Dr. Kirk Moore had been on trial for five days, accused of falsifying COVID-19 vaccination cards and throwing away the government-supplied doses.
The Utah plastic surgeon faced up to 35 years in prison if the jury found him guilty on charges that included conspiracy to defraud the United States. Testimony had paused for the weekend when Moore’s lawyer called him early one Saturday this July with what felt to him like unbelievable news.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi had ordered Utah prosecutors to drop all charges, abruptly ending his two-and-a-half year court battle.
“I just literally collapsed to the floor, and tears rolling down my face,” Moore recalled in a recent interview.
Bondi’s announcement marked a striking reversal of how the federal government handled the prosecution of COVID-19-related fraud under President Joe Biden. It has since emboldened other medical professionals who were similarly charged to consider seeking reexaminations of their cases. And it signaled the increasing clout of doctors and politicians who champion what they call “medical freedom,” which rejects modern public health interventions such as vaccine requirements in favor of individual choice.
Dismissed by the medical establishment, this movement has nevertheless built momentum as distrust in government and medical systems grew after the coronavirus pandemic. It has also gained new influence in Washington, where longtime vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. oversees the nation’s health agencies. As President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary, Kennedy has replaced members of a federal vaccine advisory panel with his own picks and pushed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to restrict access to some vaccines, including the coronavirus shot. The Trump administration’s evisceration of long-standing federal vaccine guidelines and rejection of scientific evidence have alarmed the American Medical Association and other professional medical groups.
Just days before Bondi’s decision, a federal prosecutor from her department had stood before the jury in Moore’s case and accused him of enrolling in the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution program in order to “sabotage” it, according to a court transcript. She had asked jurors to convict him and to “find that no one is above the law, not even a plastic surgeon.”
Moore said he’d signed up for the program in May 2021 to receive more than 2,000 free vaccine doses and accompanying proof-of-vaccination cards after some businesses, nursing homes and the military began requiring such proof for visitors and employees. He said his plan was always to give vaccine cards without providing the shots because he wanted to offer patients a choice to circumvent vaccine mandates.
Bondi explained her decision to dismiss the charges on X later that morning, writing that “Dr. Moore gave his patients a choice when the federal government refused to do so. He did not deserve the years in prison he was facing. It ends today.”
A spokesperson for Bondi declined to comment beyond what the attorney general posted on social media. The Utah federal attorney’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Moore was one of at least 12 health care professionals charged after giving or selling fraudulent COVID-19 vaccine cards since 2021, according to cases identified by The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica through government news releases and media clips. Those charged include midwives, nurses, pharmacists and another surgeon. Eight were charged in federal court by the Biden administration; prosecutors from California, New York and New Jersey brought state charges against four others.
Other than Moore, only one of these health care workers went to trial: a Chicago pharmacist whom a jury found guilty of selling on eBay blank vaccine cards that he had stolen from the Walgreens where he worked. The rest pleaded guilty and were sentenced to a mix of probation, home arrest and, in a few cases, prison. Many also were professionally disciplined with fines or suspension of their medical licenses.
Of those 11, the Chicago pharmacist appealed his conviction but the U.S. Supreme Court in November declined to hear his petition; his attorney told The Tribune and ProPublica that they are exploring a presidential pardon. One other health care worker said she, too, would like to be pardoned by Trump.
Some of these health care workers, along with those in other professions who were also convicted of vaccine card fraud, started a group called Covicted Patriot following the dismissal of Moore’s case.
“There are more of us than Dr. Moore,” they declared in July through an X account that bills itself as representing “Justified Felons & Persecuted Patriots who were victimized by a politically weaponized justice system for providing covid cards.”
“We celebrate his vindication as we pray for our own,” they wrote.
Moore said he supports their efforts: “I think anybody who took the same stance that I did, in large measures, should be pardoned.”
