'Hidden hand': MAGA Republicans slam Laura Loomer as a Big Pharma 'plant'

Bulwark reporter Will Sommer reports MAGA influencer Laura Loomer is drawing criticism from MAGA members who claim she’s working for pharmaceutical companies.

"Far-right activist Laura Loomer is more powerful than ever, wielding her 1.7 million-follower X feed like an internet-honed axe around Washington. The general counsel for the NSA? Fired after being targeted by Loomer. A Biden alumna with an appointment at West Point? Booted after Loomer criticized her as a holdover from the prior administration,” Sommer reports. “But … now some of Loomer’s erstwhile political allies are starting to wonder if there might be a hidden hand behind some of her most influential denunciations."

Sommer says the firing in question involves last Tuesday’s ouster of Dr. Vinay Prasad as the head of a key treatment-approval division of the Food and Drug Administration. Prasad was a hero in Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA movement because of his criticism of pandemic measures. But Loomer accused Prasad of disloyalty to Trump — even claiming that Prasad had admitted to having a Trump voodoo doll.

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Stat News reports Prasad resigned his position to avoid becoming “a distraction,” but ring-wing figures say Loomer’s attacks on Prasad came amid a high-profile struggle between Prasad and Sarepta, a Massachusetts-based drug manufacturer, over the company’s treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Sommer reports Prasad’s disapproval of the FDA’s decision to approve Sarepta’s drug, Elevidys, mounted after two patients taking Elevidys died of what appeared to be acute liver toxicity. The FDA then put Elevidys’s clinical trials on hold.

But shortly before Prasad resigned, Sommer reports the FDA reversed itself and said patients who could walk could still receive the drug, determining one patient’s death had been unrelated.

Prominent right-wing critic Kevin Bass said in a post that Sarepta had “used” Loomer as “a plant to oust FDA official Vinay Prasad," and Sommer reports former New York Times reporter and COVID skeptic Alex Berenson wrote that the pharmaceutical industry “taught its critics a powerful lesson” by pushing Prasad out.

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Sommer notes other critics, including right-wing activist Ned Ryun, posted that Loomer was “completely nuts” and claimed she “got funded by Sarepta Therapeutics to take Vinay out; probably thru a middle man for deniability but still pharma money funding it all.”

Loomer denies working “for Big Pharma,” reports Sommer, but he adds that her suit against HBO entertainer Bill Maher may uncover some insight into that. On July 17, the judge in that case ordered Loomer’s team to provide HBO with more information about the sources of her income, as well as details of any meetings or communications she’s had with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, said Sommer.

The documents won’t be made public unless they make it into a court filing, but Sommer suggests the court move “may be a roundabout way for the rest of us to finally know what’s behind the current Loomer boomlet.”

Read the full Bulwark report at this link.