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Federalist Radio Hour
Doctor Still Paying The Price For Biden’s Covid Vax Tyranny
00:49:51
On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Dr. Ron Elfenbein joins Federalist Elections Correspondent Matt Kittle to discuss his fight against the U.S. government, which targeted him with fraud charges after he criticized the Biden administration's...
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- [00:00]
Ryan Seacrest
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Ryan Seacrest
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- [01:19]
Matt Kittle
And we are back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, senior Elections Correspondent at the Federalist and your experience Sherpa on today's quest for knowledge. As always, you can email the show at radio the federalist.com follow us on XDRLST. Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast and of course to the premium version of our website as well. Our guest today is Dr. Ron Elfenbein, who is paying a steep price for publicly criticizing the Biden administration about its handling of COVID 19. It's the story of medicine and weapons. Weaponize justice and how often have we heard that and seen that in the COVID era? Dr. Ron F. Delphenbein, thank you so much for joining us in this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
- [02:13]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
Thanks so much for having me, man. It's an honor to be here.
- [02:16]
Matt Kittle
Well, thank you. And I'm sorry first and foremost that you're going through this. You continue to go through this. We'll set up the the background here in just a minute. But I want you to know a little something. The Dr. Ron Eltenbein one point was named the Maryland Physician of the Year by the Maryland Medical Society. He was also recognized by the State House of Delegates in Maryland, all for his forward thinking, planning and execution of a massive testing and treatment program for thousands of Maryland's infected with the COVID virus. But his treatment was something that the Biden administration frowned on, even though it had a great deal of success. That kind of establishes the respect that this doctor had before he ran afoul of the Fauci's and the auto pen presidencies leaders, those who were really leading the Biden administration. Ron, let's go back to that time. All of a sudden, Covid breaks out and you've established basically a clinic where you can do the testing. And it's kind of in an urgent care setup where you can do the testing and you can treat patients. And remember, you must remember at this time, fear was driving so much clearly. And I think that's kind of the background of where we begin. But give us a sense of where things began for you on this very difficult journey.
- [04:04]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
Yeah, absolutely. I just want to touch on two things before I, before I get into that, that you said. First of all, if people want more information, they could go to my website. It's www.dropthecase.com. and I would encourage people to do that, please. And there's a give, send, go. And if they can afford to give, please do so. There's also a great website people should check out called Weaponization watch dot com. It's a great group of people who are advocating for cases just like mine where the government's been weaponized against them. Additionally, Matt, you, you mentioned that the legislature awarded me a citation. They did. And I want to just point out that Maryland is a very, very deep blue state.
- [04:39]
Matt Kittle
Yes.
- [04:40]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
And I was awarded a citation. I'm a Republican. I've always been a Republican. I ran for state senate. You know, I ran for office. I very nearly won. But I was awarded this citation by the Maryland state legislature, which is predominantly Democrat. Additionally, I was awarded a citation personally by the governor of the state for the work that I did during COVID And you pointed out that I was awarded the person of the Year award by the state medical society. That was after I got indicted, by the way. So I just want to point that out because I think it's important people understand that I did have a very good reputation in the state and I was trying to help as many people as possible. So back to your question. Yes, it was a very scary time. I had an urgent care center. It was a small center that I opened in 2016, but I continued to work in the emergency room. I'm an emergency room doctor. I didn't actually work at the clinic, but I was the medical director. So I was there a lot, but I wasn't seeing patients. And Fast forward to 2019 to the later months of 2019, I started to watch what everyone else was watching, the news. You could see what was going on in China. And I said to my wife, who's also a physician, and my friends, I said, this thing's going to, going to hit us hard. And nobody believed me. They all thought I was crazy because the, the CDC and all the government, three letter agencies were saying, don't worry, don't worry, it's not coming to the United States. It's all, we're all safe. And I said, there's no possible way this isn't already here. We're a globalized society. And they're literally like pointing tank turrets into the cities in China to keep people locked down. Like, this is serious. It's, it's got to be here already. So I started to prepare and I started to buy PPE personal protective equipment, and I started to buy testing supplies. And turns out a few months later, the world shut down, much to everyone's dismay, obviously. And I very quickly realized once they became available, that monoclonal antibodies, which for those of you that don't know and your listeners, is basically a single antibody that is the most efficacious antibody, the best antibody that they can find that works against a particular strain of a virus. And what they do is.
- [06:50]
Matt Kittle
Why is that? I think that that's been the, you know, the question or was the question at the time, why is this, is this so successful to, to treat a virus?