Brian Dean Abramson, an immunization law expert in Virginia who serves on the board of directors for the National Vaccine Law Conference, said that medical workers falsifying vaccination cards is “absolutely horrifying” from a public health perspective. Their actions, he said, fuel distrust of the medical profession and create blind spots in disease surveillance and response, increasing the likelihood and severity of outbreaks. (A simulation model published in JAMA in April predicts a reemergence of diseases that had been eliminated in the United States, such as measles, and accompanying deaths as a result of declining childhood vaccination.)
“This undermines every layer of the system that protects us from infectious disease,” Abramson said. “Vaccination policy relies on accurate records and honest medical participation.”
Moore met with The Tribune and ProPublica in his clinic in the Salt Lake City suburb of Midvale. A neat row of clogs, his preferred footwear, lined one wall of his cluttered office. The 60-year-old physician wore black scrubs and a “Trump 2024” rubber bracelet stacked atop a gold chain.
Moore, a licensed physician in Utah since 2005, doesn’t deny the government’s claims: that he gave falsified vaccine cards to patients, that his staff threw away doses, and that, in some cases, he gave children saline shots instead of the COVID-19 vaccine at their parents’ request.
“All of that stuff is true,” he said.
In an interview that lasted nearly two hours, Moore said choosing whether to get vaccinated is deeply personal and the decision should be made between patients and their doctors — not mandated by government or businesses. The Trump administration has similarly framed vaccination as a personal choice in its dismissal of established public health guidance.
Moore referred to COVID-19 vaccines as “bioweapons” a dozen times and said he distrusts how quickly the government facilitated the vaccines’ rapid development and distribution. He said he concluded the vaccines were unsafe after conducting his own online research that he said cast doubt on the medical technology used in their development and the amount of testing before the first doses became available under emergency use authorization in December 2020.
The COVID-19 vaccine was developed in record time during Trump’s first term, less than a year after federal authorities declared a public health emergency — a feat Trump touted at the time as a “monumental national achievement.” This was made possible by a federal effort known as Operation Warp Speed that reduced bureaucracy and invested in clinical trials and manufacturing, according to a 2021 report by the Government Accountability Office — not due to any shortcuts in testing. The technological backbone of the vaccines, known as mRNA, has been in development for decades by scientists who won the 2023 Nobel Prize in medicine.
Moore said that the vaccines “failed in every animal test.” “All the animals died, and now all of a sudden, we’re going to use the human population as our guinea pigs,” he said. The Food and Drug Administration has previously told reporters that such claims, widely promoted among vaccine skeptics during the pandemic, are false.
The plastic surgeon said that he believes all vaccines are “poison” and that they have not been adequately tested — a view he says he has held for more than two decades.
Vaccines approved by the FDA and recommended by the CDC have been proven to protect public health by preventing disease, serious illness or death. Major health authorities like the World Health Organization have affirmed the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines, which researchers estimate prevented more than 14 million deaths worldwide in their first year.
Prior to signing up for the CDC’s vaccine distribution program, Moore did not provide vaccines in his business, the Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah. The “bread and butter” of his practice, he said, is a method of “rapid recovery” breast augmentations that he says he developed, which allows patients to return to their routines with little downtime.
“They were looking for anybody and everybody to get these bioweapons out,” he said about joining the government program, which was open to all health care providers who agreed to comply with the CDC processes, such as storing the vaccines at a certain temperature and recording who had been vaccinated. “And so, it was a pretty simple process.”
In December 2021, a husband-and-wife couple who Moore had met through a mutual acquaintance came to his home for dinner, according to a prosecution trial brief. “While they were there, Dr. Moore personally handed them both pre-completed CDC COVID-19 vaccination record cards with their names and birth dates on them, falsely purporting to show that the couple had received COVID-19 vaccines from the Plastic Surgery Institute,” the brief said. “Dr. Moore did so knowing that neither of them had been vaccinated for COVID-19, and without administering a COVID-19 vaccine to either of them.”
Within weeks, prosecutors said, Moore had started handing out fake vaccine cards in his medical office to anyone who was referred to his business by people who had already received a falsified card.
