned to consent away my liberties. I’m being conditioned by the media to not say certain things because people will come and smash my windows with bricks or people will jump on and say that I hate old people because I’m not taking care of them right there. It’s such a vicious cycle of tearing down those that are standing up for liberty. My answer to that is stand up for liberty anyway. Speak more. Maybe you can’t do it on social media. Maybe it’s neighbor to neighbor. Maybe it’s a grassroots effort, whatever it may be. Use every avenue possible. I’m a huge fan of George Washington, and one of the things that he said that’s always stuck with me is, “If the freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent, we may be led like lambs to the slaughter.” If that doesn’t sum up what’s going on with Covid right now, I don’t know what does. We are being conditioned to say that we’re haters, that somehow we hate the elderly if we don’t social distance and quarantine ourselves. That’s not true at all. Have we asked the older people how they feel? I’ve actually asked my grandma. She’s in her eighties. She does have preexisting conditions. She would be a high-risk individual. I spoke with her and I say, “Well, what do you think about what’s going on?” My dad’s spoken with her. She said, “I could have died at any time.” She had a really bad situation last fall, and she said, “I want to enjoy my life. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to die alone. I want to see my grandkids. I want to see my great grandkids.” Once again, we go back to if we’re so focused on preserving life, have we forgotten about quality of life? Is that quality of life for these aging grandparents, great grandparents to not be able to see their kids, grandkids, Robyn: I would argue that nothing about what we’ve seen has anything to do with caring about our elderly. Someone needs to explain to me why Governor Cuomo mandated that all Covid-19 patients be accepted by these elder care facilities and hospice facilities. They can’t even require a testing. If this was about saving our elders, then somebody riddle me that. Why [are] we forcing the most vulnerable people in those facilities to take on Covid-19 patients in these long term care facilities? I don’t believe it. I don’t think that that was ever what this was about for most people. I’m not saying that people who are executing on it and the frontline folks are bad people. They believe in what they’re doing, and they’re probably just doing their darndest everywhere all over the world to help these people. It is nothing less than [a take-down of our Republic]. I didn’t start into this. I started speaking up about this on February 27th. I did not see it until hundreds of hours of research. I became aware that there are people with some significant agendas that are not in our best interests who were at work here. I really hope that people will not accept the propaganda. [On] my Facebook live yesterday, we went and stood in front of our favorite restaurant and said, “Here’s what’s happening.” “Don’t think we’re really reopening.” You need to stop saying that. Stop lowering yourself into complacency that. We only see people saying that all day, every day, and they don’t realize most of these businesses are not going to reopen. If they do, they have to live with the PTSD of the precedent that’s now been created. They never thought that a mayor or a city council or a health department official or the Lieutenant Governor can just shut them down. They plan to be able to shut us down. They’re already warning us. Garrett Smith: It was a test run. We’re establishing precedent right now. If we lay down and let this happen, we’re establishing precedent. Patrick Henry is quoted quite often saying, “Give me liberty or give me death.” We [must be] willing to have freedoms not only for ourselves but for future generations. Even Ronald Reagan said that freedom is only one generation away from extinction. It has to be in the blood of all people. It has to be fought for. What we’re seeing right now is people sending away their rights and asking the government to not only take away their rights but turning in their neighbors. This is Nazi Germany. This is what we’ve always been warning about for years and years and years. Yet we’re seeing it unfold. A lot of it has to go or it goes back to what you said, the indoctrination, the propaganda. I would highly recommend Animal Farm. It just keeps coming to my mind as we’re talking. It’s a three-hour audio book. It’s a really short read. Go read that and really start to open your mind. Robyn, you said you’ve spent hundreds of hours researching this. At the end of the day, if all we’re doing is watching news and media, we may know talking points, but we have no concept of principle. We may be able to regurgitate what someone else says –our favorite co-host or whatever — but that doesn’t get us to the principle of what we’re talking about. The principles here are we have freedom. We have a responsibility to support ourselves, to