Latest / Nightmare Success In and Out / Doctor Turned Defendant: The COVID Hero Who Took on the Government | Dr. Ron Elfenbein Story

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Doctor Turned Defendant: The COVID Hero Who Took on the Government | Dr. Ron Elfenbein Story · Nightmare Success In and Out

0:00
What was going through your mind?
0:02
I want to die. Yeah.
0:03
I want that. I want the world to end.
0:04
I want to die. I just want to die.
0:06
I mean, the whole time I'm, you know, this for the next three
0:08
months, I'm thinking, God, I have four children.
0:10
I'm very close to all of them. I'm going to miss their
0:11
graduations. I'm going to miss their first
0:13
day of, of my, my son's first day of, of first grade.
0:17
I'm going to miss marriages. I'm going to miss bar and bat
0:19
mitzvahs. I'm going to miss weddings.
0:21
I'm like, you know, just this stuff being torn out of my
0:24
heart, like it was the worst thing I could ever imagine,
0:26
right? And then the best day of my life
0:28
happened and he completely acquitted you and he granted you
0:30
a new trial in case the government appealed.
0:33
What happens when your worst fear becomes your reality?
0:35
Hi, I'm Brent Cassidy, welcome to the Nightmare Success In and
0:39
Out podcast where we explore how to overcome your fears and
0:42
nightmares to set yourself free. We're going to be exploring this
0:46
topic with guys that was in Leavenworth with and others who
0:49
survived their own nightmare. These stories can be inspiring,
0:53
sometimes sad. There's some humor, but
0:56
hopefully you can come away with a nugget of something that'll
0:59
help you knock down some of the prisons you've built up in your
1:02
own mind. All right, welcome back
1:04
Nightmare success. And now listeners, this is where
1:05
you come for what happens when your worst fear becomes your
1:07
reality. How do you adapt, survive,
1:09
overcome, set yourself free? And folks, don't forget, don't
1:12
forget to follow, subscribe, like this thing out, share it
1:15
up. Really helps the show and I
1:17
really appreciate it. So who are we talking to today
1:22
on Nightmare Success? Talking to Doctor Ron Alphabon,
1:26
and I got to tell you when I found his story, I want to give
1:32
a shout out to Lucky OTT who actually connected us.
1:37
And then I went to YouTube to try to get more of it and wow, I
1:42
was just taken away. Then when I got it on the phone
1:44
with Ron, it's just so this story starts in the middle of a
1:49
chaos, a global pandemic that we all remember.
1:52
Fear, uncertainty, and a doctor on the front lines.
1:56
Ron wasn't just any physician. He was a board certified
1:59
emergency room doctor trained at John Hopkins, a man recognized
2:03
for stepping in when the system was overwhelmed during COVID.
2:07
He built testing sites, treated thousands, donated supplies
2:11
across multiple States, and earned accommodations from the
2:14
state of Maryland. Even recognition as a COVID
2:19
crusader for his service to the community.
2:22
This was a doctor being celebrated, honored, trusted.
2:25
Then everything changed. An indictment.
2:28
Federal charges, accused of fraud in the very system he had
2:31
to get dedicated his life to serving.
2:32
A jury finds him guilty. His career, his reputation, his
2:36
freedom while on the line. And then something almost
2:38
unheard of happens. The judge steps in, wipes it all
2:42
away. Acquittal.
2:44
The story doesn't end there. Because just when it it looked
2:47
like the nightmare was over, the system stepped back in,
2:50
appealed, reversed, and now he's back in the fight of his life.
2:54
This isn't just a story about medicine.
2:55
It's a story about courage and survival.
2:58
I can't wait to jump into all of this.
3:01
This is just an incredible story.
3:02
I'm so glad that it runs made the time to do this.
3:07
Before we jump into all that, I want to recognize our show
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from nightmare success. Since you folks, I want to share
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reclaiming your voice after being silenced for far too long.
4:01
Saffron's story takes you inside.
4:02
The hidden struggles, the pain and ultimately the triumph are
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refusing to be defined by circumstances.
4:07
As Saffron was putting the finishing touches on her book,
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4:31
Trust me, you'll be moved, challenged and changed by her
4:34
story. Doctor Ron Effelbaugh, how are
4:36
you? I'm great, Brent.
4:38
Thanks. Thanks for having me.
4:39
How are you? I'm good.
4:40
I'm good. I, I really glad that you made
4:44
time for this because I haven't had anybody on.
4:47
I know the COVID, all of us went through it, you know, all of us
4:52
went through the lock down, but you were on the other side of
4:54
the world as a doctor handling this and, and the efforts that
4:59
you went through and, and the, you know, innovativeness and the
5:04
creativeness of what you had to rethink and think out while you
5:07
were seeing things happen in China.
5:08
Before we get into all that kind of take us back a little bit,
5:11
Ron, growing up, where'd you come from?
5:14
Where'd you grow up? Parents.
5:16
It's college, high school. Yeah.
5:20
So I grew up in New York. My father was an orthopedic
5:24
surgeon, my mother was a linguist and she did a lot of
5:28
translating work, but she spoke like, she speaks like 7 or 8
5:31
languages. I didn't inherit any of that.
5:34
I don't speak anything other than English.
5:35
I could barely speak that. So I, you know, I grew up in New
5:39
York and I'd always wanted to, I always had an interest in
5:42
science. I thought science was
5:43
fascinating, but the practicality of being a
5:46
scientist just didn't really appeal to me.
5:48
So I used to make rounds with my father, go to the hospital with
5:51
him when I was little, and I really, really enjoyed that.
5:54
I really liked the camaraderie and the the sort of like doctor
5:57
patient relationship that he would have with the patients and
5:59
the fact that he could make these people better.
6:02
So in college, I did a lot of science work and then I decided
6:06
I really wanted to be a doctor. So I went to Cornell University
6:10
undergraduate, and then I went to the State University of New
6:14
York Health Science Center in Syracuse for medical school.
6:18
And then I trained at Johns Hopkins.
6:19
I did my residency in emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins, which
6:23
was a wonderful experience for me.
6:25
I really enjoyed it. I learned a ton and it opened a
6:28
ton of doors for me. I got involved because I was
6:30
there and because I was very active.
6:31
I got involved with the United States Secret Service.
6:33
I, I spent the entirety of the Olympic Games actually in Salt
6:36
Lake City out with the Secret Service as part of their team
6:39
providing care to the roughly 6000 federal agents that were
6:43
out there. I did a lot of work.
6:46
It was awesome. It was incredible.
6:49
I mean, so I used to go to the White House all the time.
6:51
I used to go to the, the Beltsville, which is their
6:53
training Academy here in Maryland, the Secret Service
6:55
training Academy. I would go and I would, I would,
6:57
you know, help And because people get hurt all the time
6:59
when they're doing training, so they don't want somebody on
7:01
standby. So I would go out and just
7:02
volunteer my time. It was incredible.
7:05
And you know, to go out to the Olympics, I needed a background
7:07
check. I had to go through the FBI.
7:08
I mean, I, I was literally everyday we would, we'd be
7:11
getting, you know, threat assessments.
7:13
We would be sitting in like top secret discussions and it scared
7:16
the crap out of me because this was right after September 11th,
7:18
right? So, you know, everybody that
7:20
that was walking down the street you think was al Qaeda.
7:24
It was very frightening, but it was an incredible experience.
7:26
I mean, absolutely incredible. And I did a lot of work with
7:29
NASA. And as a resident, I was
7:32
actually one of, I think the only resident in the history of
7:34
the program to get a almost $1,000,000 grant from NASA to
7:37
help develop methods to to manage airway emergencies in
7:42
space. And that research actually is
7:44
still in use today, which is pretty cool in the space
7:46
program. Well, that's kind of what you,
7:49
you kind of had an interest in that.