- [07:02]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
Yeah. So what happens if your body is exposed? Just imagine. I think the best analogy would be like, imagine like a tennis ball, okay? There's all these little hairs that stick off the tennis ball, right? Everybody's familiar with that. Each of those hairs on a viral particle, for example, would be represented by. We call it an antigen, meaning something that triggers a response, but something that sticks off of a virus particle. And the idea from the virus's perspective is that that would latch onto one of your cells. So each of those part, each of those little hairs that sticks off is foreign. Your body recognize it as being, it recognizes it as being foreign. So it produces an antibody which is just a type of protein that basically fits on top of it so that it blocks it so that it can't attach to your cell. So there's hundreds or thousands of these antigens on a viral cell that stick out these little particles. So the drug companies figure out which is the most efficacious antibody. So which antibody works the best against that particular strain, which latches on the best and blocks it from binding to your cells? The best. And then they take that particular antibody and they replicate it billions of times. So basically, we could. And by the way, just so people understand, this technology has been around since the 70s, and it is being used to treat all sorts of things. It has been since the 70s. Cancers, autoimmune disorders, various infectious diseases. So I just want to make sure people that. Because obviously the MRNA technology, which was being pushed on us and foisted upon us, despite evidence saying it shouldn't be, that was a new technology. Monoclonal antibodies were not. So they. They come out with a few monoclonals at the beginning of the. Of the pandemic. And I was immediately taken by how efficacious they were, meaning how well they worked at keeping people safe and keeping. And basically curing people of their illness. So you'd come in sick with the virus, you get your infusion, the whole process takes about an hour, and you walk out of the building feeling better. And by the next day, you're almost 100% better, if not 100% better. And that was universally what we experienced. So I was very, very early adopter of this technology. And I was on the news pretty much weekly, the national and international news, if not more than weekly, talking about COVID and how people could stay safe and things like that. And then I started to talk about monoclonal antibodies as soon as they became available. And I said, this is great. And I started to question the vaccine narrative because the only thing coming out of the government, the Biden administration at the time, was vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate. There was nothing about treatment options. And I said, well, you know, there is a place for the vaccine potentially, but that shouldn't be our only lever that we can pull. Like, in fact, this. These monoclonal antibodies are the cure for Covid. You will cure people from this disease, so why aren't we pushing this? And they made it really, really difficult to get. So I started making it easy for people to get. I set up my own infusion center, just as a background. I'm an emergency room doctor. I don't know anything about infusing medicines to people. I had to learn it all on the fly. I didn't know everything from what kind of environment you need, what kind of chairs do you need, what kind of pumps do you need, what kind of IV tubing do you need, what sort of monitoring equipment do you need? I had no idea. So I had to give myself a crash course on how to run an infusion center. So we set up one. And we set up a call center so people could call in and doctors, patients could call in and say, I tested positive for Covid and I would like to get treated. We made it very simple for people to get what they needed, which was the cure for Covid. And I went around personally to all the emergency rooms in the area and all the doctor's offices in the area and I started handing out our card and saying, if you have COVID positive patients, there's this life saving medicine, we will give it to people. Because the government was not doing it. It just wasn't available. Why though?
- [10:53]
Matt Kittle
I need to pause there. Why did, why did this become so controversial? And of course, I ask that somewhat knowing the, the answer to the question. If this has been around, this treatment has been around since the 1970s and it has proved over and over again to be successful at treating all manner of illness, why was this not pushed forward? Why was this not everywhere at the
- [11:23]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
early part of COVID So, Matt, you hit the nail right on the head. That is the best question you could have asked, I think. Look, I can only surmise, okay? But I believe it's because they wanted to push the vaccine. There was no question. That's the only lever that the government saw. And by this, the government, I mean the Biden administration wanted to push on the public. So I will tell you, they made it, as I said, it made it incredibly difficult to get. Let me give you an example what I'm talking about. So as an emergency room doctor, if you came to me in the emergency room or my clinic, okay, or my office or whatever, and I saw you and you tested positive for Covid and you would qualify for the medication, there was a certain exclusion criteria that you had to meet or inclusion criteria you had to meet in order to get, to qualify to get the medication. Let's assume you met those, okay? I would say, Matt, I think you should get this, this medicine now. What, what do I have to do to get you the medicine? So I'd have to go to some other outside website. So I'm in the electronic health record at my hospital now. I have to access a whole other website. I have to enter all your information myself. It's like three pages of demographic information that's pretty dense and it's going to take me probably 30 to 40 minutes per person to do all that work. Then I have to print it, then I have to fax it to some number in the hopes that somebody on the other end of that fax line will call you. At some point and get you squared away and get you set up for the infusion. Now that maybe that happened, but not very often. So I said, okay, well, I'm going to bypass all this and I'm going to set up my own clinic. And as I said, and I'm going to set up this call center to make it easy for people so the patients could call me directly or call the call center directly and we could schedule them. And all of a sudden, you know, the first week we did this, we saw, I don't know, 50, 50 people. The next week it was 150 people, then it was 400 people, then it was 700 people. The number just kept exploding. So we opened up a second site, and where we were doing this was we. I went to a bunch of volunteer ambulance halls and I said, you know, volunteer fire department home, you know, facilities, and they have these. These catering halls. And I said, nobody's using these. Can we. Can we rent them from you? So basically, I rented two volunteer fire halls, and we set up infusion centers in these fire. These fire stations. And HHS actually reached out to me at one point, the federal government, and said, look, you know what you're doing with these monoclonal sites. Could you please set it up for. Could we want to set one of them up at FedEx Field where the Redskins play football? Could you set it up for us?
