It appears the situation at America’s Frontline Doctors HQ is even more dire than previously thought. In a piece for the Daily Beast, reporters Kelly Weill and Will Sommer exposed that Simone Gold is not alone in embezzling AFLDS money.
A legal battle for AFLDS ownership followed Gold’s syphoning of their money “to buy a $3.6 million Florida mansion, purchase a Mercedes-Benz and other luxury vehicles, and take trips on private planes.” Now it appears that Richard Mack, who joined AFLDS from the Constitutional Sherifs and Peace Officers Association he founded, is accused of stealing $350,000 from the Covid early treatment organization that subsequently did not pay its staffers.
Mack is not the first person involved with law enforcement to serve as a member of AFLDS. Dr. Jeff Barke, an Orange County family medicine physician called out in September 2020 for promoting guns over masking while brandishing one on television, has ties to both local law enforcement and school boards per his website. He is currently suing California Medical Board president Kristina Lawson, who AFLDS stalked, ambushed, filmed, and depicted as a Nazi in one of their more disturbing videos. Lawson had a drone flown over her home and a van stake out her home before following her to work. Even more concerning is that a man involved and claiming to be a detective from Georgia had a gun with him at the time. The attack on Lawson occurred while Gold awaited sentencing for her January 6th involvement and had agreed to not commit any crimes per her guilty plea deal. (It should be noted that Gold mischaracterized her arrest as a political hit job and fundraised hundreds of thousands of dollars by doing so while AFLDS launched this actual political attack.)
Gold has finally been held accountable for her insurrection unprofessionalism by the California Medical Board, but not yet for her spread of deadly disinformation or the attack on Lawson.
While Barke involves himself in the fight against physician accountability in California, AFLDS and Vegas-area family physician Dr. Medina Culver face a Nevada hydroxychloroquine wrongful death lawsuit.
In Washington State, AFLDS founding member Dr. Ryan Cole faces punishment from the Washington Medical Commission for his spread of Covid disinformation, improper tele-health treatment of patients (he’s a pathologist) with ivermectin (which does not work against the virus), misrepresentation of his own credentials while doing so, and interference with their investigation using threats and harassment. He has traveled widely throughout the US to lobby medical boards against taking appropriate disciplinary action against disinformation doctors such as himself.
There is no state where the group - originally made for Trump by the Council for National Policy and Tea Party Patriots - has found more of a home than Florida. Gold relocated to the state and received a new medical license following her FBI raid for her J6 involvement back in California she found traumatic. Her fellow former UCLA physician and AFLDS founding member Dr. Joseph Ladapo - who worked in the Trump White House with signers of the Great Barrington Declaration - serves as Gov. Ron DeSantis’s anti-vax State Surgeon General.
In a recent incredibly damning Tampa Bay Times piece by Christopher O’Donnell and a Twitter thread by Canadian physician Dr. Jon Laxton, Ladapo and the Florida Health Department were outed for having manipulated the results of a study to show vaccine harm to young men that was not actually there. The local newspaper had to resort to a Freedom of Information Act to obtain the original, unedited study. Meanwhile, DeSantis is hawking a book titled “The Courage to Be Free” while also banning books. Laxton and his United Nation Verified counter Covid disinformation group Team Halo have been a target of anti-vax physicians, namely Dr. Peter “Courageous Discourse” McCullough. Contrarians like to pair their lies with a whopping dose of irony, apparently.
This is hardly the first time the Florida Health Department has been called out for manipulation of data. In February, Ladapo was reportedly investigated for “allegedly falsifying” a Covid report but this probe was said to have been closed after the person who reported him failed to provide further information. We have talked at length about the Florida Health Department’s remote employee, DeSantis public health “integrity” member, and recent testifier before Congress Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg’s pattern of presenting bad data as scientific fact. She has been feeding misinterpreted pre-print studies to Ladapo while, like Barke, being involved in the multi-lawsuit legal attack back in California over the signing of physician accountability bill AB2098 by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The Ladapo and Høeg public health “integrity” committee also features pro-ivermectin scientist Brett Weinstein who targeted Florida ICU physician and vocal opponent of Covid disinformation Dr. Natalia Solenkova on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast over a fake tweet in January. This targeting led to an overwhelming wave of harassment for Solenkova who did nothing wrong and has taken legal action against Rogan for the attack. The timing of this episode just after the formation of the “integrity” committee featuring Ladapo and Høeg is concerning, to say the least. Unfortunately these attacks on individuals have only been ramping up as this dangerous anti-vax movement gets increasingly desperate.
The AFLDS Florida Health Department has shown no qualms about carrying out acts of stochastic terrorism against their enemies, despite their movement already having been proven false and deadly. Ron DeSantis is an anti-truth fascist and a tyrant. At his side helping him find his “data” is Joseph Ladapo, the only known sitting State Surgeon General to engage openly with QAnon. The risk of allowing this to continue any further is too great for public health, democracy, and the individuals who stand up to these lies in the absence of meaningful action from medical leadership.
So, again, we ask: is anyone going to stop Ladapo?