7:50
So the science world ended up to NASA and and there you are.
7:54
So, so then you, you end up in New York and you're, you're an
8:01
emergency room doctor, which I mean, I can't you you turn on,
8:05
you know, any of the networks and that's, that's, you know, a
8:07
series of this, a series, TV series of that.
8:10
I mean, those, those people live on, you know, call in the moment
8:15
and you never know what you're going to get.
8:17
Yeah, You know, that's true, and that's part of the allure of the
8:20
job. I mean, I don't know if you
8:21
watch the show The Pit, but it's actually a very realistic
8:23
depiction of what we do. I mean, it's obviously, you
8:25
know, taken to the extreme, but it's a pretty realistic
8:28
depiction of what we do on a daily basis.
8:32
Obviously what he sees in, you know, 16 hours is what we would
8:34
see in our entire career. But but it's, it's a, it's a
8:37
good, it's a good depiction. I mean, yeah, the job is fun.
8:40
The job is exciting. The job keeps you on your toes
8:42
and the job really Meeks you have to kind of keep learning,
8:45
which is something that I I really enjoy and I really like.
8:47
So it was a good fit for me. So it's things.
8:51
It helps with the Gray hair too. Well, yeah, we we're both
8:54
working that really good. That's good.
8:55
I mean, it's good to have it so it so Ron, let's let's get into
9:02
how this whole nightmare happened.
9:04
So COVID and, and you, you actually jump ahead of what a
9:12
lot of people, a lot of people were hanging back thinking this
9:14
isn't coming our way. This is something that's over in
9:18
Asia. How could it get here?
9:21
Walk us through what was going through your mind as a doctor
9:23
and somebody was seeing this because you jumped way ahead of
9:25
it. Yeah.
9:26
I mean, I guess in probably late November, December of 2019, you
9:32
know, we started to watch the news and I started to see, wow,
9:34
there's this thing over in Asia. And I'm thinking to myself, OK,
9:38
I'm not an epidemiologist, but I can understand virology and
9:40
understand how things are transmitted.
9:42
And I understand that we're a very globalized civilization.
9:46
So, you know, to my mind, there's no way this thing is
9:49
staying in China. And then they literally, I don't
9:52
know if you remember this, Brent, but they were like
9:55
literally breaking cities up, like putting bricks to peep,
9:58
keep people inside. And then they had tanks in the
10:00
street with their turrets pointed into the city to keep
10:03
everybody in. And I'm like, Oh my God, like
10:05
there's no way this is not coming to United States.
10:07
So I started to prepare. My wife thought I was crazy.
10:10
A lot of my friends thought I was crazy.
10:11
But I started to prepare. I started to purchase PPE,
10:14
personal protective equipment and testing supplies.
10:17
I owned an urgent care at the time and I, I didn't work there.
10:22
I was just a medical director. I had nurse practitioners and P
10:24
as who work there. But I started to say, look, this
10:26
thing's definitely coming. There's no way it's not, it's
10:28
probably already here. So we better start preparing.
10:30
And I think, I guess other people were listening to the CDC
10:34
and the FDA and saying, well, no, they're saying it's going to
10:36
be OK. And, and I'm like, look, maybe
10:38
I'm wrong, but you know, I, I, I can see with my two eyes what's
10:43
going on. And to me it just seemed pretty
10:46
obvious that there was no way it wasn't coming to the United
10:48
States. So I started to prepare as best
10:50
I could. And I think that to your point,
10:54
like we've, we've sort of positioned ourselves ahead of
10:56
the curve because we were the only game in town that had all
10:59
the stuff. So, you know, I had friends of
11:01
mine in, in New York. One of my buddies is a
11:04
cardiologist. He got drafted to work in the
11:05
ICU at, at Columbia, Columbia Presbyterian to Manhattan.
11:09
And he's like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
11:10
I don't know how to treat COVID. I don't know what you know, And
11:12
they were literally, no exaggeration, giving them Hefty
11:14
bags to use as their gowns. So I was sending him mountains
11:19
of PPE that I had purchased at my own expense, putting it in
11:23
boxes and shipping it to him. I had a friend of mine, we
11:25
developed a 3D printing capability to, to make face
11:29
Shields. So we were sending those up to
11:31
him too. And then I had other friends in
11:33
other states. I was doing the same things too.
11:35
And people I didn't even know. And then people would reach out
11:37
to me and say, Hey, could you help me?
11:38
Or, you know, nursing homes and doctors in the area.
11:41
And I, I mean, I, I was like, yeah, I have it.
11:43
So I'll share with you. But because we positioned
11:46
ourselves this way, we, we became the de facto sort of
11:49
testing Center for my county and then pretty much for the state
11:52
of Maryland. And we very rapidly grew from
11:54
one site to 8 during the height of the pandemic within a year.
12:00
And we went from employing, you know, six people to employing at
12:02
one point over 300 people literally within a year.
12:05
I mean, it was just astronomical growth.
12:08
And you know, at the urgent care, we would we would open at
12:11
8:00 in the morning and people would start lining up at 4:00,
12:15
4:00 AM. We had to hire off duty cops
12:17
because the line with the urgent care sits on a major highway and
12:21
the line, I'm not exaggerating, was over a mile long backed up
12:24
onto the highway. So we had to hire off duty
12:27
police to start coming at 3:30 in the morning to start managing
12:30
all this. And then we would have fights in
12:31
the parking lot. You know, people had to go to
12:33
the bathroom it to bring in porta potties.
12:35
I mean, all these crazy things that you would never think about
12:38
was a daily struggle for us because all these things would
12:42
pop up and somebody had to solve this problem and it was like it
12:45
has to be solved right away. So, you know, we had to think
12:48
outside the box. We were the first site.
12:52
We were on the front page of the newspaper because we were the
12:54
first people to start the drive up testing.
12:56
So we would, you know, to minimize, minimize
12:59
contamination, we would keep people in their car and have
13:02
providers see them and we had them seen them virtually.
13:04
We handed an iPad to them so that the provider could be
13:06
inside the nurse practitioner PA.
13:08
They wouldn't get, you know, contaminated, cross contaminated
13:11
and they would talk to the patient over over Skype, which
13:14
is HIPAA compliant and then they would do a history and physical
13:19
on them as best they could through.
13:20
Skype and you know, that ended up going across the nation what
13:24
you just talked about. 100 percent, 100% went across the
13:27
nation very quickly because, you know, it works and it's safe and
13:30
it, it really minimizes the, the risk to both the providers who,
13:34
who are finite resource. Of course, if they get sick and
13:37
they go down, you're screwed. And they're also hard to
13:39
replace, not just because they're a finite resource, but
13:41
also to get insurance credentials and all that takes
13:45
months. So we needed these people to
13:47
stay healthy for a lot of reasons.
13:49
And I didn't want my people getting sick.
13:51
That was the, you know, the scariest thing in my mind was
13:53
that someone was going to get sick and die because of
13:55
something they caught working for me.
13:57
I mean, that would be horrible. So yeah, that went that went
14:00
viral. If you want to say use that word
14:02
across the across the country. And you said so.
14:06
You know, we, we, we really. Like in this time period, Ron,
14:10
all this going on, I mean, it's, it's just a surge of, of having
14:14
to figure it out of people that are showing up hour after hour
14:19
within the world of the medical field.
14:22
Are are you guys as doctors collaborating on Oh my gosh,
14:27
look, look what happened here today or what what was going on
14:30
in that world? Yeah, that's a great question.
14:33
I, I, you know, I'm, I'm, I've been a member of the state
14:35
medical society. I'm a leader in the state
14:37
medical society. I've been since I came to
14:39
Maryland and they did a great job of reaching out and, you
14:42
know, every day you'd get an update.