- [14:00]
Matt Kittle
Wow.
- [14:00]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
And I said, sure. So we set it up. I did it in partnership with HHS and the Maryland Department of Health, and I ran it for over a year. And to be honest, they didn't really want us to push it. You know, I wanted to set up all sorts of, you know, advertising and stuff so people would know about it, but they didn't really want us to do it. But luckily, we could still refer to that site because we had this call center, so we could. The call center could make appointments directly for that site. And then I said to them, we should set up a testing site here as well, because you could take a person who's symptomatic and would qualify for the medication. And you could. We would tell them to wait in the car while, you know, we have the results back from the rapid test in 10 minutes. We could literally say, ma' am or sir, you tested positive for Covid. We think you should get this infusion. It could be life saving, and it will cure you right here and right now in the next hour. Would you be okay with that? And 99% of people were like, of course. We would walk them across the hall, literally put them in a chair and infuse them right there and cure them on the spot. Now you would think that like they would be all over that. They did not want us to do that. I had to convince them that that was the right thing to do. And then once we did that became, even though the government was trying to suppress that, that became the sort of blueprint for the entire country going forward. I called it the test to treat model. But whatever you want to call it, that became what everybody started replicating because it was so successful. So we became the largest supplier of monoclonal antibodies in the entire state of Maryland, surpassing Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland. And I believe that we were the largest in the entire Mid Atlantic region. So that's Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware. We were the largest supplier of this life saving medicine. And Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida knew it as well. He started setting up things, these clinics were popping up right and left all over Florida. In fact, he even started setting up mobile vans to drive around to give this stuff to people because it was working so well. But then the administration did something very curious. And this is why I really do think that they had ulterior motives. To get back to your question, they said, we're going to start as of tomorrow, we're going to federalize the distribution, meaning that they were going to take over, the Biden administration was going to take over the distribution of the monoclonal antibody. So what happened before that was the state would approve you as a site and then you would get a pin number and you could log into the, the distributors, the medication distributor's website and you would just say, I need 200 doses. And literally 12 hours to 24 hours later, you get a FedEx box with whatever you asked for in it. Soon as the administration took over the distribution. I'm not exaggerating. Literally the next day there were artificial shortages created. And then they said, we're going to start using equity as a means to determine where this medicine goes. Now, I don't even know what that term means. I've never heard a good explanation for what equity actually means, but it certainly has no place in a medical discussion.
- [16:58]
Matt Kittle
It means discrimination is what it means. It means some people get services first. In this case, life saving services. I have to ask you though, when HHS gave you the go ahead to set up this, you know, this massive operation at FedEx Field, was that under the Trump administration or the Biden administration?
- [17:21]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
I believe it was the Biden administration.
- [17:22]
Matt Kittle
Okay, so at first they recognize the value of this, at least it seems to me. And then now all of a sudden you have a break and it was that quick. So what happened next?
- [17:40]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
Yeah, it was a few months between those two things that absolutely.
- [17:43]
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. Few save days are here now through June 23rd. Find hot deals throughout the store and earn four times a point. Look for in store tags to earn
- [17:54]
Albertsons/Safeway Announcer
on eligible items from Keebler, General Mills, Lactaid, Jack Links, Cheez it and Gatorade.
- [18:00]
Ryan Seacrest
Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event long savings. Stack up those rewards to save even more. Enjoy savings on top of savings. When you shop in store or online
- [18:09]
Albertsons/Safeway Announcer
for easy pickup or delivery, restrictions apply. See the website for full terms and conditions.
- [18:14]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
So they started using equity as a means to determine where this medicine was going. And that is the first time, as far as I can tell, in the history of medicine where a life saving medication has been politicized like that. I just want that to sink in for your view, your listeners, because that is so unconscionable and so disgusting and so vile. But that's what happened. And I will give you, I will use Florida as an example because it is the best example. Because Florida has the most at risk population of any state in the union, because it has a high proportion of elderly patients with a lot of comorbidities. Those people were the highest risk. Florida was almost completely cut off from a supply of monoclonals of which the government had ample supply, but they just refused to send it to Florida. And by the way, the states that seemed to get cut off miraculously were the red ones, not the blue ones, the redders. And Florida was having an outbreak of Delta at the time and basically they were consigning people to die. The federal government was literally saying, I don't care about Florida. Too bad we're not going to send you any of this life saving medicine. And I cannot overstate enough how important this medicine was to people because it literally was the cure. People would come in, I'm not exaggerating, blue in the face to their pulse ox. Their oxygen saturation was in the mid to high 80s, which is not good. And we would give them the medicine and they would walk out, they'd have to be wheelchaired in and they would literally an hour later walk out. Now they weren't like, you know, I'm gonna, gonna go dance a jig. But they felt, they said, wow, I feel so much better. And we ended up infusing throughout the course of the pandemic over 5,000 people and we had pretty much no side effects and no adverse reactions.
