EXCLUSIVE: Organizer of Michigan lockdown rebellion pushed bogus 'cure' for coronavirus, claiming his $75-a-month juice company made him 'invincible' and would 'dominate' virus

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The founder of the first anti lockdown protest - which sparked copycat rebellions across the nation - has claimed taking nutrition supplements which cost up to $75 a month will beat coronavirus.

Garrett Soldano started the Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine Facebook page which racked up more than 360,000 likes and began a culture war over restrictions imposed by state governors in their response to battling coronavirus.

His Facebook page's anti-lockdown posts led to people storming the state capital in Lansing, causing a gridlock as angry citizens protested Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer's stay at home order, sparking similar protests across the country.  

DailyMail.com can reveal Soldano is also a national marketing director for Juice Plus+, the controversial supplement company once endorsed by O.J. Simpson.

 Garrett Soldano started the Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine Facebook page which racked up more than 360,000 likes and began a culture war over restrictions imposed by state governors in their response to battling coronavirus.

His Facebook page's anti-lockdown posts led to people storming the state capital in Lansing

Protesters carry rifles near the steps of the Michigan State Capitol building in Lansing, Michigan last Wednesday

The anti-lockdown protests started in Michigan and similar protests have now sprung up in Wisconsin, Colorado, Maryland, Virginia, California, Florida and beyond, spurred on by Tweets from Donald Trump

People in their vehicles protested against excessive quarantine orders from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The protest was organized by Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine days after Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer extended her order through April 30 and took the requirements of staying home a step further

 According to Soldano, taking these capsules avoids a buildup of free radicals which causes the body to be inflamed and weak, and therefore becomes 'susceptible to any type of disease process, any virus, any bacteria'

In an episode of his podcast called Change Your Best from last month, Soldano tells listeners to sign up for the tablets and chewable vitamins so they can 'dominate your nutrition'. 

The former Denver Broncos linebacker claimed because he is giving his own family the supplements, if they are infected with Covid-19 they will 'get over it'.

Soldano claims that with Juice Plus+ it will 'literally' turn bodies 'into an environment of greatness and you'll dominate any virus'. Such claims are without any foundation, scientists have firmly said. 

According to the respected Science Based Medicine website 'there is no scientific evidence' that Juice Plus+ benefits health, let alone beats coronavirus.

In a statement to DailyMail.com, Juice+ repudiated Soldano's claims and said: 'We make no claim and have no data to support that our product prevents or treats COVID-19. 

The best way to protect yourself and others during this unprecedented time is to follow the latest guidance from public health officials and your health care provider.' 

Founding the Facebook group, however, is likely to give Soldano access to the contact details of potentially tens of thousands of possible customers for his claims. 

Soldano claims that with Juice Plus+ it will 'literally' turn bodies 'into an environment of greatness and you'll dominate any virus'. Such claims are without any foundation, scientists have firmly said

Juice Plus+' parent company National Safety Associates (NSA) was accused of being a giant pyramid scheme in the 1990s in a series of lawsuits over its water filters.

The company agreed to issue refunds to more than 32,000 people in Florida under an agreement with the state attorney general, who declared it a multilevel marketing company.

The anti-lockdown protests started in Michigan and similar protests have now sprung up in Wisconsin, Colorado, Maryland, Virginia, California, Florida and beyond, spurred on by Tweets from Donald Trump.

On Friday, he wrote in a series of tweets which read: 'LIBERATE MINNESOTA', 'LIBERATE MICHIGAN' and 'LIBERATE VIRGINIA'.

At his Friday briefing President Trump said some measures imposed by the governors of the three states had been 'too tough' and has kept up the attack on successive days.

The protests in Michigan have raised eyebrows because other organizers included the nonprofit Michigan Freedom Fund (MFF), which is funded by the DeVos family. Betsy DeVos is Trump's education secretary.

Greg McNeilly, a political adviser to the DeVos family, founded MFF.

In an episode of his podcast called Change Your Best from last month, Soldano tells listeners to sign up for the tablets and chewable vitamins so they can 'dominate your nutrition'

Soldano created the Facebook page Michiganders For Liberty on April 9 and changed the name to Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine the next day

Soldano created the Facebook page Michiganders For Liberty on April 9 and changed the name to Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine the next day. Soldano has deleted his LinkedIn page, which describes him as an 'ENTREPRENEUR, AUTHOR, PHILANTHROPIST, AND A MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER'

The other host of the event was the Michigan Conservative Coalition, which was founded by Matt Maddock, a Republican in the state house of representatives.

Now DailyMail.com can reveal that one of the central players of the protest has an even more colorful history.