14:44
But to be honest, it was information overload because you
14:46
get an e-mail from the state medical society, you get an
14:49
e-mail from the state, the Maryland Department of Health,
14:51
you get an e-mail from the Health and Human services.
14:53
You get an e-mail from doctor Fauci, you get an e-mail, you
14:55
know, so it was like, all right. And, and a lot of it was you
14:59
could tell a, a good effort. I, I, I will give them that.
15:02
Like, I think certainly from the federal government, a lot of it
15:05
was like some people will read more into a nefarious intent,
15:09
but I, I would say I'm going to give them the benefit of the
15:11
doubt. They were trying the best they
15:12
could, But you could tell a lot of it was based on nothing like
15:15
the six foot rule and the, you know, all these things that the
15:18
mask one day don't mask the next day mask the I mean, it was
15:21
like. You could walk into a
15:23
restaurant, wear a mask and sit down and take your mask off.
15:26
Right, right. Or, or you know, you could go
15:28
into a Walmart, but you can only go up 1 aisle and down the other
15:31
aisle because the virus can only move in One Direction.
15:32
Like that's just, I mean, it's just plainly stupid things that
15:35
anybody with half a brain, I would say, what the hell is
15:37
this? You know, so a lot of it was
15:40
that and it was just you're trying to make head heads or
15:42
tails out of all this conflicting information and
15:44
information overload. I just did the best I could and
15:48
you know, and all of a sudden so, you know, we grew
15:52
exponentially and with this huge behemoth now and monoclonal
15:56
antibodies became a thing. And I, I they've been around, by
16:00
the way, that can you explain? That because my wife who's who's
16:03
ChatGPT Google knows all about it.
16:06
But I think the average person might not.
16:08
Yeah, a great question. So monoclonal antibodies is
16:11
exactly what the name says, monoclonal meaning one antibody.
16:15
So basically, if you if Fred, if I cough in your face and I have
16:18
COVID-19 and I expose you to COVID-19, OK, and you have
16:21
COVID-19, your body will produce antibodies, multiple strength,
16:25
multiple types of antibodies to all the different proteins on
16:27
the, on the from the surface of that virus capsule.
16:31
But it would take your body, let's say 2 weeks to maximize
16:33
the production of those antibodies.
16:35
We're going to take the most significant antibody, the most
16:39
efficacious antibody that's going to work the best against
16:41
that virus and give you quadrillion copies of it in one
16:46
infusion. So basically what it would take
16:48
your body three weeks to produce, we're going to give you
16:50
in an hour. So the stuff, if the technology
16:54
has been around for 40 or 50 years, it's not new.
16:57
It's been, we use it for cancer treatments.
16:59
We use it for autoimmune diseases.
17:02
We use monoclonal antibodies for a lot of things.
17:05
When this came out for COVID-19, I was a huge proponent right
17:09
away because I recognized how efficacious these things were.
17:11
And, and just to put this into perspective for you, when
17:14
someone has a heart attack, what do you do?
17:17
You, you give them an aspirin, right?
17:18
Every give them an aspirin. Aspirin cures heart attacks.
17:21
Everyone's an aspirin, aspirin, aspirin.
17:22
There's there's a thing in statistics called number needed
17:25
to treat, and that means that if I want a certain outcome in the
17:29
case of a heart attack, I want to save a life.
17:31
That number needed to treat is how many people do I need to
17:33
treat with an aspirin to save one life.
17:36
That number for aspirin is about 60, depending on who you want to
17:40
read it. But let's just say average about
17:41
60 for monoclonal antibodies. The end result being save a life
17:47
or keep them out of a hospital. That number is about 15.
17:50
Anywhere between 10 and 15. Wow.
17:52
So just to put it in perspective, it's exponentially
17:54
better than an aspirin, which is our mainstay treatment for for
17:57
heart attacks. That certainly for the
17:59
layperson, it's unheard of. There's no medicine that I'm
18:04
aware of that has such a huge efficacy and it's such a low
18:08
number needed, needed to treat. I mean, it's it's remarkable.
18:10
So this stuff was so good at curing COVID.
18:14
So I was out there publicly talking about it.
18:16
I was on CBSNBCABC, Fox News, Newsmax at least once a week
18:23
talking about COVID. And then I started to talk about
18:25
the monoclonal antibodies. And I said these things are the
18:27
best they can, you know, And we opened up two sites.
18:31
We became the largest infuser in the state of Maryland, bigger
18:34
than Johns Hopkins, bigger than University of Maryland.
18:36
We, we, we were, we were getting the most.
18:39
So the state would get an allocation and we would get the
18:41
lion's share of that allocation because we were using so much of
18:44
it. And the Biden administration did
18:47
something very curious. And first they politicized it.
18:51
They they said, all right, well, we're going to federalize the
18:54
distribution of this medication. So the way it worked was if I
18:57
wanted to get more of this medicine, I would just log in.
18:59
You have to get a pin number from the state.
19:00
You have to be approved. And then you would log into the
19:03
district distributor's website and you would say, I need 50
19:06
doses. And then you have to say, I
19:08
used, you know, 52 last week. And you had to sign something
19:11
that says that you're being honest and you're, you know,
19:12
they could come and they could audit you and whatever.
19:14
But and then the next day, you'd have a package from FedEx with
19:17
what number of doses you requested.
19:19
There was no problem. There's no shortage.
19:21
The Biden administration said, we're going to, we're going to
19:23
federalize this and we're going to control distribution.
19:26
And what that did was overnight, there were shortages.
19:29
The next day, you couldn't get as many as you wanted because
19:31
the federal government stepped in and said, we're going to
19:33
control this now. And if you remember, like
19:35
Florida is a great example, Ron DeSantis couldn't get enough.
19:39
He had to go and purchase it using taxpayer dollars directly
19:43
from the manufacturer, which is asinine and the crazy, but
19:45
that's what he had to do because he couldn't get it.
19:48
So I I said what, what, why is this happening?
19:50
What are they doing? Why are they?
19:51
Why are they doing what I was? Going to ask you why?
19:53
Why did they do that? Because they know better than
19:56
everybody else. You know, I, it's the federal
19:58
government. They just, they think that, you
19:59
know, it's the Biden administration.
20:00
I, I don't know, I mean, you could say it's either
20:02
incompetence or nefarious intent or a combination of those two
20:05
things. I don't know.
20:08
But then then they started to use equity.
20:12
As a means of distribution, determining where the medicine
20:14
was going to go, which had never been done before in the history
20:16
of medicine. You never use equity.
20:18
You say, well, where is it needed the most?
20:20
It's like saying I have a chemotherapy chemotherapeutic
20:23
agent that can cure cancer, but I'm, I'm not going to distribute
20:26
it where there's an outbreak of cancer.
20:27
I'm going to distribute it where because, because it's equitable.
20:30
So we're going to send it to all 50 states.
20:31
That makes no sense, right? That's what they did.
20:34
Again, Florida is a great example.
20:36
They couldn't get any of it. They, they had a huge outbreak.
20:38
I think it was Delta or maybe it was Omicron, but they couldn't
20:41
get any, so De Santis had to go out on his own.
20:44
Then they said there was an Omicron spike and they said once
20:49
the, the, once the, the prevalence of Omicron reached
20:53
70%, that they were going to shut the whole program down
20:55
because the monoclonals that we had at the time, there were
20:57
three of them that we had didn't work against Omicron.
21:01
And I went on Newsmax and I went on Fox News and I said, well,
21:04
first of all, I don't even think that's true.
21:06
But even if it is true, we don't know.
21:09
And I as a doctor don't know what the patient in front of me
21:11
has because we don't do genetic testing.
21:13
We only do it on about 1% of people.
21:15
So the 1% of samples get tested to know, OK, which, which strain
21:19
of COVID did you have? Nobody does it.