- [19:59]
Matt Kittle
Did everyone live?
- [20:01]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
Well, as far as I know they did. I mean we were so every patient who got an infusion we tried to do a follow up exam with and I never, I, to my knowledge, not a single person that we did a follow up exam with wasn't alive. Not everybody answered those calls. So, but that was our policy was that every person who got it the next, I think within two days was supposed to get a follow up visit to make sure they were doing better. And I will tell you that, I mean I didn't make all these calls so I can't speak myself but I would ask our providers, you know, hey, how are these people universally. They were all doing well. Have a friend of mine who, who I did not know at the time, but he reached out to me, he owned seven assisted living centers and he cold called me and he said, he literally called me one night while I'm putting my 3 year old to bed and I answered the phone and he says to me, hi, I got your name from so and so and your number. I, I own seven assisted living centers and my residents are dying at an alarming rate and I'm just wondering if you can help me. I'm like, of course I can help you. What, you know, what are you asking for? And he's like, and he's, the phone went dead. And I said, are you there? And he said, yeah, I swear to God that's what he said. He said, you were the 27th person I'm calling. You're the only person that said yes, you can help. And I said, well, what do you need? And he said, well, I'd like to get monoclonal antibody. I said, listen, I'm putting my 3 year old to bed. I'll have my program manager reach out to you tomorrow morning. And then every single day thereafter he had a little bus. He would drive his patients, he'd have his driver drive his, drive the patients in the little bus to our facilities and we would infuse them and he's, and I've since become very good friends with this man. And he has told me that every single person that we infused survived, including 103 year old man with multiple medical problems and every single person they sent to the hospital did not.
- [21:50]
Matt Kittle
Okay, interestingly, based on, based, based on all of that, the success level is well established. The government knows that. I just want to get back to the Politicization of all of this? Because. No, no, I think that, you know, let me ask you this. What do you think? Obviously, red states, they're the opposition party, so that's the political side of this. But Ron DeSantis was, if not the first one of the first governors to reopen his state and the Biden administration and the Fauci's and all of these guys deplored Ron DeSantis for doing that. Deplored. I, I believe Kim Reynolds, the governor of Iowa, was, was doing the same right around the same time. Do you think that this was punishment for that?
- [22:41]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
Oh, I mean, sure, absolutely. And, and it actually gets more nefarious than that. So it turns out that, and I did not know this, I kind of suspected it, but I didn't know this for sure until I saw an interview with Secretary, excuse me, Secretary Kennedy where he said he was on Joe Rogan and he said that there was a little known federal law that if anything is shown, if there's an emergency use authorization for a vaccine and anything is shown to be efficacious in the treatment of that particular disease, the emergency use authorization for the vaccine goes away. And he was claiming that's why they had to crush ivermectin and they had to crush hydroxychloroquine. And I would argue that the monoclonal antibodies were way more efficacious than either of those two medicines. And it's a one and done scenario. You walk in 30 minutes, you get an IV infusion of this medicine and you're done. That's it. You don't have to keep taking medicine. It's one time and you're done and you're cured. So the nefarious part is that this directly put the emergency use authorization of the COVID shot at risk. So they had to kill it. And interestingly, very quickly, the emergency use authorizations for each of these monoclonals, and there were a bunch of them, bunch of different manufacturers started producing them, they all started to vanish very quickly. They were pulled from the market and you can't get them anymore. Now they will tell you, oh, that's because they didn't work against the new variants and blah, blah, blah. I don't believe that for a second. I've never seen any data that would suggest that's the truth. And in fact, what got me into trouble was I was out there talking about how great these things were. And then the Biden administration, as I said, they politicized it. And then in late December of 2021, they shut the whole program down based on just ridicul nonsense that made no sense medically. So I went on Fox News and I went on Newsmax and a bunch of other right leaning news media and I said, the Biden administration is going to kill people. They are actively going to kill people and they don't know what they're doing. And this is terrible. And you know, it turns out I was right, that they were misreading, quote, unquote, misreading data. Now, just, just to give you an idea of how wrong they were, they said that the reason that they were shutting the program down was because there was an Omicron surge in the country. And they said that the prevalence of Omicron reached 70% and once that threshold was crossed, the monoclonal antibodies available were not, don't work against Omicron. So they were going to shut the whole program down. And I said, they're wrong. They don't know what they're doing, as I said before. So they said 70%. Turns out, and I'm not making this up, the, the prevalence of omicron was 20%. 2, 0.
- [25:23]
Matt Kittle
Right.
- [25:24]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
That is a 50%. They got it wrong. By now. That could be just gross negligence and incompetence.
- [25:30]
Matt Kittle
Right.
- [25:30]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
Or there's something else going on. You know, I don't know which, but it's pretty obvious to me, I think, which of the two. But I, you know, I can't prove that.
