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 taken 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 said in a statement that it was “the right decision and the just one.” Trial proceedings had begun this month in Salt Lake City. Charges against Kris Anderson and the Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah were also dropped, the lawyers said.
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.
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