21:21
So you have no way to know. And you're taking away people's
21:25
right to decide for themselves and their informed consent.
21:29
Because look, Brent, I can say to you, look, I have this
21:32
medicine and I can give it to you.
21:34
There's literally very few to no side effects and no risks to
21:38
you. Would you want to take it or
21:40
that, you know, maybe it won't work?
21:42
Well, of course you'd say yes. But if you did say no, fine, but
21:44
that's your choice. Why did the government step in
21:46
and say we're going to shut the program down?
21:48
So then they did, they shut the whole program down.
21:50
And I went on Fox News, I think I sent you the article.
21:53
And I went on Newsmax, and I publicly said they're going to
21:55
kill people. People are going to die.
21:57
This is terrible. They shouldn't be doing this.
21:58
They don't know what they're doing.
22:00
And I think I said it's the height of bureaucratic
22:02
arrogance. I think that's the term that I
22:04
used because, again, it's the government stepping in and
22:06
saying we know better than everybody else.
22:07
What? What?
22:08
What's going to happen anyway, right?
22:10
They got called up by a lot. And you're a doctor.
22:12
And I'm a doctor. Yeah.
22:15
So a couple weeks later, the government never apologized, but
22:20
they said, oh, we misread the data.
22:22
And that I I to this day I still can't believe.
22:25
By 50 points. 50%, five, zero. It wasn't 70%, it was 20%.
22:32
Only the government can make a mistake like that.
22:35
And one, face no consequences and two, not look like
22:38
ridiculous fools. But who can make a mistake like
22:41
that? So anyway, we go back to
22:46
infusing because, you know, we had literally refrigerators
22:48
stocked with the stuff that we couldn't use because they
22:50
weren't allowed to. And I and I said, I don't know
22:53
how many people are dead, dying, or in the hospital because of
22:55
the stupidity of these people. And four months later, without
23:00
any warning and completely out of the blue, I find out I'm
23:02
indicted on healthcare fraud charges for patients I had never
23:05
even seen my, my nurse practitioners and P as did.
23:09
And you know, for, for the indictment was like, I mean, you
23:14
get indicted and you don't even know what it's for.
23:16
Like it's just a bunch of words and you're like, what does this
23:18
mean? And you don't know for months
23:19
and months and months what they're actually coming after
23:21
you for. It's like the scariest thing.
23:23
Ron, I want to, I want to ask you though, you know, in the
23:26
build up to this, you are a big public doctor faced for people
23:34
as a go to an expert, basically who's doing all these different
23:38
things as this evolves, as COVID evolves, you're you're doing
23:43
from the drive UPS, everything that you're doing.
23:46
And now, now you're being interviewed by everybody.
23:48
So it's, it's not like you were not known.
23:53
So when, when, when you get this indictment, was there any
23:58
indication or anything where somebody said, Oh, I don't know
24:02
if you should have done that or should have said that because
24:05
somebody's going to do this. Was there anything that or did
24:08
you just it just land on your head?
24:10
It completely landed on my head totally out of left field.
24:12
But I one thing I forgot to mention, Brent, was the federal
24:16
government, Department of Health and Human Services actually
24:18
approached me and they said, hey, you're good at this.
24:22
Like, you know what you're doing, You got this under
24:23
control. We want to open up a site at
24:26
FedEx Field where the Washington Reds play football and now the
24:29
Washington Commanders. Could you do it for us?
24:32
So I went into partnership with HHS and the Maryland Department
24:36
of Health and I opened up a site right where they wanted us to.
24:40
And, you know, I, I had to convince them that we should
24:43
test there as well. They didn't want to test, they
24:44
just wanted to treat. And I said, no, no, we should
24:46
test because we can take people right from their car, test them,
24:50
and if they're symptomatic, throw them in a chair and cure
24:51
them right away. And they were like, Oh my God,
24:53
this is great. And that became the blueprint
24:55
for the entire nation, that innovation.
24:59
And, you know, would you go into business with somebody that you
25:01
think is a fraudster? Right.
25:02
I mean, they, they approached me.
25:04
I didn't approach them. Yeah.
25:05
Yeah. And so, so, you know, we, we but
25:09
but yeah, the whole thing came out of completely.
25:11
OK, so it just lands on you. We're like or.
25:13
How do you find out? Yeah so so I'm driving my 3 year
25:18
old to his gymnastics class. I have four children and he's
25:23
the youngest and I am very involved in all my kids lives.
25:26
Every week I would take him to his gymnastics class like
25:28
clockwork and he and I would play and, and I'm driving and my
25:33
phone rings and it's our operations manager and she says
25:35
there's two federal agents here that want to talk to you.
25:37
And I'm like, talk about what she's like.
25:39
I know they won't talk to me. They want to talk to you.
25:40
I'm like, sure, put them on the phone.
25:42
So they started asking me all these weird questions about
25:43
billing and coding and I said, look, I don't know anything
25:45
about billing and coding. I'm the medical director.
25:48
Call our billing and coding company.
25:50
We have a company, a third party company that does that and like,
25:53
we don't want to talk to them. We want to talk to you.
25:55
And they kept asking me all these weird questions.
25:57
And the smartest thing I did was I said, you know what?
25:59
I'm not comfortable talking to you guys.
26:02
Leave your cards and I'll have my attorney call you and Luck,
26:05
we had a business attorney. She's not a criminal lawyer, so.
26:08
By the way, that's a very good tip that Ron just gave
26:11
everybody. Don't talk to somebody who's a
26:15
professional, who's inquiring on you, because they're
26:19
professionals. You need to get a professional
26:20
to talk to a professional that's an attorney.
26:23
And they're trying to trip you up and to find something that
26:27
they can use against you. That's what they're trying to
26:28
do. They're not trying to be your
26:30
friend. They're not trying to.
26:30
They're not there because they like the color of your eyes or
26:33
whatever. They want to trip you up and
26:34
they want to find something. And I didn't know any of this at
26:36
the time. I'm just like, I don't know what
26:38
why you're asking me these questions.
26:39
I don't know anything about this, you know?
26:41
So anyway, my lawyer, I call her and she's a business lawyer.
26:44
And I'm like, Carolyn, can you just look into this, please?
26:46
I don't. And she's like, oh, yeah, sure.
26:48
So she calls me back like an hour later and scares the crap
26:51
out of me. She's like, this is a fraud
26:53
investigation and you're the target.
26:55
I'm like, what? You know, I had no idea.
26:57
She's like, here's my friend, he's a criminal lawyer, call him
26:59
right away. So then I find out like I'm
27:01
indicted and, and the only reason they didn't arrest me and
27:05
throw me in jail was because I had a lawyer and they and I told
27:08
him I had a lawyer. So they have to go through the
27:10
lawyers and you know, I, I'm not a threat to society, so I'm not
27:13
violent. So they allowed me to turn
27:15
myself in and all the rest that stuff.
27:17
But anyway, totally out of the blue and just to put this into
27:21
perspective, like the initial indictment was for three cases,
27:25
they eventually said expanded it to 55 counts, which each count
27:29
represented a human being, an actual patient that the clinic
27:32
saw. We saw in that time frame of the
27:34
indictment over 100,000 people. They picked 5.
27:40
They didn't even have a coder look at those five charts.
27:44
They had government lawyers look at those five charts.
27:47
They said that basically what they got, they came after me for
27:50
was up coding, meaning that we were charging too much.
27:52
So there's, you know, there's. A coding scale of one to five.
27:55
And, and I think you're somewhere in three or four on
27:59
this scale. It's, it's when I was watching
28:03
this on YouTube, you were talking to the other Doctor
28:05
Who's the host. It just blew my mind that
28:07
anybody would even dive into that minutiae. 100% and and and
28:12
you know what like at worst, at worst, what they came after me
28:15
for was a billing dispute. So pick up the phone and call
28:19
and say, hey, you know, we don't understand why you're billing
28:21
like this. Could you explain?
