The Justice Department has dismissed charges against a Utah plastic surgeon who was accused in 2023 of selling fake Covid-19 vaccine cards for $50 apiece, Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a social media post.
The decision to dismiss charges against the surgeon, Dr. Michael Kirk Moore Jr., was the latest move by President Trump’s administration to push back against measures taking during the pandemic regarded by many of his allies as government overreach.
“Dr. Moore gave his patients a choice when the federal government refused to do so,” she wrote on Saturday night. “He did not deserve the years in prison he was facing. It ends today.”
In the motion to dismiss the case on Saturday, Felice John Viti, the acting U.S. attorney in Utah, wrote that dropping the case was “in the interests of justice.”
Lawyers for Dr. Moore did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Trial proceedings had begun this month in Salt Lake City.
Opposition to the case had attracted considerable interest among conservatives, many of whom viewed it as an example of what they said was former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s use of the judiciary to target figures on the right.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic, said in April on social media that Dr. Moore deserved a “medal for his courage.” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, said last week that she was asking the Justice Department to drop the charges against Dr. Moore, calling him “a hero, not a criminal.”
Ms. Bondi’s decision was consistent with measures taken by the administration to shake up the Covid vaccine system, often in the face of opposition from medical experts.
In May, Mr. Kennedy announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would no longer recommend the Covid vaccines for healthy children or pregnant women. The C.D.C. later changed its recommendation for healthy children, requiring consultations with providers, but dropped it for pregnant women.
Documents released in recent weeks showed that the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official had rejected broad uses of two Covid vaccines, citing unknown risks or injuries despite assurances of safety from dozens of staff experts.
And Mr. Trump in January ordered the reinstatement of many service members who had been dismissed for refusing the Covid vaccine.
When it filed the charges in 2023, the U.S. attorney’s office in Utah said that Dr. Moore, a board-certified surgeon in the Salt Lake City area, had sold hundreds of cards falsely claiming to be proof of vaccination in exchange for cash payments or donations to an unspecified charity. He was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States and two other charges.
Prosecutors said that under the scheme, Dr. Moore and others then destroyed the government-issued vaccines, noting that many child patients were given saline shots instead of vaccine doses at their parents’ request.
Dr. Moore and others sold enough of the falsified vaccine cards to equal 1,937 doses of the vaccine, according to charging documents, which say that the scheme lasted from May 2021 to September 2022, it said.
Matthew Mpoke Bigg is a London-based reporter on the Live team at The Times, which covers breaking and developing news.
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