- [25:38]
Matt Kittle
Well, there's, there's, you can always assume incompetence in the Biden administration, but there is also incompetence by design and just nefarious actions. As you not. And I don't have a lot of confidence, no matter what, I don't have a lot of confidence in what the Biden administration was doing. But no matter what, this ended up to be a death sentence for a lot of people. Our guest today is Dr. Ron Elfenbein, who is paying a steep price for publicly criticizing the Biden administration about its handling of COVID 19. It is indeed the story, and we've heard many of these stories, the story of medicine and weaponized justice. So let's get to that trouble. Now all of a sudden you start criticizing the Biden administrator. You were not shy about this and you warned if we stop this treatment that has proved so successful, we are going to, this administration is going to be the murderer of millions of people. So then what happened four months later?
- [26:46]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
So in April of 2022. So I, I spoke out in December, in April of 2022, without any warning, I am indicted for federal health care fraud charges. And just to give you an idea of how, like, little of an investigation was done, they got my name wrong and all the charging documents.
- [27:07]
Matt Kittle
That doesn't surprise me.
- [27:09]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
Yeah. And even the chief judge of the state of Maryland who adjudicated my case, called the prosecution out in a pretrial conference and said, this looks like, quote, a case of shoot first and ask questions later, end quote. Because that is exactly what it was. They had no evidence. They didn't really do any investigation whatsoever. They just indicted me. And it turns out what they indicted me for wasn't even a crime. Like, they were wrong about a lot of the things in the indictment, like, factually wrong. Not just because I'm saying I'm innocent, but they were factually incorrect. And so I took it to trial because I did nothing wrong. And the chief judge, as I said, the chief judge of the State of Maryland, who was appointed by President Obama, by the way, so he's not some right wing judge.
- [27:51]
Matt Kittle
Yeah.
- [27:52]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
Issued a 93 page opinion completely acquitting me and saying they basically, the government should never have brought the case. No reasonable jury could have found guilt. I mean, there's a whole list of quotes. My favorite one was the evidence weighs so heavily in favor of the defendant. That's me. That it would be unjust to enter judgment against him. I mean, 93 pages of that. Now, the Supreme Court doesn't write 93 pages. Not only did he equip me, but he said, just in case the government appeals, you're guaranteed a new trial. So literally, as they're packing up their bags to leave because Trump's about to be inaugurated, the Biden DOJ decides to appeal. So now I'm facing a new trial, and, you know, I. For something that has already been adjudicated, and it's just. They just don't like to lose. So they're basically weaponizing the Department of Justice against me. And one. One thing that's pretty striking is the American Medical Association. I'm not a member of it, but the AMA came to my defense, and the AMA wrote an amicus brief for the court, which is a friend of the court brief. And what's striking about that is the AMA writes the rules the government is accusing me of breaking. So the people who wrote the rules said he didn't break the rules, but the government came after me anyway.
- [29:12]
Chris Markowski
Stop gaslighting the American people. The Watchdog on Wall street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day, Chris helps Unpack the connection between politics and the economy and how it affects your wallet. As consumer cop confidence hits record lows, some economists are blaming Americans confusion about the economy while gas prices rise. Just be honest with us, whether it's happening in D.C. or down on Wall street, it's affecting you financially.
- [29:36]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
Be informed.
- [29:37]
Chris Markowski
Check out the Watchdog on Wall street podcast with Chris Murkowski on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.
- [29:42]
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway for you. Save days are here now through June 23rd. Find hot deals throughout the store and earn four times a point. Look for in store tags to earn
- [29:53]
Albertsons/Safeway Announcer
on eligible items from Keebler, General Mills, Lactaid, Jack Links, Cheez it and Gatorade.
- [29:59]
Ryan Seacrest
Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event long savings. Stack up those rewards to save even more. Enjoy savings on top of savings. When you shop in store or online
- [30:08]
Albertsons/Safeway Announcer
for easy pickup or delivery, restrictions apply. See the website for full terms and conditions.
- [30:16]
Matt Kittle
Can I ask you the question that I think a lot of our, our listeners would be asking right now? So the Biden administration comes back at the end of their tenure in office and they say, well, we have this judge who has ruled definitively that this investigation was wrong from the get go. Everything about this is wrong. Not guilty, don't bring it up again. And then they decide at the end they're going to bring this up again. But it's a new Department of Justice. So why is this Department of Justice under Donald Trump, who is in his administration, have been obviously very critical about the handling of COVID the vaccine, all of that with the, the Biden administration, why do they continue to prosecute you?