28:22
I had a perfectly reasonable explanation.
28:24
No one gave me the opportunity to ever explain it.
28:27
And I and again I want to point out I didn't see these people.
28:30
I wasn't billing and coding for them.
28:32
So anyway they but. But but Ron, those people that
28:37
they brought up, actually they it wasn't that they were you
28:41
were billing something that you had that somebody hadn't been
28:43
taken care of or seen as a as a client.
28:46
All of them had been, and sometimes twice.
28:49
No one guy was like 6 times because he needed it for work or
28:52
something. You're absolutely right.
28:52
That's a great point. Historically speaking, when you
28:55
talk about healthcare fraud, it's for billing for things that
28:57
don't have like what's in Minneapolis, right?
29:00
All that fraud that you're talking about, tons of, of fraud
29:03
billing for stuff that never happened.
29:05
The the government called three of these people at trial and
29:08
they all testified. I got seen, I got swabbed, I had
29:11
the test done. I had my vital signs taken.
29:13
Well, they all testified to that.
29:15
I want to talk about the, the point where this you're a,
29:18
you're a doctor, a respected Dr. highly decorated Dr. Did these
29:25
guys come to you right away and try to throw a plea at you
29:30
because you went to trial? How did, how did that process
29:34
work? And, and I'm, I'm sure your wife
29:37
is absolutely blown out of the, you know, the, the drapes that
29:42
this is happening. What, what, what's the
29:44
conversations that are going on, Ron with what are we doing next?
29:49
Yeah, so my wife's a physician as well.
29:51
She's a pediatric oncologist. She treats children with cancer.
29:55
We were mystified. We were like, what the hell is
29:57
going on? And no, the government never
29:59
approached us about. And, and one thing to your point
30:03
about being decorated, and I don't mean to say this is pat
30:05
myself on the back, but just to put it into perspective, the
30:08
governor of our state personally came to me personally and gave
30:11
me a citation. And for all the work you did
30:13
during COVID, you're a hero. Here you go.
30:15
The state legislature voted and did the same thing.
30:18
The state medical society named me it's person of the year even
30:22
after I got indicted for all the work I did during COVID.
30:24
And the feds come after me and, and never even give me the
30:27
opportunity to explain myself. They just throw an indictment at
30:30
me. They never offered me a plea
30:31
deal. They never came to me.
30:32
They never wanted to talk to me other than those two agents that
30:35
showed up that one day. And there, there was this COVID
30:39
task force and we had a new US attorney in Maryland who had
30:43
just been appointed by Joe Biden.
30:45
And I believe that they wanted to make headlines and they
30:49
wanted to make a big splash. And they were looking for a bad
30:52
guy. And they said, oh, this guy,
30:53
he's, he's obnoxious. He's on TV bad mouthing us.
30:56
And he's, and look, his, his numbers, he, you know, his
31:00
billing went from whatever $800,000 before COVID to 20
31:04
million during COVID. He must be doing something
31:05
wrong. He must be a criminal.
31:06
Of course, we were seeing over 100,000 people.
31:09
So the context was missing. But he's got to be guilty of
31:12
something. And even the federal judge who
31:14
adjudicated my case during a pretrial conference said this
31:18
looks like, quote, a case of shoot 1st and ask questions
31:22
later because that's exactly what it was.
31:24
Show me the man. I'll show you the crime.
31:26
That's exactly what they did. They came after me.
31:28
And then they said, oh, we're gonna have to look for
31:29
something. How long did that last?
31:31
The the process of you getting indicted to you finding yourself
31:35
in a courtroom. So we got indicted in April of
31:39
2022 and I went to court in August of 2023.
31:42
OK. So about a year or so.
31:44
So, yeah, I want to take a break here because that when we get
31:47
back, I want to talk about the courtroom and the experience of
31:51
the thing that happened with this judge.
31:52
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31:56
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31:58
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33:53
OK, Ron, so you, your, your whole world turns crazy upside
33:58
down. But the thing that I find
34:03
encouraging about this story is all the people that are supposed
34:06
to mean something on the medical side are, are on your side.
34:09
I mean, you're, you're, you haven't been left on an island.
34:14
The, the AMA and all these different people are saying,
34:17
wait, this is Ron Ron's Ron's the one that's doing all this
34:21
good stuff. What are we doing?
34:23
So anyway, I'll, I'll let you tell the story of how it goes
34:26
forward here because it's quite, quite a Yeah, well.
34:30
You know, I'll tell you, I was very naive.
34:32
I, I was actually looking forward to trial because I was
34:34
like, I can get to tell my story.
34:35
I can finally, you know, speak. Just if they can understand, you
34:38
know, let me talk about it, yeah.
34:39
Right. But I had no idea that I was
34:41
walking into this trap. That's just, you know, so
34:43
difficult to overcome. The government is every every
34:47
single thing going for them. You have nothing going for you
34:49
except the truth. In my case, yeah.
34:51
So I walk in and the first day of trial, literally day one
34:56
first witness called by the government is their expert,
35:00
quote UN quote, expert around whom the entire case is built.
35:03
OK. This guy had no clue about
35:07
anything that he was talking about.
35:08
It was so bad that on cross examination, my lawyers just
35:12
completely eviscerated him and not through like lawyerly tricks
35:15
or anything. It was, it wasn't like Saul
35:17
Goodman, you know, I'm from baking, Breaking Bad.
35:19
It was like just the truth. The guy had no idea what he was
35:22
talking about. It was so bad, the judge asked
35:25
him to step down and go wait outside.
35:27
He put the jury into the jury room, called us up to the bench.
35:29
And this is all in the transcript so you can read it
35:31
yourself. He points his finger at the
35:33
government. He says, what the hell are you
35:35
doing? Where is the crime?
35:37
And the government says, oh, judge, you'll see it's the, you
35:39
know, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, you better show
35:40
me something soon because I'm about ready to toss this case
35:43
right now. This is day one.
35:46
And of course he didn't throw the case out then, but he would
35:48
threaten to. So, you know, we go forward.
35:51
And I'm thinking the whole time I'm like, my, my lawyers told me
35:54
this before. And they're like, the government
35:55
has no evidence against you. I'm like, how can they bring
35:58
charges? They have to have something.
35:59
And they literally presented no evidence.
36:02
They said with the coding that we were using was wrong.
36:05
OK. They never said why it was
36:07
wrong. And they never said what the
36:08
right coding should have been. They just said it was wrong.
36:11
Based on what? I have no idea.
36:12
They just said it's wrong. And they did a good job of,
36:16
like, making me look like a dirtbag.
36:18
That's what they do. You know, they put my tax
36:20
returns up. Look how much money he made,
36:21
even though I didn't really make that much money.
36:23
But they were like, look how much money he made.
36:25
He must be guilty of something. He's rich.
36:27
I mean, and that is just so egregious and over the top.
36:31
But anyway, you know, they indicted me.
36:33
They said we didn't spend enough time with the patients.
36:35
Well, their own expert testify time is immaterial.
36:38
So that completely eviscerated that argument.
36:40
And they said it was medically unnecessary.
36:43
They didn't even argue that point.
36:45
The judge even pointed that in his opinion, they didn't even
36:47
argue it. They just just dropped it
36:49
because they realized they couldn't.
36:50
There was no, no, no argument for that.
36:53
So when they realized they had no arguments left at closing,
36:56
and this mystifies me that the government gets to go last at
36:58
closing. You should get to go last.
36:59
They're coming after. You, I've always thought that I
37:01
was a political science major in college and, and in the
37:05
constitutional law and everything else that you you go
37:07
through. I never understood why the
37:09
defendant isn't the one that gets the last word.