As word spread, Moore’s employees suggested patients who wanted a card could donate $50 via Venmo to a local health freedom advocacy group called the Health Independence Alliance, according to Moore. The husband of the couple to whom Moore first gave the fake vaccine cards testified at the Utah Legislature in January on behalf of the Health Independence Alliance on a vaccine-related bill. Moore says that he supports the group but does not run it; the Health Independence Alliance declined to comment in response to a request sent to the email listed on its website. The couple, who were not charged, declined to comment.
When sending their donation, patients were told to include an emoji of an orange in the Venmo subject line, according to federal prosecutors, and they were also instructed to bring an orange with them to the waiting room of the clinic. “At one point, there was a large basket full of oranges” at Moore’s clinic, prosecutors said in their trial brief.
Moore confirmed this system in his interview with The Tribune and ProPublica, saying the piece of fruit was a quiet signal to his busy staff that the patient was there for a falsified vaccine card.
He said during this time he maintained his plastic surgery practice while distributing fake vaccine cards and treating COVID-19 patients with ivermectin and other methods. Ivermectin has not been authorized by the FDA or recommended by the CDC to treat COVID-19.
An undercover state licensor called Moore’s office in March 2022 and asked to make a vaccine appointment during the criminal investigation after someone complained to the state health department, according to the prosecutors. At his clinic, the licensor, posing as a patient, received a vaccine card attesting to her vaccination without ever being offered a shot, prosecutors said.
Federal prosecutors alleged in their trial brief that a portion of the donations for the advocacy group paid a part-time worker at the plastic surgery clinic $18 an hour to give out falsified vaccine cards and administer saline shots to children. The worker, who could not be reached for comment, testified against Moore as part of an agreement with prosecutors to dismiss her charges after the trial, according to prosecutors’ trial brief.
Moore said during an interview that he didn’t make any money himself and never directly charged patients for these cards. He added that every adult patient who got a fake card had wanted one.
“Nobody in my practice was ever tricked. Nobody came to me expecting a vaccine and didn’t get it,” he said. “Everybody got what they wanted.”
But some children who received saline shots at their parents’ request falsely believed they were being vaccinated against COVID-19, according to court filings and Moore. This was a breach of medical ethics because doctors have a duty to build trust between their community and the health care system, said Wendy Parmet, director of Northeastern University’s Center for Health Policy and Law.
Moore said he gave kids the saline shots so they wouldn’t be bullied if their peers found out they got a vaccine card without getting a shot. “I did have some parents that didn’t want their kid to know that they were getting something fake,” he said.
He didn’t question the parents’ deception, Moore said, because he didn’t want to “intervene in their family dynamic.”
“You have to stand up for what you feel is right,” he said. “That’s the reason why I did what I did. I had no intention of defrauding the federal government.”
On the first day of Moore’s trial in July, about 60 supporters — including state lawmakers like House Speaker Mike Schultz — gathered on the stairs outside the federal courthouse in Salt Lake City. They waved American flags and held signs protesting Moore’s charges at a busy intersection. The doctor tearfully thanked the crowd before walking into the courthouse where a jury would soon be selected.
The rally increased public and social media attention on Moore’s case, eventually reaching Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. She sent a letter to Bondi, urging the U.S. attorney general to drop Moore’s charges.
“Dr. Michael Kirk Moore deserves to be celebrated, not prosecuted, for his bravery in standing up to a system that prioritized control over public health,” Greene wrote in her July 12 letter. Her office did not respond to requests for comment. (Greene, an early supporter of Trump’s, recently announced her resignation from Congress after falling out of the president’s favor.)
That same day, Bondi ordered the charges be dropped and thanked Greene and Utah Sen. Mike Lee in posts on X for bringing the case to her attention. Lee’s office did not respond to questions about his role in the dismissal of Moore’s case.
Utah prosecutors then dismissed the charges against Moore, his business and a neighbor who prosecutors alleged had organized the donations to the health freedom advocacy group. Prosecutors also dropped charges against his office manager — who had pleaded guilty — and the part-time worker. Both of these employees testified against Moore and his neighbor the day before Bondi’s announcement. Neither the neighbor nor the office manager responded to requests for comment.
