This Doctor’s Life Was Destroyed After He Criticized Biden Admin’s COVID Madness. It’s Time For Trump’s DOJ To Right That Wrong

President Donald Trump campaigned on taming the Deep State and ending Biden-era lawfare. He can send a powerful message by ending the five-year persecution of Dr. Ron Elfenbein.

The Biden administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecuted Dr. Elfenbein for what it alleged was $250 in over-charging Medicare while treating COVID patients at the height of the pandemic. But his real crime seemed to be criticizing Biden-administration COVID policies on Fox News and Newsmax.

Dr. Elfenbein was convicted by a jury, then acquitted by the judge. Two years later, President Joe Biden’s DOJ appealed the acquittal, and a new trial is scheduled for next month.

What is the distinction between prosecution and persecution?

It’s time for President Trump and Acting Attorney General Blanche to call off modern-day Captain Ahabs at DOJ and make Dr. Elfenbein whole for the years of legal fees and lost income..

Why is the government coming after him again? Because deep state do what deep state do.  With an unlimited budget, the bureaucracy will never admit defeat. Ask Lieutenant General Michael Flynn.

The feds have the power to bankrupt you by defending yourself from bogus charges.

The Beginning

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was scrambling for answers and treatments. Dr. Elfenbein of Gambrills, Maryland, owned FirstCall Medical Center and Drs ERgent Care LLC.

His clinic was one of the first — if not the first — to offer testing for COVID-19 in Maryland, and he pioneered the use of monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID-19. Such were his successes that the Federal and State governments asked him to open another site.

Dr. Elfenbein’s work received recognition from then-Governor of Maryland Larry Hogan, and the Maryland Legislature. His professional peers at the Maryland State Medical Society named Dr. Elfenbein, the 2001 “Person of the Year.”

Furthermore, anyone acquainted with Dr. Elfenbein know him as a man of strong character and devotion to serving others.

Full disclosure: I came to know Dr. Elfenbein when we both ran — unsuccessfully — for the Maryland legislature in 2006.

Signs Of Trouble

In mid-December 2021, the Federal Government halted distribution of two monoclonal antibody therapies, claiming they were ineffective against new strains of COVID-19. In January 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ended its emergency use authorization for monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID-19.

The problem was that data gathered the month prior to the FDA’s decision showed that monoclonal antibody treatment for the Omicron variant of COVID-19 was very effective.

In December 2021, the week after the government blocked distribution of monoclonal antibody therapies, Dr. Elfenbein was interviewed by a Fox News. He was not pleased. He said,

“I am as angry as I possibly can be about this … The fact that these people are so adamant that they’re right when they’re using faulty data and they’re using faulty logic and frankly statistical modeling that has never been correct, ever, throughout this entire pandemic, to look at this, is just beyond the pale…. People are definitely going to die because of this or need hospitalization because [health officials] misread the statistics.”

As Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which took issue with the federal government’s assessment of and approach to COVID-19, discovered government bureaucrats don’t like being embarrassed.

In his case, Dr. Bhattacharya and his co-authors were subjected to a smear campaign meant to be as Dr. Francis Collins, then-director of the National Institutes of Health, stated in an e-mail to Dr. Anthony Fauci, a “quick and devastating published takedown.” And the White House worked with social media companies to censor them.

Dr. Elfenbein was subjected to much worse.

In April 2022 — less than four months after his interview with Fox news — the DOJ alleged Dr. Elfenbein over-charged Medicare and Medicaid by more than $15 million. During discovery, Dr. Elfenbein’s defense team found that the DOJ had sent undercover agents to infiltrate his clinics. They must have found nothing, because they were not called as witnesses nor were their discoveries revealed.

After a three-week trial, a jury in Baltimore convicted Dr. Elfenbein of five-counts of upcoding by $50. You read that right: the full force of federal law enforcement was being brought to bear over $250.

The press release from the U.S. DOJ screamed:

“A federal jury in Baltimore convicted a Maryland doctor today for submitting over $15 million in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare and a commercial insurer for patients who received COVID-19 tests at his testing sites.”

Imagine your name is in the press release. Then, imagine you were convicted of overcharging the government by only $250. Then imagine you were acquitted by the trial judge overseeing the case. Then, imagine the Department of Justice seeking a retrial two years after you were acquitted.

Such a charge only made sense in a world in which it was considered a high crime to challenge the federal government’s “scientific consensus.”

Reversal Of Fortune

The DOJ expected Elfenbein would plead guilty and take a slap on the wrist. But he refused to plead guilty to a crime he has resolutely claimed he did not commit. Four months after he was found guilty, Dr. Elfenbein was acquitted by the trial judge who heard the case.

He ruled that the government did not prove its case, and that the service coding rules were ambiguous. He felt that the government’s rapidly changing medical billing rules made it difficult to understand, and that different interpretations of billing codes were not criminal.

The government’s case was undermined by its own witness who had to recant his testimony under cross examination because he had not actually read key regulations upon which he was testifying as an “expert.”

The government appealed the acquittal, and, in in July 2025 the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the jury may have made a good faith verdict but acknowledged the many weaknesses in the government case. It also allowed the government the option of a retrial.

In early January 2025 — two years after Dr. Elfenbein was acquitted — and two weeks before President Trump was inaugurated, the Biden DOJ decided to go after Dr. Elfenbein again. Ironically, the FDA again authorized monoclonal antibody therapies for after exposure to Covid as a therapy to prevent severe illness the previous month. His trial is scheduled for August 2026.

When the Biden administration was harassing President Trump and his allies, many on the Left would giggle that “the process IS the punishment.”

I believe that Dr. Elfenbein, who saved the lives of thousands of COVID patients and was honored by both Democrats and Republicans for his work, has suffered for over four years for the crime of embarrassing Biden’s FDA officials.

President Trump and Blanche need to call off the deep state dogs. Furthermore, they should use the DOJ’s existing authority and funding to reimburse Dr. Elfenbein for his legal expenses.

Fairness demands it. Decency demands it. Above all, justice demands it.

Michael Collins lived in Annapolis, Maryland from 1995-2005, and wrote a twice-weekly column — Right Stuff — on state and local issues for the Capital Gazette newspaper 2011-2017.

 The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.