37:12
It's crazy, yeah. But so that the the government's
37:16
lawyer gets up there and and again, I just want to say that
37:18
they never even had a coder look at the charts that they accused
37:21
me of up of up charging. And what's crazy about that?
37:24
And, and by the way, before they indicted me, they hadn't even
37:27
looked at the charts. And what's, what's important
37:29
about that is you don't know what the coding should be until
37:33
you look at the chart because the coding is based on what's in
37:35
the charts. So how could you say someone's
37:38
committing fraud without the evidence of fraud, right?
37:41
Like, it's just mind boggling. We had a professional coder and
37:44
he looked at hundreds of charts and he said they all looked
37:47
appropriate. In fact, some of them may have
37:48
actually been under coded. Anyway, a closing lawyer gets up
37:53
there. You already said it earlier,
37:54
Ron, You, you had a third party that was doing the coding.
37:57
You guys are taking care of patients.
38:00
Right, right. And I, and I didn't see any of
38:02
these people. So anyway, the government gets
38:04
up there and he says, you know, hey, jury, you may be asking
38:08
yourself what the appropriate coding level was.
38:10
The good news is you don't have to know.
38:12
You just need to know he's a criminal and he's wrong.
38:14
And then mystifyingly, completely, mind bogglingly,
38:18
they get up there and they say, you know, jury, jurors, the
38:21
government, the, the defense got up there and they, they
38:23
presented this, this, this expert and he, he showed you all
38:26
these rules and he talked about these charts.
38:28
And does that make any common sense to you?
38:31
Just use your common sense, Jurors, use your common sense.
38:35
And I think that resonated with people because this stuff is so
38:38
absurd and crazy. But you know, if we had been
38:42
able to retort that, of course, the, the logical response to
38:45
that would be like, oh, I'm going to file my taxes and call
38:48
the IRS and say, Hey, I, I use my common sense.
38:50
That's OK, right? I mean, and, and to your point,
38:53
Brett, you know, like you said, the AMA, the AMA wrote an amicus
38:56
brief on my behalf. They're the ones who wrote these
38:59
rules that the government is accusing me of breaking.
39:02
And the AMA said I didn't break them.
39:04
And yet the government is still coming after.
39:05
I think that's a pretty strong point.
39:08
Yeah, I agree. I agree.
39:10
And I'm not a member of the AMA. I've never been a member of the
39:12
AMA. I don't like the AMA, but they
39:16
supported me through, and I appreciate that, but I don't
39:18
like their politics. I should say.
39:19
It's not that I don't like the AMA, I don't like their
39:20
politics. But regardless, they supported
39:23
me. They wrote an amicus brief, as
39:25
did the state medical society, saying that I didn't break the
39:28
rules. The government's accusing me of
39:29
breaking, and they wrote those rules.
39:31
So it's just mystifying. Anyway, they find me guilty, and
39:35
I think it was because of this, you know, common sense nonsense.
39:39
Yeah, because they're right. It doesn't make common sense.
39:42
But the rules are the rules. Like now all of a sudden the
39:44
government doesn't want us to follow the rules because they
39:45
don't like them. The rules that they helped,
39:47
right. With the AMA.
39:48
I mean, it's it's crazy. So that then the best day of my
39:51
life, because that was the worst day of my life, I had to drive
39:54
home and tell my children that I was found guilty like it was.
39:56
Well, and you were looking at real time.
39:59
Up to 50 years. Up to 50 years because is is is
40:02
a lot of people have heard me say on the show, you can have a
40:07
charge and they can stack a charge too.
40:09
So like, and I don't know that they did that in this case.
40:12
They had five different ones accounted, counted 10 years and
40:14
that'd be 50. But in some cases, let's say
40:16
that you've owned a business for 30 years and they want to do
40:21
wire fraud. They can just they could take or
40:24
how or they can do mail fraud. How many times you put something
40:26
in the mail? They can do that multiple times
40:29
and each one of those takes 10 to 20 years.
40:32
And so you could be looking at 509 hundred years just because
40:35
they're allowed to stack those. So it's, it's a, it's a very,
40:38
very scary proposition. And you, you were looking at 5
40:42
people, 5 different things and you I'm sure that was 10 years
40:46
plus. And so it was 50 some odd years.
40:47
It's a lot. Of and millions of dollars in
40:49
restitution. And was it?
40:51
Like 85 million or something like that.
40:53
Some ridiculous numbers, but I don't even know where they came
40:55
up with it and I still don't understand where they came up
40:57
with it. But but just to put that into
40:59
perspective. So if you're going to say that
41:01
we build A level 4 and had a perfectly reasonable rationale
41:04
and even the judge said it was perfectly reasonable and the
41:06
judge said evidence actually sided with me and my decision
41:10
making. But even if you put that decide
41:11
and say fine, you should have build A level three, OK, the
41:14
difference between a four and a three on average is about
41:17
$50.00. So you're talking about 5 *
41:20
52150 dollars. You're going to throw me in jail
41:22
for 50 years over $250? What?
41:27
In what world does that make any sense other than the federal
41:31
government? Let's talk Ron, about what
41:32
happens afterwards. Because you you leave and.
41:37
It's the worst day of my life, The.
41:38
Worst day of your life? Oh my God, I could barely stand.
41:41
I literally could barely stand. I was in wreck and my kids were
41:44
waiting in the in the in the driveway from we didn't call
41:47
them from the car, obviously. And like they could what?
41:49
Was going through your mind. I want to die.
41:52
Yeah, I want that. I want the world to end.
41:53
I want to die. I just want to die.
41:56
I mean, the whole time I'm, you know, this, for the next three
41:58
months, I'm thinking, God, I have four children.
42:00
I'm very close to all of them. I'm going to miss their
42:02
graduations. I'm going to miss their first
42:03
day of, of my son's first day of first grade.
42:08
I'm going to miss, you know, marriages.
42:10
I'm going to miss barn bat mitzvahs.
42:12
I'm going to miss weddings. I'm like, you know, just this
42:15
stuff being torn out of my heart.
42:16
Like it was the worst thing I could ever imagine.
42:19
And then the best day in my life happened.
42:21
I get a phone call from my lawyer.
42:23
And of course, it's never good when your lawyer calls you.
42:25
So I'm like, oh God, what does he want now?
42:27
So he's like, this really killed me.
42:30
He goes, he goes, I have some news I want to talk to you
42:33
about. Can I call you back in 10
42:35
minutes when I have the whole team on the line?
42:37
I'm like, Oh my God, sure. It's like me saying to you,
42:39
Brand, I got your biopsy results, but I got to get the
42:41
chicken out of the oven. Let me call you back in 10
42:43
minutes. I'm like, come on, you know,
42:45
like so anyway, I'm now I'm pacing back and forth.
42:48
I go to my office because I didn't want my kids or my wife
42:51
to hear what horrible things are going to happen now.
42:54
And he says, we just got Judge Birddar's 93 page opinion.
42:58
And I'm thinking, all right, he's and he said money and he
43:00
completely acquitted you and he granted you a new trial in case
43:02
the government appealed. And, and the judge was so
43:05
incredible. He said I I just want to read a
43:07
couple. Questions 90 because 92 pages.
43:09
I I was reading 93 because you said it to me. 93 actually 93
43:13
pages counter. I mean the guy said things like
43:16
the government did not carry its burden and no reasonable jury
43:19
could have so concluded. He said the evidence weighs so
43:23
heavily in favor of the defendant that it would be
43:26
unjust to enter judgement against him.
43:28
There can, of course, be no crimes if the defendant complied
43:30
with those rules. I mean, it goes on and on and
43:32
on. I don't want to bore you with
43:34
all these quotes, but I mean, 93 pages of quotes like that of
43:36
just completely obliterating the government, saying they should
43:38
never brought this case. It was terrible that, you know.