- [31:09]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
Yeah, so I honestly believe that, well, remember this started under Biden, so started under Biden and it was continued under Bide. And I think that the Biden people knew that once they got the snowball rolling downhill, it just continues to roll and gather more steam. It's very hard to stop one of these things as it's moving. So I have been trying to get in touch with somebody, particularly Todd Blanche, who's now the acting attorney General of the United States because her President Trump's orders when he, the first day he took office, he established the end of weaponization of the federal government and they established a weaponization task force whose job it is to find cases just like mine. And in that memo, there's seven items and the last item is to cover whistleblowers. And I would argue that that's exactly what I am. I was A subcontractor for hhs. I worked for the government, essentially, and I was blowing the whistle saying, hey, these people don't know what they're doing. They're dangerous, and they're going to kill people with their. With their ridiculous policies. I would think that's the definition of a whistleblower. So I think that if President Trump knew about my case, he would make it go away in a second. But I also think Todd Blanche is a very busy man. He just took over, very busy, the largest law firm in the world. And I think he's got a ton of stuff to do, and I just don't think he's aware of what's going on. And I. I give him all the difference in the world. He's a busy guy. He's got a lot on his plate. But I think that, hey, you know, if somebody out there who's listening could reach out to him and say something or write him a letter or whatever. I've tried to. I just. It's hard to get in touch with these people. Like, it's not like you can just pick up the phone and call Todd Blanche. So I think that's the key, is trying to get in touch with somebody to say, could you just look at this case, even just on its face? I mean, it's just. The whole thing is just silly, and it's already been adjudicated. Like, just, Just stop the ridiculous weaponization that was started under the previous administration. I just think I'm caught in this bureaucratic mess and this bureaucratic morass, and they just don't know. You know, one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing. And that's not a fault of the president or, or Deputy or Attorney General Blanche. It's just the government. You know, I think it's just. I'm stuck in that. In that swamp, if you will, still the.
- [33:31]
Matt Kittle
The bureaucracy trying to fight and hold this. Even though. Do you. I mean, what we have seen with this Department of Justice and what we have, of course, learned recently from some deep staters, one. One in particular, the former director of the cei, who said the. The quiet part out loud is that there are people in the doj, there are people in intelligence, in the intelligence community that are doing everything. Stop Donald Trump and his agenda. And that agenda, of course, includes the exoneration of people like yourself. Do you think it's. It's just a matter of someone within the DOJ who is more political and more politically inclined to the left, trying to hold this thing up, most likely.
- [34:25]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't know for sure, but I think most likely, because I think any reasonable person who looked at this on its face value, if they literally just took a step back and looked at it for 10 minutes. Minutes, not even 10 minutes, I think you could see that, that the case was so ridiculous and it was kind of, you could see that it was political. It had to be political. There was no other explanation for it. Like, no reasonable government would have brought this case. And I kind of feel bad for the prosecutors because they were handed it and they were like, you take this to trial. And I mean, like, you know, but again, like, even the chief judge wrote this opinion and said that this whole case was nonsense. Yeah. I mean, I was exercising my First Amendment and calling them out. And I think this is the definition of vindictive and selective prosecution for exercising my First Amendment rights and for calling, for calling bad things when bad things were going on. And that should send a chilling. I mean, that should send a message to everybody who's listening, because if they can do this to the president and they can do this to me and they'll do this to everybody. And by they, I don't mean the Trump doj, I just mean another administration who comes around who, who wants to weaponize government, like, this stuff cannot stand. It is the most un American thing imaginable. Weaponizing your own government against its citizens. I mean, this is terrible. It's like it shouldn't be allowed to stand. And I'm not the only one this has happened to. Like, as you said before, unfortunately, this is a pretty pervasive thing from the last administration. I mean, you saw with the January Sixers. You saw with, you know, with Trump. You saw, I mean, this just, the list goes on and on and on of people who had the government weaponized against them, and it's the most un American thing imaginable.
- [35:59]
Matt Kittle
Now, you do have, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you do have a pretty powerful ally in. Ed Martin serves as the United States pardon attorney. He is associated with the organization that you mentioned at the outset of our conversation. Have you talked to Ed Martin? And if so, what does he say about the case and about. He does have the year of the President. President certainly has had it for some time.
- [36:30]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
I have spoken to Mr. Martin. I don't really want to get into what he said or hasn't said because I don't think that's probably a good idea. But he, I Don't mean that. I'm sorry. I just. I just. It's an ongoing thing, so. But he's been. He's been incredibly gracious, and he's been wonderful, and I think he's a. He's a real American hero. He really is. He's a good guy. He's an honest guy, and he fights for what he believes in. So I have all the faith in Mr. Martin, and. But I can't speak to what he's particularly said to me or hasn't said to me, but I have spoken to him, and he's. Yeah, it's. You know, I think it probably should stop there.
- [37:06]
Matt Kittle
Sure. Based upon what I know about this case and the context and the background, everything we've talked about, the political motivations of the Biden administration, this is a Medicaid fraud case. Now, we have seen lots of Medicaid fraud. We've seen lots of welfare fraud in the last 12 months. In particular, we have seen a massive amount of fraud in Minneapolis, and that's just the tip of the iceberg and what may be found in California. But it's. It's red states and blue states, too, because it's this whole bureaucratic mess that we've talked about that just keeps pumping out all of this money to people who do not or should not have been allowed to claim it and did so illegally. Your case is. Is different. What they're, what they have accused you of, the. The Biden administration, the Department of Justice, is that you build incorrectly. Can, can you explain that? Because again, I, I've read much on this case, and I've. I, I've read a portion of decision, and it doesn't seem to me that the Department of Justice, the prosecutors in this case understand the law.
