The US attorney general has instructed charges to be dismissed against a physician charged with ruining vaccines worth $28,000 (£20,742) for Covid-19, handing out counterfeit vaccination record cards, and administering saline injections to children instead of the vaccine at parents’ request.
Pam Bondi described Dr Michael Kirk Moore Jr. as having “given his patients a choice when the federal government wouldn’t do that”. He had been indicted by the Biden administration’s Department of Justice in 2023.
The plastic surgeon was already standing trial in Utah, where he had entered not-guilty pleas to all charges, including conspiracy to defraud the US. The acting US Attorney for Utah’s district, Felice John Viti, moved to dismiss the charges on Saturday, stating this was “in the interests of justice”.
Dr Moore was charged with furnishing fraudulently completed vaccination records for over 1,900 vaccine doses, the US Attorney’s office in Utah announced in 2023. These were reportedly furnished, without vaccinating, for a fee of $50 (£37), in return for direct payment or donation to a designated charity.
The government also charged him with administering saline injections to children at the request of their parents so that the “children would believe that they were getting a COVID-19 vaccine,” the US attorney’s office stated.
He was charged along with his firm, Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah, Inc., and three others for attempting to defraud the US and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Bondi posted on X on Saturday that she had directed the Justice Department to dismiss the charges since Dr Moore “did not deserve the years in prison he was facing.”.
She stated US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Senator Mike Lee, both Republicans, brought the case to her attention, referring to them as champions for “ending the weaponisation of government”.
Lee expressed gratitude to the attorney general for “standing with the countless Americans who suffered too many official lies, mandates, and lockdowns during COVID”.Dr Moore and the other defendants could have up to 35 years behind bars on various charges, the Associated Press news agency reported.
The then-US Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., operated an organisation for eight years, Children’s Health Defence, that constantly raised doubts about the safety and effectiveness of vaccination. Kennedy has consistently over the past year claimed to be not “anti-vax” and will not be “taking away anybody’s vaccines”.