43:41
And so not only did he equip me, but he also granted me a new
43:44
trial because he knew that they could appeal it.
43:46
And then, of course, they did appeal it.
43:47
And now I'm facing a new trial this August.
43:50
So I have to go through this nightmare yet again.
43:52
OK. So on the on the appeal, so they
43:57
they appealed there was a was there a three judge panel is
44:00
that? 3 judge panel I guess yes.
44:04
So they, they wiped away the acquittal, but you have the
44:08
opportunity for the, the new trial.
44:13
How long did it, how long did you get to feel good about the
44:16
acquittal before the appeal? The the DOJ was going to appeal
44:21
this. Yeah, the government really,
44:23
really waited until the 11th hour to to file.
44:26
And it was really right before Trump was inaugurated.
44:28
And I think just to kind of stick it to me, the Biden DOJ
44:31
decided to appeal this because they don't like losing.
44:33
And, you know, the the appellate court's decision just is just
44:39
mind boggling. I don't know if you've read it
44:40
or not, but it's really it said it's said, yes, Doctor
44:44
Elfenbein's approach was reasonable, but the government's
44:47
still free to come after him. Right.
44:49
Again, That, that like, what world does that make any sense?
44:52
Does it, you know, yes, what I did was fine and it was good,
44:55
but not only come after me, come after me criminally, right?
44:57
Like it's OK to come after me civilly and say we disagree with
44:59
you, but to throw me in jail, even though they they agreed
45:02
that my interpretation was reasonable and that was their
45:05
word, not mine. Reasonable.
45:07
Like what world does that make any sense?
45:09
Is there any chance because you're, you're looking at
45:12
August, which is not that far away.
45:16
Is there any chance because we're, we are in a new
45:20
administration. Obviously the Trump and Biden
45:24
administration had different ways of thinking about what they
45:27
were doing and how they were doing it.
45:29
Is there a chance that this thing they say, hey, by the way,
45:33
calls your attorney And we're, we're, we're done.
45:36
We don't really need to do this. So great question.
45:40
And I have sat quiet for two years.
45:42
I'm sure you know all about this, right?
45:43
Because the lawyers tell you don't say a word, you know,
45:46
don't talk to anybody. But of course, the government
45:47
can talk to whoever they want, and they can make you look like
45:49
the worst human. They can actually pay.
45:52
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, exactly. So I decided, you know what,
45:56
like this isn't getting me anywhere.
45:58
And by the way, I testified at my trial, which is very rare for
46:01
defendants to do because I was innocent, didn't do anything
46:03
wrong. And my lawyer, I said to him, I
46:05
said, look, I made this decision, I'm going to go
46:07
public. I know you're not going to like
46:08
it, but I'm going to do it. And he said, actually, I'm OK
46:11
with it because you testified. You already been through this
46:13
once. What are you going to say that
46:14
hasn't already been said? And I'm like, OK, so that's my
46:18
whole reason for going public is to try to find somebody in the
46:21
Trump administration. I'm not asking for special
46:24
treatment. I'm just asking for someone to
46:26
to to do 2 things. Look at this objectively and say
46:29
#1 is this a just? Prosecution read the judge's of
46:32
93 page. Read the judge's opinion, right.
46:34
And then who's, by the way, is the chief judge of the state of
46:37
Maryland? He's a.
46:38
Judge, I was going to bring that up.
46:39
That's a big point. And he was an appointee of
46:42
President Obama. So he's not some hardcore
46:44
Republican guy, right? I, I know there's supposed to be
46:47
a political, but he was an Obama appointee, for whatever that's
46:50
worth. And, and #2 is this a good use
46:54
of taxpayer funds? The DOJ doesn't have unlimited
46:58
resources. I know we like to say that, but
47:00
they really don't. And they have, they don't have
47:01
unlimited time. So, you know, don't they have
47:04
real criminals to go after? Like this has already been
47:06
adjudicated. So I'm trying to find someone in
47:08
the Trump world to look at this and to say, yes, this is crazy.
47:11
And, and by the way, I believe that I'm actually a
47:15
whistleblower because day one in office, President Trump puts out
47:21
an edict that says we're going to end weaponization of the
47:24
government. I firmly believe this is
47:25
weaponization against me. There's no, I don't think
47:27
there's any question that this was a weaponized government that
47:29
came after me for a bunch of nonsense regardless numbers.
47:33
Pam Bondi on on February 5th, Attorney General Bondi put out a
47:36
memo and #7 on that memo, it's lists, lists different people
47:41
that needed to be looked at for weaponization was
47:43
whistleblowers. And when I, when I went public
47:46
and said that they're going to kill people, they're shutting
47:48
down this program, they're taking away people's informed
47:50
consent, that's whistleblowing. And actually, I just didn't know
47:53
this. But according to Secretary
47:55
Kennedy, who's been on multiple podcasts multiple times saying
47:58
this, if, if anything threatens, if anything shows efficacy
48:03
against a, a, a virus, that the virus, the emergency use
48:10
authorization granted for the vaccine can no longer be valid.
48:13
So in other words, if, if that's why they, according to Secretary
48:16
Kennedy, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were so
48:19
badly, you know, the government went out of its way to put it
48:22
down and say, oh, it doesn't work.
48:23
It's crazy because if they had been shown to be efficacious
48:27
against COVID, the COVID vaccines would have lost their
48:29
emergencies authorization, therefore they would have been
48:31
illegal to give. But monoclonals?
48:34
That's a big. Definitely fall into that
48:37
category. I didn't know that either.
48:39
So I think that definitely puts me in the category of a
48:41
whistleblower. So I'm trying to find, there's
48:43
this. The president established a task
48:45
force, the weaponization task force.
48:47
Their job is to meet daily and find cases, in my opinion, like
48:50
mine, to bring to the president to say here's a case of
48:53
weaponization. These people have been what you
48:56
know, DOJ was weaponized against them.
48:58
I think it's the perfect case for that.
49:00
So to answer your question, yes, I'm, I'm very hopeful that we
49:03
can find that person. And I've made some inroads.
49:05
I've, I've spoken to United States Senator, He had me in his
49:07
office. We talked about my case.
49:10
I've spoken to other people in, in the government.
49:12
I don't want to mention names, but you know I I think there is.
49:15
You've been making inroads into people that are trying to get
49:18
them to listen and, and, and, and this is a case that needs to
49:20
be listened to because there are so many things that happen, Ron,
49:26
that it's, it's very obvious that something was triggered.
49:30
And it, and it looks to me like it was triggered about the same
49:33
time that you were going on and saying, listen, people are going
49:35
to die if this happens this way. And, and then you get indicted.
49:41
Everything up until that point in your life, you are what
49:45
everybody wants and the doctor that everybody's recognizing and
49:49
wanting to collaborate with and is following.
49:52
And you were ahead of the curve on the, on COVID.
49:55
Not so many people can say that. Not so many people can say that.
49:59
It's very few, very, very few. I, I just, you know, I hope the
50:04
best for you. I, I, I think you're, you know,
50:07
and your family. I know it's probably just had to
50:09
go through a living hell. The roller coaster ride that
50:12
you've been on from, you know, going and getting found guilty
50:16
and then getting acquitted by the judge and then getting the
50:19
appeal over and then going back and going to trial.
50:21
It's it's a, it's a lot for a family to go through.
50:26
And I know that it was a lot for you to have to go back into the
50:29
medical world and figure out, you know, how do I get back in
50:31
and find a job? Because one of the very you and
50:35
I talked about this on the phone, you know, medical
50:39
malpractice insurance is tough. If you've been out for a while
50:42
and you want to jump back in, especially if you're an
50:44
emergency, all those different things just go like, you know,
50:48
people don't know that this is the type of thing that happens
50:51
when you're in a, in the fight of your life.