- [38:33]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
Yeah, yeah. It's very frustrating. So, first of all, it's. It's. It's not just Medicaid. It's Medicare in my case, and private insurers, but.
- [38:43]
Matt Kittle
That's.
- [38:43]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
Right, yeah, but you make a great point. Okay, so typical fraud involves billing for. Specifically health care fraud, billing for things that don't happen. Okay. Mystery patients, we call them ghost patients. Patients that don't exist. Right. You make things up. That is not alleged in this case at all. In fact, they are charging me with five counts, five individual patients who all exist. In fact, the government called three of them. God knows why, but they did during trial, and the three testified. Yes, I'm a real human being. Yes, I got seen. Yes, I got tested. So where's the fraud now? They're saying that we didn't code correctly exactly like you said. Just to put that into perspective, we use a lexicon of coding called ICD10. That's the coding manual that we use. There are over 69,000 codes in ICD10. The government is saying that five patients out of, in the timeframe of the indictment, over 100,000 patients that we saw were incorrectly coded. Now, over the course of the entire pandemic, we saw over 300,000. But the government, from the time of the, of the, of the indictment said that they five counts, that they were improperly coded and that basically we were billing what's called a level four billing. It just has to do with the evaluation management code that we chose. And there was a perfectly reasonable rationale for that, by the way, that the government said that was wrong. Now, at trial, if you can believe this, but this is the truth, you're welcome to view the transcripts. You can see it for yourself. The government never said why that was wrong, how it was wrong, or what the right code should have been. They just said, hey, he's wrong and he's a criminal. And they kept repeating that over and over and over again, but they never explained why or how. And, and then the difference between a level four and the next lower level, which would be a level three on average, is about $50. I say average because every insurance company pays a little bit differently, so the average is about $50. So if you multiply five counts times $50, that's $250. The government is looking or the, sorry, the Biden DOJ was looking to throw me in jail for 55. Zero years. 50 years over what amounts to a $250 billing dispute. Now, in what galaxy does that make any sense?
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- [41:48]
Matt Kittle
It doesn't make, it doesn't make any sense in any galaxy because you have been in the medical field for a long time. You know all about Medicare billing and, and all of that. These kinds of mistakes are routine because as you say, there are thousands and, and thousands. I'm not saying that there was a mistake in here, but I'm just saying, just in terms of, there's no fraud involved. There's just a very complex billing code that comes in. And sometimes humans are prone to error and they make a mistake and they're not. They're not prosecuted for that.
- [42:28]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
That's right. Or it's just a simple disagreement of, you know, I disagree with you. Now, any normal human being, right, Anybody out there who's listening to this, if you go to the grocery store and you are buying a can of soda and they charge you too much for that can of soda, what do you do? Do you call the federal government and make a case out of it, or do you ask to speak to the manager or the checkout person and say, hey, I think there's a mistake here? I do.
- [42:55]
Matt Kittle
I. I do call the federal government, because that's the kind of cranky old guy I am. I Understood. Understood.
- [43:01]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
I mean, it's insane. So again, I go back to my original point that there has to be something else going on here, because the case on its face just makes no sense. So I think the prosecutors were handed a directive. Go get this guy at all costs. Do whatever you have to do to go get him. And they did their job. I don't necessarily. Well, I don't particularly like it, but, I mean, they were just doing their job. But I think that the Biden people were the ones who issued the orders. Go get him. You can't explain just the nonsense any other way. It doesn't make any sense.
- [43:32]
Matt Kittle
Yeah. Well, I'll tell you this. If you were the only guy, the only person that, you know, saw the weight of the government, you know, prosecuting you with, with all of their resources and all of their power, I would say, well, maybe, maybe there's a. There's an issue here. Sounds like they've got the evidence here. And, you know, this government is not known to weap. Weaponize justice, but you are one of many, many Americans who got caught up in the political weaponization of justice. And so you are not alone in this. And that brings us to, you know, final series of questions here. You are up against the weight and the, the power, the, you know, this, the massive amount of unlimited money to prosecute you from the federal government. You're still a doctor. You're still working in emergency rooms. That hasn't changed. So they, they still, you know, there are people in the medical community who still very much trust you to do your job that you've done forever. What has this cost you in terms of the monetary side? Because I, I've reported on these kinds of things for many, many years and one of the questions that always comes up, and I think it's important, where do I go to get my reputation back? That's a big part of this as well.