support our families. Look at these business owners that can’t support their employees anymore. Look at these families that own businesses that can’t support their families anymore. We turn to the government as a parent to bail us out, so to speak, with all these stimulus plans, even the last one, a trillion more that’s coming down the pipe — that they’re working on. AOC, Ocasio-Cortez who is just way extreme as saying that we should suspend rent for the rest of the year. How does that impact the second biggest industry in our country next to healthcare, which is the rental industry, property management. They are destroying America, and we need to wake up and say this isn’t sustainable. If they really cared about life, then they should focus on other areas that cause, far more deaths per year than Covid-19. Robyn: Everybody is making these links too. We saw people willingly get on boxcars and go to the gas chambers because everything was so teed up post World War I that in Nazi Germany people were terrified. They were hungry. They were eating cigarette butts out of the street. They were looking for someone to save them. They were in the exact same vulnerable position that our media has put us in. There is nothing to fear about this virus. Yes, we should leave the elderly and the fragile in the nursing homes, no different than flu. This thing literally kills 0.1% maybe 0.2%. [There are] dozens of studies documenting this. It’s not Hitler’s Germany where there was a perfect storm like this, and you had to decide whether you’re going to stand up for freedom or not. There are people who saved themselves and they spent the rest of their lives in jeopardy saving others. I want to point out that there are examples throughout history. The most successful campaigns and take-down [of] amazing civilizations was when they get the people to do it voluntarily like Garrett has very articulately laid out. We’ll put this in the show notes — if you’re listening to this on the podcast — a little 15-minute documentary about the Holodomor. People know about Nazi Germany. Stalin in the Ukraine killed millions and millions of people. There’s lots of dictators who just [get more attention]. Hitler gets a lot of attention in history class, but Stalin killed way more people in the Holodomor. He purposefully took control of transportation channels and the food distribution networks. He starved millions of people. There were 28,000 people a day dying in the Ukraine in the Holodomor. There’s some great fiction books or nonfiction books I’ve read about Chairman Mao’s cultural revolution. They got mothers to turn on daughters. If it is unthinkable to you that people are being encouraged to tattle on their neighbors and go on social media and say, “Look at me tattling on somebody who isn’t wearing the mask. He was walking around in the park and got five feet away from somebody,” or whatever it is. Remember that this has happened in history over and over and over again on many continents to many people. We are educated. Smart people I know have completely bought into the propaganda. Say no to the propaganda. Do not call yourself or other people essential or non-essential. This is nothing more than propaganda. I see people wearing a Facebook badge that says, “I am an essential worker.” Please never say this to anyone ever again. If you ever have to use those words, I hope you only do it to mock it because everyone is essential. That is what Garrett is fighting for. If anybody owns a Utah business, the link you can go to is utahclassaction2020.com. We really need some help. We’ll give you the list. You’re calling Utah businesses and you’re explaining to them what we’re doing. You’re getting them to fill out the application. That’s where the application is. [This] will be in the show notes, but write this down if you’ve got your phone handy. In your notes, [write] utahclassaction2020.com. If you would like to volunteer, we’re just making phone calls, sending emails, helping us out. We would love some help. That’s utahclassaction2020.com/volunteer. We’ll have that down below too. If you care about freedom, like Garrett and I do — if you have some time to give us for a couple hours in the evenings right now — we really need some help. Please fill out the volunteer form there. Garrett Smith, thank you for caring about freedom. He’s not as young as he looks. He’s in his mid-30s, having his fourth baby. Thank you for caring about freedom and thank you for caring about Utah and thank you for caring about your country enough to do this. Every other attorney I talked to [turned me down]. There was one who was the best civil rights attorney in the state. After he really thought about it, he’s like, “My wife and my kids are going to be mad at me for doing this.” He really believes that the virus is killing. That was probably the big thing that made him resistant. He really believes there’s a very, very virulent virus out there killing people. Even though he was all in for the civil rights part of it and he’s won class action suits