Bobbie Anne Cox & Warner Mendenhall recall the "unconstitutional" Covid LOCKDOWNS

Attorneys Bobbie Anne Cox & Warner Mendenhall recall how the "unconstitutional" Covid LOCKDOWNS destroyed small landlords, making way for BlackRock to buy up properties so we all can "own nothing"

Cox: "Remember folks, the government did that to its people... Not the virus..."

This clip of Cox (
@Attorney_Cox
), who's also a legal commentator and Fellow at the Brownstone Institute (
@brownstoneinst
), is taken from a conversation with Jeffrey A Tucker (
@jeffreyatucker
) and attorney Warner Mendenhall (
@MendenhallFirm
) posted to The Epoch Times Youtube channel on November 1, 2025.

---------------Partial transcription of clip----------------

Cox:

"But just to connect the dots, when they did these lockdowns, and people were, businesses were going belly up and people were really experiencing, I mean, horrible mental negative, impacts, not just from the isolation, but also from the financial burden that was now being thrust upon them. Remember folks, the government did that to its people. The government. Not the virus, not the person next door to you. The government did that to everybody.

"And then what did the government do? Oh, march within a month, maybe two, the most. The CARES Act. $2.1 trillion worth of spending that they issued, doling it out to the citizens. Right? Giving it to, to keep everybody, you know, afloat, whatever. What did they do in that time period? As Jeffrey said, the CDC simultaneously issues. The CDC, The Center for Disease Control issues a nationwide eviction moratorium, announcing that you can't evict your tenants if they stop paying rent, because if you do that, eviction will cause further spread of COVID.

"[It was] completely absurd. But they got away with it for over a year. The courts would not hear an eviction case for over a year. What is, what does that do? And the CARES Act money. The $2.1 trillion is not going to the landlords as a rent voucher. No, it's going directly to the tenants who are, as I had landlords calling me up daily. My tenants won't pay rent. But I just saw them walking into their apartment with a brand new big screen TV.

Mendenhall:

"And let's tie this to some bigger movement that's going on out there. So you kill the landlords and there are a lot of small landlords out there... You're killing them and they're going bankrupt. And BlackRock's coming in and buying up those properties and you will own nothing. They do not like these small mom and pop landlords. They don't like these small mom and pop businesses because what does that do? They're independent thinking people who won't necessarily go along with the programs."

Cox:

"And... it took over a year. It took a year and a half for the lawsuit filed against, you know, the lockdown, the. I'm sorry, the nationwide eviction moratoriums. Finally goes up to SCOTUS. SCOTUS finally says, nope, sorry, CDC, wrong, wrong branch of government. Congress could do that. Which they never would, because that would be political suicide. But you can't do that. You're an agency. But why did it do it? Because it's an agency and they're not elected. They're unelected bureaucrats, and they can't be removed.

"So the CDC did it. They get away with it, by the way, in New York, they continued that eviction moratorium for another year. So you had some landlords in New York State that couldn't collect rent for two years. It was done intentionally, and it was done, with a very sly hand, I have to say. The other thing, a year later. Right. So in 20— That was March of 2020. March of 2021, the federal government issues... they called it the American Rescue Plan. I wrote it down so I wouldn't get it wrong. And the American Rescue plan, that was another $1.9 trillion that they started to dole out.

"So what are they doing? They're increasing our debt, and they are putting a Band-Aid on the real problem. But this is all stemming from what they did. They locked everybody down for months on end. And it's people. It's like this. You know, you said yesterday, at some point, you know, people want to just pretend. I think it was your opening statement. People just want to pretend it didn't happen. And I'm thinking to myself, we are still recovering... From the legal end and the calls I get in my office. Can you help me with this? Can you help me? People are still recovering.

Tucker:

"Quickly, on the Supreme Court, ruling on the rent, a term about which I had forgotten. Does that entitle the victims of these policies to some sort of compensation?"

Cox:

"No, no, no. It only said CDC. You can't do this. Okay. Yeah. No, I mean, that would. That would probably bankrupt them if they had to again."

Mendenhall:

"It's a Taking. Same. Same kind of issue."

Tucker:

"So they got away with it, in other words?"

Cox:

"Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah. [And] the agencies doing, you know, what they're doing, over these past five years, whether it's state level or it's federal level, a lot of what they're doing is, you know, what we would call unconstitutional. They don't have the power to do it. But they're doing it anyway. And sometimes the legislature steps back and says, 'Oh, well, better for them to do it.' Like in the case of the nationwide eviction moratorium."