- [45:10]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
Oh, I, I mean that's the biggest part I have, as I said before, I mean, just, I think the fact that I got all those accolades and awards speaks to my reputation itself. Right. I don't want to pat myself on the back, but I mean, I think that speaks to the kind of reputation I had in this, in this state and amongst my colleagues and my peers. I, I don't think that my reputation has, is as strong anymore. I think it's completely been eroded because of this. If you Google my name, the first thing that pops up the doj, you know, health care fraud, indicted, you know, horrible human being, the worst person on earth. I mean, all these kinds of horrible things. My, I have four kids, my wife's a physician, my kids, you know, we're very honest with them. And I mean this takes your, Talk about money, I mean, millions of dollars to defend myself and now I have to face a new trial. It's going to be millions more money, by the way, which I didn't have and I still don't have. I'm into, I'm in debt to my lawyers and I will be for the rest of my life. I write them a small check every month and that's all I can pay and they're fine with it. But I will be doing that until I die. You know, my children, three of the four all had to go into therapy. They were all well adjusted, straight A students. But three of the four had to go into therapy. The only reason the fourth one didn't was because he was three at the time and he didn't understand what was going on. He's now 7 and he still doesn't understand what's going on. And we're trying to shield him from that. I went two and a half years without sleeping. I couldn't sleep. I mean, what do you think that affected? How do you think that affected my health? I was like a shell of myself. I wouldn't go outside, I didn't want to talk to anybody. Anything that used to bring me pleasure didn't anymore. I mean, I've never, I'm a very optimistic person, but I'm as close to suicidal as I've Ever been in my entire life. Now I was not suicidal, but that's as close as I've ever come. I mean, it was horrific. I would not wish this on my worst enemy. It's. It's the worst thing. Just imagine your name, the United States of America versus your name. And every piece of paper that you get from them in discovery has some fancy seal on it from some three letter agency. Scares the hell out of you. And by the way, you know, I found out in discovery that the government put, put phony patients through our line to get, to get seen and tested. They never even called them a trial. Don't you think if there were some shenanigans going on, they would have called those people, those investigators and said, hey, could you explain what, you know, as witnesses? They never did because there were no shenanigans. We were doing what we said we were doing.
- [47:30]
Matt Kittle
So, so there's entrapment involved in this thing too. Beyond just the prosecution of coding and all of those sorts of things. They were trying to, to see if you would fall for the bait, so to speak.
- [47:45]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
I guess. But they never even called him a trial because they didn't have anything. Yeah, I mean you can't make this stuff up. It's, it's literally like again, every day I would wake up when this was going on and I just felt like I was living some Kafka esque nightmare there and you know, or the Twilight Zone. I mean that's, you know, it just was that crazy to me that this is our country, this is our world and you know, I did nothing wrong and I, I'm trapped in this system that just won't let go and it just, I. You can't put words to it. It's so horrific and horrible and it's really detrimental.
- [48:20]
Matt Kittle
I think you've done well putting words to it, I think, I think our listeners will, will very much appreciate, you know, what you have gone through, because they have seen it over and over again and what you have gone through is just absolutely terrible. This is not the country you and I grew up in. That's the sad part about it. But it is the reality. So final question. Where do you see all of this going? And by this I mean your case obviously, but accountability, because that's ultimately, first and foremost, it's you getting through this legal process and I understand that. But those prosecutors, those government agents that push this and an administration that pushed this for very political reasons ought to be held accountable. Do you think there will ever be accountability in any of This.
- [49:18]
Dr. Ron Elfenbein
I sure as hell hope so. And I'll tell you, there's one guy. Guy who's no longer at the Department of Justice, but his name is Kenneth Polite. And Mr. Polite not only signed my indictment and my appeal, but he also signed off on all the Arctic Frost investigation subpoenas for all those congressmen and senators, Republican, by the way, for all their private phone records in violation of their First Amendment rights. So. So you have a single human being in that administration. Obviously, Joe Biden is the top of the administration, so you can certainly hold him accountable. But then this gentleman, Mr. Polite, was. Was the individual who signed off on all those documents, plus mine, Jim Jordan actually just called him to testify at his committee, so we'll see what happens there. But if you want a name of a person to hold accountable, there you go. You know, he was. I forget what his title was. He was the Fraud Chief or something like that, you know, but he's the guy who signed off on all those documents, so he's ultimately be the person responsible for that. And I sure as heck hope that people are held accountable for this, because again, I go back to my statement before that. This is the most un American thing I could ever imagine. When your own government is weaponized against you like that, it's just. It's just unconscionable and it's just evil. The best word I can use is evil. And that's. That's what this was. 100%. There's no other explanation for it.
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Matt Kittle
It's bizarro world, really, at the. The end of the day. Because now you have the people who were applauding your indictment, your prosecution, and so many others like you. Now they are trying to tell the world through their pals in the accomplice media that the Trump administration is somehow weaponizing justice for trying to hold these people accountable. Bible. And we still have. Unfortunately, under the Trump administration, people in the DOJ were still playing the same political games for the same reasons. And all of that has to stop. And there's only one way to do that, and that is to start putting people who are really guilty of abusing their positions behind bars. Thanks to my guest today, Dr. Ron Elfenbein. You've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, senior elections correspondent at the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray.
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