and he’s the best civil rights attorney in the state, several people told me he doubled his retainer to take this case. [He] wouldn’t budge off $500 an hour. I’m like, “I’m sorry. I’m a single mom putting my last two kids through college by myself. Zero dollars of help from their other parent. I can’t do that as much as I want to.” You fell out of the sky. I believe you are sent to me by God. I know that your partner, Gary, said the same thing. I have to run with that. Even though it’s costing us right now a lot of time and effort to do this, it’s absolutely worth it if it means we get closer to freedom. I really want to thank you for being the amazing human being you are. Of all the terrible things that have happened in the last three months, the new friends and the new people I’ve met who are warriors for freedom like yourself are such a great blessing to me. They’re really the silver lining in this cloud. Do you have any final words for people listening? Tell them where they can follow you. Garrett Smith: Thanks, Robyn. I just wanted to say thank you. A big shout out to you for what you’re doing as well. Because sometimes when you take a political stance, you alienate some of your clients and you’ve got a great following. It’s really impressive that you’re standing up for liberty as well. Freedom is so essential. I just think that if we’re not fighting for freedom, there’s really little quality to our lives. What’s the state of things that I’ll leave for my kids? Like you said. I’ve got my fourth on the way. Then hopefully they’ll have kids, grandkids, great grandkids. These stimulus bills are just putting our posterity in poverty. This is not a viable solution. We need these businesses to open, and we need to exercise reason. Thomas Jefferson said a lot of great things, and one thing that’s been on my mind that he said is, “Those who would trade freedom for a little bit of security deserve neither freedom nor security.” I think that this battle will be fought in the minds of every person, like I said. I fought it in my own mind at the start of this virus thinking, “Whoa, is this the end of the world?” Even if we had lost 10 million people, as of right now, does that justify the government’s overreach and taking away our rights? We should govern ourselves. We are all about self-government. We [must] take the time to be constantly vigilant. Benjamin Franklin said, “To understand constitutional principles, to know it as a people, to share it with others, then we may lose freedom because we can’t remain in a state of civilization in ignorance. We have to understand it.” Really that’s the call to action here — not only to volunteer to be involved but study the Constitution. Few people have read it. Few people have read it this year for sure. We have the opportunity to stand up, to fight for liberty, and also to make an impact in our communities and in this war that’s raging in the minds of all Americans right now. You can reach me at my website, www.integralaw.net. My open letter that I wrote to the state of Utah is under the We Are Essential tab. I specifically put that to say that all of us are essential. If we put food on the table, then we’re essential. No one can tell us that we’re not. You can also follow us at the Integralaw Facebook. There’s other ways, but that website’s a great place to start and get some of the thoughts that I originally had on the matter as well as some of the codes that I’ve referenced. Robyn: Thanks, again, Garrett. That’s where you can find him. He is an amazing attorney who is honest. All the jokes about attorneys — throw them out the window when it comes to Garrett. Other people have told me how high integrity he is. I feel very blessed to have him on our team. Make sure that you go to our brand new website, which is all about these one click campaigns where you can speak very quickly and very articulately to the President, to your legislators in Congress, in Washington, to your governor, lieutenant governor, to your city council and mayor. Make sure you check all of that out. You want to be following at takeactionforfreedom.com. Thanks everyone. See you next time.Our Rights From the Constitution
Due Process of Law
Writing to Your Local Government
Managing Risk for Your Freedom
Violating our Constitutional Rights
Asserting Your Constitutional Rights
The Media and Your Constitutional Human Rights
Your Constitutional Freedom of Speech
A Call to Protect Your Constitutional Rights
[Related Vibe Podcast episode: Ep.#180: Nurse Kate Talks About Life In the U.K. Since COVID-19 with Kate Shemirani]
I just want to take a moment to personally thank BOTH of you for your spirit, intelligence and modeling of behavior for many to witness. I loved listening to the podcast and within minutes felt an immense amount of respect towards your ideals and goals as well as hope because this is the kind of media the public needs right now. This is not the normal we should live by and it is going to take collective action to ensure the security of freedom within this country.