50:54
You did the profession that you're in, you're you're back
50:58
in, but by a, by fighting to get back in and it's not easy.
51:02
Skin in my teeth, yes. Skin in your teeth, yes.
51:06
Thank you for pointing that out. Yes, that's very true.
51:08
And, and it's, it's admirable that you've been able to fight
51:11
your way back in it because that's, it's, it's not, it's not
51:14
an easy road for anybody. Thank you Ron.
51:17
If, if, what do you think's your biggest take away from all this?
51:25
My biggest take away is I think that, you know, again, I was
51:32
very naive. I used to think I used to think,
51:35
look, if they're federal government's coming after you,
51:37
you know the expression don't make a federal case out of this.
51:40
Like if they're coming after you, they must know something.
51:42
They must have the goods on you. They and I'm telling you and
51:46
you, I know you know this, but I have met so many wonderful
51:48
people through my journey that I never would have otherwise met
51:51
yourself included, right? These wonderful people that,
51:55
that I know for a fact, a lot of them are innocent and a lot of
51:58
them pled guilty to charges because you're facing years in
52:04
jail. And, and I, you know, I don't
52:05
know if you're listening, I'm sure they probably do know this
52:06
because you talk about this, I'm sure a lot.
52:08
But if, if you are offered a plea deal and you, you don't
52:11
take it and you go to trial, there's a tax, they actually add
52:14
time to your penalty, to your yeah, there's a penalty because
52:18
you quote UN quote wasted time and that's crazy.
52:20
You're exercising your constitutional right to a trial.
52:25
Why should you be? Why should you be penalized for
52:27
that? But you are.
52:30
So a lot of people, you know, like General Michael Flynn, I
52:33
mean, the poor man, like, you know, that they, they admitted,
52:35
they set him up. They, they, they threatened to
52:40
indict his, I think it was his son and his wife if he didn't
52:42
plead guilty. I mean, it's like Tony Soprano,
52:44
it's like the Mafia who does stuff like that.
52:47
This is the United States government.
52:49
They need to be better than that.
52:50
But that's what they do. So I, I, you know, I, I, I've
52:54
learned that like my, my entire matrix of like good and bad has
52:59
sort of flipped the switch. I used to think again, forgive
53:02
me for saying this, but like, you know, defense attorneys, how
53:04
could you defend people, these sleazebags, but totally flipped,
53:08
flipped the flipped the script on that 100%.
53:12
Look, are there criminals out there?
53:13
Of course there are. And they need to be, need to be
53:15
prosecuted, but you know, they come after people for the
53:19
dumbest things and without any evidence and they still find
53:22
them guilty. So I, I think I have really now
53:26
every time I hear about somebody gets indicted or whatever, I
53:29
think, is this real? Or, you know, we really need to
53:32
let this play out before you make a decision because maybe,
53:36
maybe they really didn't do anything wrong.
53:38
And I, I, I think that that is a really hard pill to swallow.
53:43
Well, I, I just hope, and it sounds like you've got effective
53:47
attorneys and, and you are a smart guy and, and you've got a
53:51
lot of fight encouraging you and, and that's what it takes.
53:55
And hopefully it doesn't get to August.
53:57
Hopefully it, hopefully sane minds come together and, and,
54:02
and figure this thing out. Ron, if people want to get a
54:06
hold of you, I know your website is that is the website your?
54:11
Is that your name or is it? Is it?
54:13
Is it's Ron elfenbine.com RONELFENB ein.com and I'm on X
54:19
Ron Elfenbine MD on X Please follow me please.
54:22
You know, and I have a, I have a give send go.
54:24
Look, this has been, as, you know, like lawyers are not
54:26
cheap. And my lawyers have been
54:27
wonderful and very magnanimous with their like, I mean, it
54:31
almost bankrupted us. And I, I, I literally pay them
54:34
every single month. I've never missed a payment, But
54:36
I mean, I couldn't afford their bills.
54:37
And they said, just pay us when you can, what you can.
54:39
And they've been great about it. But if people have the, have the
54:42
ability and the desire, please, I could definitely use some
54:44
help. I also have a Change.org on my
54:47
website. That's just another thing that
54:50
we can present to the DOJ to say, look, you know, people are
54:53
behind me. This is crazy.
54:54
You should just drop this case. Like you have better things to
54:56
do. You have real criminals to go
54:57
after and, and you know, I, I, I again, I, I go back to the point
55:01
that this is really what it boils down to is a billing
55:05
dispute over $250. And if that's what I mean, like
55:08
I would have happily come to the table and said, OK, you know,
55:11
you think that we overbuild. Let's discuss that.
55:14
Let me explain to you why I don't think so.
55:16
But you know what, if you think so, fine, I'll give you some
55:18
money back. Like big deal.
55:20
But they never did that. And, and that they're supposed
55:22
to do that according to their own internal documents.
55:25
That's what they're supposed to do.
55:27
Well, just the the other, I mean, you're talking about just
55:30
a very $250 and five people and the goodwill that you created or
55:36
should have been somewhere piled up somewhere just was wiped away
55:41
off the table. That's what just blows me away
55:43
on this on this story is what you did and how you treated and
55:47
what you were willing to do. Like you said, even with the HHS
55:51
going into to the RFK state and and and and figuring things out,
55:57
you were you, you were helping figure things out in a crisis
56:01
and then you got indicted. And it's just, yeah, that's.
56:04
The thanks you get and, and you know, to, to your point, Brent,
56:07
like again, not to pat myself on the back, but on, on on par.
56:10
Like if you want to look at it, the amount of money that we
56:15
saved the system from treating people, we treated over 3000
56:18
people with monoclonal antibodies.
56:19
And you know, a certain percentage of those definitely
56:22
would have died or needed hospitalization.
56:24
You're talking hundreds of millions of dollars that we
56:27
saved the system and then the rapid testing and isolating
56:29
people quickly and all these things that we were very
56:32
innovative with hundreds of millions of dollars.
56:36
To your point like that we saved the system and you couldn't, the
56:38
government couldn't pick up the phone and just say, so that's
56:41
why I think this is clearly weaponization.
56:43
They had ulterior motives because this doesn't make any
56:45
sense. Anyone with a half a brain would
56:47
look at this and say what what? This doesn't make any sense.
56:49
Doesn't make any sense. And like you said, easy phone
56:53
call. Easy phone call.
56:54
Let's talk about this. I want to thank Homestead
56:58
Financial for letting me use this podcast room and all the
57:01
cameras and fancy lights. If you got home mortgage needs
57:03
out there, Greg Afdev is your guy.
57:05
Hey, if you're working around and wanting to read a book, go
57:09
go find Maya's nightmare success.
57:10
Loyal to portrayal life behind bars and finally breaking,
57:14
adapting and finally breaking free.
57:16
If you got time, leave me a review on Apple.
57:18
Those are great really helps the show.
57:20
I love reading them. If you want to check out what
57:22
I'm doing, it's brettcassidy.com.
57:24
I spell it wrong. I spell it with a Ty, not a DY
57:26
as I used to say when I was writing my emails back and forth
57:29
from the level where stay strong.
57:30
I'll do the same. Ron, man, I just what a story
57:35
you survived up to this point and I just I think something's
57:38
going to happen that something's got to happen that that we don't
57:43
get to August and I want to I want help any way I can, because
57:45
I know that you're fighting like hell and and there's a lot of
57:48
people that that are are with you.
57:52
Thank you. I appreciate that.
57:53
I really do. It means a lot.
57:54
And you feel like, I mean, you've been through this, so,
57:56
you know, it's like the loneliest feeling.
57:58
In the world, it's a lonely feeling.
57:59
It's an island that nobody wants to be on.
58:01
Yeah. Exactly.
58:05
All right. Thanks for your success.
58:07
In. And out.