Soldano created the Facebook page Michiganders For Liberty on April 9 and changed the name to Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine the next day.

Soldano has deleted his LinkedIn page, which describes him as an 'ENTREPRENEUR, AUTHOR, PHILANTHROPIST, AND A MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER'. 

His biography reads: 'For more than 2 decades, people have enjoyed the warmth, humor, and transformational power of his business and personal development events. He has transformed 1000's of lives at his motivational seminar STATE.

'Along with being a certified Firewalking instructor he also has grown one of the largest Chiropractic companies in the state of Michigan, and is a National Marketing Director for the Juice Plus Company. His team, 'Team Prosperity' is one of the fastest growing in North America'.

Soldano, a former football team captain at Western Michigan University before playing for the Broncos and the Chicago Bears, has written a book called 'God's True Law: A Parent's Guide to Raising Successful Children'. 

Soldano's chiropractic offices are based around Michigan, also having a few locations in Florida until he discovered Juice Plus+.

At an event in Austin, Texas in October 2019, where he was promoted to national marketing director, Soldano posed with a belt with the words: 'NMD' emblazoned on it.

The protests in Michigan have raised eyebrows because they were paid for by the nonprofit Michigan Freedom Fund (MFF), which is funded by the DeVos family. Betsy DeVos is Trump's education secretary

Greg McNeilly, a political adviser to the DeVos family, founded MFF. The other host of the event was the Michigan Conservative Coalition, which was founded by Matt Maddock, a Republican in the state house of representatives

Governor Whitmer banned crossing the street to visit with neighbors or driving to see friends, among other things mandatory closure to curtail Covid-19

He proudly holds it up, saying 'we don't do ribbons anymore, we do belts!', as he pumps up the crowd who cheer him on.

On his podcast last month Soldano talked about coronavirus, calling it a 'glorified cold, it's glorified flu' on March 12. 

He said: 'I feel like I had the coronavirus last week….and I got over it in three days. It's already gone through and the people who are infected now are a little late to the game.'

According to Soldano, what is killing the country is F.E.A.R, which stands for 'False Evidence Appearing Real'.

In the March 15 episode of the podcast he said the 'amount of people dying are [sic] 4 percent...it's not that big of a deal'.

Ironically, his Facebook page Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine asks for 'no conspiracy theories' at the same time as including photographs of protesters with signs saying 'vaccines kill' and unfounded claims that coronavirus numbers are being inflated by hospitals. 

With no social distancing measures or lockdowns, estimates from the Centers for Disease Control say that between 160 million to 214 million people could be infected with the virus.

With Soldano's estimation of four percent mortality, that would equate to 640,000 to 856,000 deaths.

Soldano heartlessly dismissed those who have died from coronavirus and said 'all these deaths are from immunocompromised people and those people have been given a different deck of cards'. 

Then he launched into his sales pitch.

According to Soldano, what is killing the country is F.E.A.R, which stands for 'False Evidence Appearing Real'. In the March 15 episode of the podcast he said the 'amount of people dying are [sic] 4 percent...it's not that big of a deal'

Soldano proclaimed: 'The biggest thing is that you got to [do is] increase vital nutrients and antioxidants.

'That's what is found in fruits, vegetables and berries. They're saying right now you need to eat 10-15 servings of fruit and vegetables and berries without this virus going on.

'You should be dominating over 20 (servings of fruit and vegetables) because you should be flooding your body full of all these antioxidants and vital nutrients and who is going to eat over 20 servings a day? You can't do it. 

'Especially getting the variety they call the rainbow, the different colors of fruits, vegetables and berries. If you're not growing your own garden and you're not dominating it then you're going to have to fill in the gaps. We utilize Juice Plus+'.

Shaking a bottle of pills in the background, Soldano declared that 'I love this product' because it is would 'increase your body full of antioxidants and vital nutrients, to decrease the free radicals'.

He said: 'What you see right here is over 30 different fruits and vegetables and berries and all your omegas, omega three, five, six seven and nine in capsule form. I get that every single day at least and sometimes I take it two to three times a day depending on my work amount'.

According to Soldano, taking these capsules avoids a buildup of free radicals which causes the body to be inflamed and weak, and therefore becomes 'susceptible to any type of disease process, any virus, any bacteria'. 

According to Soldano, taking these capsules avoids a buildup of free radicals which causes the body to be inflamed and weak, and therefore becomes 'susceptible to any type of disease process, any virus, any bacteria'

He added: 'You want to make sure you're flooding your body every single day including your children, that's why I like the Juice Plus+, they got the gummies!'

Soldano claimed Juice Plus+ is 'better than organic' foods and claims that 'certified organic is a gray area' because 'they can't prove to me there's no pesticides on that product'.

