An Army Blackhawk pilot in the 16th Combat Aviation Brigade who resisted the COVID vaccine mandate four years ago is facing involuntary discharge from the military next month.
Despite the mandate being rescinded and President Donald Trump’s attempt to fix the harm done by the Biden administration, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Brandon Budge is still due to be kicked out over an alleged infraction stemming from his early resistance to the vaccine in 2021.
Four years and $40,000 in legal fees later, he is still fighting to save his career — which could come to an abrupt end on April 30.
It all began in April 2021, when Budge was selected for promotion to chief warrant officer 4. Budge, then 39 and the father of six, had served 18 years in the military, including two combat deployments to Afghanistan.
The Biden administration had just taken office. The COVID pandemic was over a year old at that point, but the Biden administration was pushing vaccination hard, including inside the military. It first tried to pressure troops to get vaccinated. Budge and many fellow service members resisted, for various reasons.
Budge told Breitbart News, “There was no data on it. The medics didn’t know what it was. The medics didn’t know what was in it. They weren’t trained on it. They had no idea. They couldn’t answer questions. The doctors wouldn’t answer questions, and if you asked questions, you were met with just an immense amount of frustration and angst and so there was, it was really hard for me to just accept the fact I was going to stick this thing that there was no information on in my body.”
He said there is a difference between a tetanus shot that has been around since the 1960s and an experimental mRNA drug.
“This kind of crosses the line. Like, why don’t we wait ’till the FDA route? And especially as a pilot, you’ve got to remember, if I go fly an aircraft, and there’s 10 people, if something happens to me, everybody dies. It doesn’t make any sense to turn your pilots into vessels for experimentation,” he said.
Even before the mandate, he was subjected to pressure from his company commander.
“I was the only one that was forced to wear a mask. My commander decided that because I wasn’t vaccinated, I was going to wear a mask, but really, it felt like it was just a reason to single me out. Travel policies were changed [in] a way that didn’t allow me to go home and visit my wife and kids. There was just a lot of pressure put on people that resisted the vaccine,” he said.
He said he was forced to wear a mask even after the mask mandate was lifted, which he resisted as well. He said he was once pulled into his company commander’s office, who told him, “If I catch you in the hangar without a mask again, I will fucking ruin your career.” Budge said one of the doctors at the aviation clinic also threatened to make sure he never flew again in the Army or the civilian world.
Then in August 2021, Biden Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin mandated that every service member take the vaccine by December 2021 or be kicked out.
Budge, like many at the time, continued to hold off, even as he was scheduled to deploy to South Korea the next month in September. During a visit to the aviation clinic for another reason, a medic — unbeknownst to him — entered into his record that he had received the vaccine, he said. He speculated that she believed she was helping him.
His command finally got him to take the vaccine using his wife’s condition.
His wife was pregnant with their youngest, and the pregnancy was considered high risk. She was due in November. Budge had asked for a 90-day extension on his orders to South Korea, which was denied. He filed a complaint with a member of Congress, which he said “really frustrated” his command.
Then, he received a call from a command chief warrant officer in South Korea who warned him that if had to rush back to the U.S. to be with his wife but was unvaccinated, he would have to be quarantined for two weeks before being able to return.
“I was told that there was a two-week quarantine period in Korea when you travel to and from the country if you were not vaccinated, and that it didn’t matter if Jessica was on her deathbed, I would not come home if I did not receive the vaccination,” he said.
“The individual told me that I better think long and hard about my decision not to get the vaccine, because if the baby came or something happened to Jessica, I was not coming home, period.”
Budge finally relented and got vaccinated at a Walgreen’s before his deployment. He said it was then he learned that his record showed he had already been vaccinated.
Budge said apparently the medic had tried to help some pilots by falsely entering into their medical record that they had been vaccinated, but that he did not know anything about it or request she do that.
His command still dropped the hammer on him, accusing him of knowing he had a false vaccine entry on his medical record and not correcting it. In November, he was issued a general officer memorandum of reprimand, or a GOMOR, which is a letter of reprimand that is often career-ending.
A portion of the GOMOR provided to Breitbart News acknowledged he did not ask for the false vaccine entry:
While you did not direct or ask for the falsification, you were complicit with the falsification by not correcting the data and allowing the Soldier to input false information into your medical record. Your actions were dishonest and unbecoming of an officer in the United States Army, in violation [of] Article 133, UCMJ.
Budge said he was the only pilot he knew who was being punished. His command also accused him of getting vaccinated in an attempt to escape punishment for the false vaccine entry.
Budge said he believed he was retaliated against because he had spoken up loudly against the vaccine since the beginning, saying things to his company commander such as, “I’ll take it when there’s FDA approval,” “I don’t have to put something experimental in my body,” and “I would rather take an FDA-approved vaccine, something that’s been tested.”
The GOMOR triggered a Special Selections Review Board, where it would be decided whether he could keep his promotion or not.
Budge filed an inspector general complaint against his command in January 2022. He told his command on February 16, 2022. Seven days later, his command initiated a Flying Evaluation Board (FEB) against him, a disciplinary board normally reserved for pilots who do something egregious while flying. A negative outcome would take away his permission to fly.