Less than a week after his charges were dropped, Moore and his fiancée flew to Washington, D.C., at Bondi’s invitation to meet with her and Greene; Moore said he asked if Lee could join them. Moore said the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank founded by former Trump administration officials, paid for his travel. (The group did not respond to a request for comment.)
Moore described the meeting as low-key and genuine: “It was a handshake and a hug to both M.T.G. and Attorney General Bondi.”
Moore estimates that he lost about two-thirds of his plastic surgery business after his 2023 indictment because he had used his marketing budget to cover his legal expenses. As he’s tried rebuilding his practice in recent months, he rebranded as Freedom Surgical & Aesthetics. He said he started thinking about a new name during the 22 days he spent in jail in November 2024 after a judge determined he had violated pretrial rules by communicating with other co-defendants.
The new name “stands for freedom and for people’s ability to choose,” he said. Images of the American flag and bald eagles appear on his clinic’s new website among photos of svelte women.
Moore’s medical license is in good standing. A state licensing division spokesperson would not say whether the agency is considering taking action against his license.
The lack of consequences for medical workers who falsify records could encourage others to undermine public health guidance, said Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Offit, who served on the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel from 1998 to 2003 and has clashed with Kennedy over vaccine policy, was kicked off a vaccine advisory committee for the FDA in August.
“The first two years of the pandemic turbocharged the medical freedom movement, which is a euphemism for basically saying that I don’t need experts. I will do my own Google searches and decide what’s right and what’s not,” Offit said. “Even if it goes against what is standard medical practice or medical wisdom, I’m going to decide for myself — and my neighbor be damned, in the case of vaccines.”
As Moore vows to “do everything I can to get COVID shots off the market,” others who faced similar legal battles say his turn of fortune has inspired them to fight their convictions.
Julie DeVuono, a former nurse in Long Island who also distributed fake vaccine cards to her patients, said she and two others created the CovictedPatriot X account after others who gave out fake cards reached out to her in response to her social media post celebrating Moore’s vindication.
New York state prosecutors had charged DeVuono with forgery and money laundering for using the proceeds from the fake vaccine cards to pay her mortgage. She pleaded guilty in 2023 and was sentenced to community service and probation. Her home was also seized as part of a $1.2 million forfeiture, and she lost her nursing license.
“Is there any chance for us to get some kind of restored justice?” she said in an interview.
DeVuono, 53, said she feels she and others who were convicted of similar crimes were treated unfairly, but she can’t ask for a presidential pardon because her charges were filed in state court. Instead, she’s advocating on behalf of others who can beseech Trump, such as Kathleen Breault, a recently retired midwife and nurse in New York.
Breault faced a possible five-year prison sentence after she and a co-defendant were indicted in federal court in 2023 for destroying thousands of vaccines and issuing falsified vaccine cards.
“I was terrified,” Breault, 68, told The Tribune and ProPublica. “But I also felt defiant, because I felt like what I did was right.”
She said if she had gone to trial, her defense would have been civil disobedience. But Breault has health issues and cares for her grandchildren. She said her children urged her to do whatever she needed to in order to avoid a prison sentence.
So she pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the United States — a felony — and was sentenced last December to three years probation. (Her co-defendant, who died in March, had also pleaded guilty.)
Breault said she was buoyed by news over the summer that similar charges against Moore were dropped at the behest of the Trump administration. The outcome of Moore’s case has motivated her to begin the process of asking for a presidential pardon.
A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about whether Trump has received any pardon requests from health care workers indicted in connection with the pandemic or if he would pardon them. He has not pardoned anyone in that situation, according to a review of the clemency grants in his second term listed on the Department of Justice’s website.
Breault said she’d like to have her conviction erased so she’s not limited by her felon status. She’d like to own a gun again, but those with felony convictions are prohibited from possessing firearms in New York. She’d also like more freedom, including not having to report to her probation officer when she travels or how much is in her bank account.
“After seeing what happened with Kirk,” she said about Moore, “maybe if I didn’t take the plea, I wouldn’t have a felony conviction now.”