The Department of Justice has dismissed charges against a plastic surgeon accused of selling hundreds of fake COVID-19 vaccination cards, destroying nearly 2,000 doses of the vaccine and injecting minors with saline shots at their parents’ request.
Attorney General Pam Bondi made the announcement Saturday on social media, saying the department tossed the charges against Michael Kirk Moore, a certified plastic surgeon in Utah, at her direction. Moore, his medical corporation, Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah, and three others were indicted by a federal grand jury in early 2023 for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and two other charges.
“Dr. Moore gave his patients a choice when the federal government refused to do so,” Bondi wrote on X. “He did not deserve the years in prison he was facing. It ends today.”
Law enforcement, at the time, wrote in an unsealed indictment that Moore and his codefendants had allegedly destroyed at least $28,000 of government-provided COVID-19 vaccines. The group provided fraudulent vaccine records to others “in exchange for direct cash payments or directed donations of $50 per person per occurrence” to an unspecified charity with ties to “a private organization seeking to ‘liberate’ the medical profession from government and [industry] conflicts of interest,” per the documents. The alleged scheme ran at least from May 2021 through September 2022, the DOJ said.
Curt L. Muller, then the special agent in charge with the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Inspector General, said in 2023 that “by allegedly falsifying vaccine cards and administering saline shots to children instead of COVID-19 vaccines, not only did this provider endanger the health and well-being of a vulnerable population, but also undermined public trust and the integrity of federal healthcare programs.”
Moore and his codefendants faced up to 35 years in prison. Their trial proceedings had begun earlier this month and were scheduled to run over 15 days. Monday court documents show the charges against Moore, the Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah and Kris Anderson, his neighbor who was also charged, have been dismissed.
In statements to the press, attorneys representing Moore asserted the plastic surgeon would have succeeded in court and said the decision to dismiss reflects evidence showing his innocence.
Moore’s case has been a focal point for conservatives critical of the COVID-19 pandemic response under President Joe Biden as well as others more broadly skeptical of vaccination.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, had written last week to the DOJ asking for the charges to be dropped and was credited by Bondi for bringing the case to her attention. In a recent tweet, Greene said Moore was “being prosecuted for helping people avoid tyrannical vaccine mandates under Democrats” alongside false claims that COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent the disease's spread and are behind “millions” of uninvestigated vaccine injury reports.
Moore also appeared to have the support of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who historically has promoted vaccine skepticism and wrote in an April social media post that the plastic surgeon “deserves a medal for his courage and his commitment to healing!”
The dismissal lands among several recent actions from federal agencies undercutting the government’s prior supportive stance on COVID-19 vaccines and vaccination’s broader role in public health.
These actions, often under the instruction of RFK, include limiting COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for pregnant women and healthy children ages six months to 17 years, ousting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices members, shuttering of vaccination messaging campaigns and launching a new investigation into the debunked link between vaccines and autism.