Despite the FEB members being chosen by his command, the board said the allegations against Budge were unsubstantiated. Their findings read:
The allegation in the notification to appear before a flying evaluation board, FEB, pursuant to AR 600-105, paragraph 6-1 (B)(1) are not supported by a greater weight of evidence than supports a contrary conclusion. None of the reasons to convene an FEB under AR 600-105, paragraph 6-1 (B)(1) exist. CW3 Budge should remain on flying status.
His command still attempted to take his wings from him. His wife then wrote a letter, which was published on the Gateway Pundit in August 2022. It was only after that he was able to keep his flight status, but he lost his promotion to chief warrant officer 4.
As far as his inspector general complaint, he was initially told the Army IG had substantiated his complaint against his command. On December 27, 2023, he received an email with a memo from the Army IG that said, “The allegations that 16th Combat Aviation Brigade failed to properly execute military justice in accordance with AR 15-6 was substantiated.”
He then went to his brigade command and said, “I want my career fixed. I want my rank back. You guys made this mistake.” He said the brigade judge advocate declined to do anything and said he would contact the Army IG’s office and inquire as to what it meant. He then received another email about a month later, on January 29, 2024, with a memo backdated to December 27, 2023, that said, “The allegations that the 16th Combat Aviation Brigade failed to properly execute military justice in accordance with the AR 15-6 was not substantiated.”
Former Rep. Mike Garcia (R-CA)’s office tried to find out why the finding was changed, but the Army IG refused to explain, only saying the original memo was a mistake.
Budge said his command circled the wagons and ignored opposing evidence and others who stuck up for him. For example, the battalion executive officer went with him to the battalion commander after he received the GOMOR, and said, “Sir, you’re ruining a warfighter’s career — a W-3 with a lot of experience — over some really shaky details,” and the battalion commander admitted there were some “gaping holes in the investigation that will make for some great [After Action Review] comments for future investigations.”
“The executive officer pleaded with this battalion commander to take the hard right over the easy wrong. And this guy absolutely refused. He admitted that it was screwed up and then refused to do anything to correct it,” Budge said.
“From the division commander to the brigade commander — who’s a colonel, to the battalion commander — who’s a lieutenant colonel, to my company commander — who’s a major, absolutely nobody took a pause to determine if they should be doing what they were doing, and they had just [used] full force. And so we’ve continued to fight.”
Since Budge lost his 2021 promotion to W-4 and was passed over for promotion again due to the investigations, and the Army only allows for soldiers to be passed for promotion twice before forcing them to leave, Budge has been given a separation date of April 30, 2025.
Budge said he would love to continue serving. He also noted the Army is facing a widely-known dearth of experienced pilots, since it is losing so many to the private sector.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January that would reinstate service members kicked out over the COVID vaccine who want to come back in, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has directed the military branches to implement that.
But these do not apply to Budge, since he is still in the military. He is urging the administration to help those still in limbo like him.
“I don’t have much time left to fix it. Why do we have to jump through hoops? Why do I have to continue to pay lawyers to fix something that was rescinded [and] that was absolutely immoral and wrong?”
He said in order to try to save his career, he would have to go through the Army Board for Correction of Military Records (ABCMR) and other correction boards to try to get the GOMOR removed — which could take another couple of years, with no guarantee of success.
“You look at guys from the anthrax era — they’re still fighting it more than 20 years later. I don’t have two-and-a-half or three decades to fight. I earned W-4. I’m a good pilot. I’m a good soldier. I have lots of experience. I earned that stuff. And it does not make any sense at all that my entire life would be upended, or anybody else’s lives for that matter,” he said.
“If they wanted to make this right, they would just absolutely remove anything that had to do with COVID in any way, shape or form from people’s records.”
Budge said to remedy his situation, the GOMOR should be removed and his rank returned, as well as backpay.
He said losing his promotion has cost him $1,000 a month, as a chief warrant officer 3 versus a chief warrant officer 4, and the difference in retirement pay is nearly the cost of the house, he said. Meanwhile, everyone involved in his case is still serving, except for the investigating officer for the GOMOR, who was kicked out for misconduct, he said.
He believes those individuals should be held accountable “in some way, shape or form, because of the amount of pressure that they put on [me and] my family.”
“That unrelenting pressure, the level of deceit, the level of dishonesty, the level of just absolute angst that that was projected. It was not constructive. It didn’t serve a purpose in any way, shape or form, other than to isolate and to bully and to alienate my family and I, that’s all that it did,” he said.
He said he would like apologies from the division and brigade commanders, but would ask for administrative action for those below — particularly the battalion commander who admitted there were issues with the GOMOR but did not do anything about it, and especially for his company commander, who threatened that he would “pay for” his resistance to the vaccine.
“I had zero blemishes on my record at 18 years, and that included my enlisted time. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke. I’ve run ultra marathons. I’ve raised money for families that lost loved ones, special operators that lost loved ones. I was a production control officer.
“There was no need for him to act in that manner. I was not a troublemaker. I wasn’t somebody that that has had ever been a troublemaker and had a good aviation career, and he absolutely was inappropriate in his actions,” he said.
On Wednesday morning, the Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George personally called Budge to tell him he is working to keep him in the military.
George also has ordered an Army-wide review of all GOMORs related to the vaccine mandate, his spokesman Army Col. Dave Butler told Breitbart News.
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