He said: 'I know that I'm fueling my family the right way. If we are exposed to the coronavirus, (if) we're going to be one of the 60,70 thousand people in the world who get it, have signs and symptoms, we may not even have signs and symptoms and we'll get over it.

'That's my confidence, that's why I'm chillaxed right now, I'm relaxed because I know if we're exposed to it my family is healthy because we're doing the right things to fuel our body the right way. We do this every single way regardless if there's an outbreak or not'.

Such hard selling tactics are familiar to anyone who has been given the pitch from Juice Plus+ or any other National Safety Associates products.

Juice Plus+ was introduced by NSA in 1993 and reportedly hit $6 million per month in sales by the end of its first year.

The product is arguably best known for being endorsed by OJ Simpson, which was dragged into Simpson's trial for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman. 

A video from March 1994 of Simpson - whose nickname, fittingly, was 'The Juice' - praising the products for helping his arthritis and for improving his golf game was filmed three months after the murders took place. 

The product is arguably best known for being endorsed by OJ Simpson (pictured during the trial in 1995), which was dragged into Simpson's trial for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman. A video from March 1994 of Simpson - whose nickname, fittingly, was 'The Juice' - praising the products for helping his arthritis and for improving his golf game was filmed three months after the murders took place. Yet in court Simpson claimed he was so stricken by arthritis that he could not have committed the crime

Yet in court Simpson claimed he was so stricken by arthritis that he could not have committed the crime. 

Science Based Medicine says Juice Plus+ is 'capitalizing on our worries and selling a convenient capsule without any real evidence that it will benefit us'.

Juice Plus+ was also featured on Quackwatch, which debunked the scientific theory that Juice Plus+ uses to back up its advertising.

In 1993, NSA settled a case with the Florida attorney general and agreed to pay refunds to 32,000 people who signed up to sell its water filters.

Each person had to put in $7,000 to buy water filters, air filters and videos and earned their money by getting other people to sign up.

The more people a person recruited, the bigger their bonus which was also tied to how many NSA products each new recruit bought from their distributor.

According to a report at the time in the Orlando Sentinel, to get a bonus of three percent on a recruit's sales, the distributor had to sell $5,000 worth of stuff a month.

But based on the NSA marketing plan from 1992, 10 percent of the entire US population would need to be distributors to everyone at the sixth and seventh levels to break even.

Also in the early 1990s NSA was hit with a class action complaint by two of its distributors who said the firm had up to 500 sales pyramids for water filters.

Each of these were headed by a 'national marketing manager' - the same title that Soldano has with Juice Plus+ - who sold distributorships for a fee, and so it would go on down the line.

More recently Juice Plus+ was fined $1.1 million by Italy's Competition and Market Authority last April which accused it of beaching European Union advertising law.

The fine was for 'hidden marketing' where it was not clear the purpose of Facebook groups was to sell the products to people.

The claims the products could help lose weight were a 'deception' and the products wrongly claimed they could help recover from 'certain pathologies'.

Documents turned over by various branches of Juice Plus+ said it had hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue each year.

The Australian Department of Health fined Juice Plus+ in February this year $24,000 for failing to comply with therapeutic goods advertising requirements.

This related to promoting the products for a condition that is not permitted for this medicine, and a health professional endorsement of the products.

Three conservative, pro-gun brothers Ben Dorr (above), Christopher Dorr, and Aaron Dorr are running at least four massive state anti-quarantine Facebook groups urging the public to protest. Ben is the political director of a group called Minnesota Gun Rights

Christopher Dorr (left) is the director of Ohio Gun Owners and Aaron Dorr (right) is the executive director of Iowa Gun Owners

Ben Dorr created a Facebook group entitled Wisconsinites Against Excessive Quarantine on Wednesday, which now has over 99,000 members. Dorr and group members created an event for a drive-in rally at the state capital of Madison scheduled for Friday

Among the other people organizing anti-lockdown protests are a group of pro-gun activists including Ben Dorr, the political director of a group called 'Minnesota Gun Rights.

He is the moderator of the Facebook group Minnesotans Against Excessive Quarantine while his brother Christopher created similar pages in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Another brother, Aaron, created 'New Yorkers Against Excessive Quarantine'.

The Dorr brothers run a range of pro-gun groups and Chris Dorr has in the past threatened 'political bodies lying all over the ground' if Ohio enacts stronger gun control measures.

The family has been accused of setting up organizations that look like grassroots movements but actually to raise money for their political ends.

The NRA has called out Aaron Dorr for using a fake name to raise money in Alabama using 'bait and switch tactics.'