Completely agree!
Just found green smoothie girl, and LOVED THIS PODCAST with Garrett Smith. My only criticism is that it was too long for people to pay attention too. Please shorten your information and it will get shared AND listened to much more. You have inspired me to write to my Governor and ask more questions on our local Mayor
I have been locked out of facebook. I want to sign your letter to our representatives. How can I still get in this, can you email me a copy of your letter please?
Best,
Marilyn Leisz maleisz@aol.com
She has the letters posted on https://takeactionforfreedom.com/emailgovernors/
Are there similar class actions taking place in other states that you’re aware of? If so, can you provide a link? Also can you copy me your letter sent to government officials? I recently received mail from my State Senator regarding the need for contact tracing ( HR 6666) moving forward as we reopen. I would like to issue a similar response.
She has the letters posted on https://takeactionforfreedom.com/emailgovernors/
Thank you Robyn & Garrett for taking a stand against this blind tyranny.
Many of us have parents or relatives who fought for the freedoms will still enjoy, and it’s a freedom worth taking a stand again. We can do it with the power of love & community, but also with the law, thanks to brave folks like you two.
Most great empires were taken down from w/in, not some outside enemy, (although the brain-washers would like us to believe it’s some outside virus that are bodies have zero defense against, so lets all just eat fast food!).
This movement & energy continues to gather power & momentum, as more "wake up" to what’s happening to America.
Robin and Garrett,
Thank you both for this podcast. It is because of people of you that the rest of us wanting to do something to assert our rights under law can learn so much.
I also would like to know if there are actions in my state of NC that I can join. If not, I would love a copy of your letter to government officials that I can model to send state and county officials, as well as US representatives and senators.
Got it. You gave me the information. needed to get going. Thanks Robin
Just an FYI – maybe I’m the only one having difficulty trying to listen to this podcast. It keeps cutting off and really difficult to get it to start playing again. Do you know what might be wrong? I am really interested in listening.
Thank you for putting a spotlight on this issue!
I have noticed over the years that freedom of speech was being taken away, you are so correct about the media.
Looking forward to participating with new software link, takeactionfor freedom.com
Thanks for caring enough to do all of this!
So informative and so very true. We need more people like both of you in this world! Thank you!
Robyn and Garrett,
Thank you so much for providing this freedom supporting conversation in the mist of the promotion of fear and abuse of human rights. You have me exploring in my mind and heart actions I can take to promote the truth about how we can and should hold onto our rights and not surrender them by fearing and ignoring them. Thank you again.
Robyn,
You’ve made the task of reaching out to local, state, and national representatives regarding my opposition to unconstitutional restrictive measures that have been taken, as well as, my opposition to locally rolling out 5G. Thank you so much, again.
I am now wondering if your products and advice are actually science-based since you’re peddling tyranny stories about the pandemic. I am absolutely astonished that you are stoking media bashing and science denying. In my eyes you have lost a ton of credibility!
Anyone can find a few people, even those with prestigious degrees, to support whatever they believe in. Ask yourself what the preponderance of scientists around the world believe, not a handpicked few. I am just incredulous!
I’m confused…while I agree the business owners have rights doesn’t the general public have a right to be healthy? These types of so-called tyranny arguments conveniently seem to not mention that the customers that these businesses are complaining about losing must be assured that by visiting your establishment during a pandemic your business is going to take some measure to safeguard their health. I have not seen one report that indicates that the small businesses had an independent Covid safety plan that they would have implemented that would have had the same public health impact that the states plan would have had…this pushback just comes off as business owners mad about losing revenues. I feel for the businesses that have had to close because if the restrictions. However I am not sorry that those restrictions have saved lives. If the argument then becomes why not feel bad for the business owners that have families and have lost their primary means of caring for them? My answer is that’s why there are social safety net programs. If you are against being seen as OMG im on welfare and that is somehow damaging to your rep or ego, then you are not really concerned about taking care of your family.
What parts of the Constitution do you agree with and defend?