Utah
Charges dropped against doctor accused of throwing away $28,000 in COVID vaccine doses
The federal government on Saturday dismissed charges against a Utah plastic surgeon accused of throwing away COVID-19 vaccines, giving children saline shots instead of the vaccine and selling faked vaccination cards.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a post on the social media platform X that charges against Dr. Michael Kirk Moore, of Midvale, Utah, were dismissed at her direction.
Moore and other defendants faced up to 35 years in prison after being charged with conspiracy to defraud the government; conspiracy to convert, sell, convey and dispose of government property; and aiding and abetting in those efforts. The charges were brought when Joe Biden was president.
“Dr. Moore gave his patients a choice when the federal government refused to do so,” Bondi wrote. “He did not deserve the years in prison he was facing. It ends today.”
Felice John Viti, acting U.S. attorney for Utah, filed the motion Saturday, saying “such dismissal is in the interests of justice.”
The trial began Monday in Salt Lake City with jury selection. It was expected to last 15 days.
Messages sent to the U.S. Department of Justice, Viti’s office in Salt Lake City and to Moore were not immediately returned Saturday to The Associated Press.
A federal grand jury on Jan. 11, 2023, returned an indictment against Moore, his Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah Inc., others associated with the clinic and a neighbor of Moore’s. The indictment alleged more than $28,000 of government-provided COVID-19 vaccine doses were destroyed.
They were also accused of providing fraudulently completed vaccination record cards for over 1,900 doses of the vaccine in exchange for either a cash or a donation to a specified charitable organization.
The government also alleged some children were given saline shots, at their parents’ request, so the minors believed they were getting the vaccine.
Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., a leading anti-vaccine activist before becoming the nation’s top health official, posted his support for Moore in April, saying on X that Moore “deserves a medal for his courage and his commitment to healing!”
During his confirmation hearings in January, Kennedy repeatedly refused to acknowledge scientific consensus that childhood vaccines don’t cause autism and that COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives.
In a follow-up X post on Saturday, Bondi said Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene brought the case to her attention.
Colorado
Dentist accused of poisoning his wife’s protein shakes going on trial for murder
DENVER (AP) — Just days before she died after suffering symptoms that mystified her doctors, Angela Craig confronted her husband, James, in their suburban Denver kitchen over his lack of support.
In that 2023 argument captured on home surveillance video, she accused him of suggesting to hospital staff that she was suicidal, court documents show.
Prosecutors say James Craig caused the ailments that ultimately killed his wife by poisoning her protein shakes and trying to make it look as if she killed herself. His trial on murder and other charges is set to begin Monday with the questioning of potential jurors.
Angela Craig, 43, died in March 2023 during her third trip to the hospital that month. Toxicology tests later determined she died of poisoning from cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, an ingredient that is found in over-the-counter eye drops.
The couple were married 23 years and had six children.
Craig has pleaded not guilty to charges including first-degree murder, solicitation to commit murder and solicitation to commit perjury.
Police say Craig tried to fabricate evidence to make it appear his wife killed herself
The 47-year-old dentist allegedly bought arsenic online around the time his wife began to experience symptoms like dizziness and headaches for which doctors could find no cause, prosecutors say.
At the time of his arrest, police said Craig was trying to start a new life amid financial troubles and appeared to be having an affair with a fellow dentist. Prosecutors said he had affairs with two other women, but they have not detailed a motive in his wife’s death.
Craig’s attorneys have argued police were biased against him and claimed testing of his wife’s shake containers did not turn up signs of poison. They’ve questioned the reliability of a jail inmate who said Craig offered him $20,000 to kill the case’s lead investigator, an alleged plot for which Craig is also on trial.
To avoid being held accountable, prosecutors said, Craig tried to fabricate evidence to make it appear his wife killed herself.
He tried to get another fellow inmate to plant fraudulent letters at Craig’s home to make it look like his wife was suicidal, prosecutors said. Then, in the weeks before Craig had been set to stand trial in November, prosecutors said he also sent letters to the ex-wife of the inmate he allegedly tried to get to kill the investigator, offering her $20,000 for each person she could find to falsely testify that his wife planned to die by suicide, they said.
Previous Craig attorneys withdraw from case
As jury selection was about to begin, his lawyer at the time, Harvey Steinberg, asked to withdraw, citing a rule allowing lawyers to step down if a client persists in actions considered criminal or that they disagree with.
Another attorney for Craig, Robert Werking, later argued that investigators did not look into whether Craig wrote the letters or check them against his handwriting.
Werking also said that the inmate and his ex-wife were prosecuted for forgery for their roles in an alleged fraud ring in 2005, suggesting they could not be trusted.
Werking withdrew from the case himself this month after being charged with arson of his own home, leaving his wife and law partner, Lisa Fine Moses, to defend Craig.
Werking’s attorney, David Beller, said he was getting mental health treatment and asked the public to show him grace.
Moses did not immediately return telephone and email messages seeking comment.
Prosecutors plan to show video of couple’s argument
Over the objections of the defense, prosecutors plan to show the video of the argument in the kitchen to jurors.
“It’s your fault they treated me like I was a suicide risk, like I did it to myself, and like nothing I said could be believed,” Angela Craig told her husband after her first trip to the hospital.
Prosecutors convinced the judge jurors should see the video because they said it disproves potential claims that Angela Craig poisoned herself — possibly while trying to dissuade him from divorcing her — or to frame him and gain an advantage over him if they did divorce.
“Her mental state is anger and frustration, not suicidality or desperation to keep the defendant in the marriage,” Senior Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Mauro wrote in a recent court filing.
One of Angela Craig’s siblings, Mark Pray, said last year that James Craig not only orchestrated the “torment and demise” of his sister but had shown disregard for others, including their children.
An online search
Prosecutors say James Craig searched online for answers to questions such as “how to make murder look like a heart attack” and “is arsenic detectable in an autopsy?”
After Craig’s initial attempts to kill his wife failed, prosecutors allege, he ordered a rush shipment of potassium cyanide, supposedly for surgery. The shipment was
accidentally discovered by an employee at his dental practice in the Denver suburb of Aurora on March 13, 2023. The employee reported it to the office manager two days later when Angela Craig returned to the hospital for a third and final time.
Craig’s business partner, Ryan Redfearn, told a nurse treating Angela Craig that he was concerned she could have been poisoned with the cyanide. The nurse reported that to police, who began their investigation the same day.
Angela Craig died days later.
Nebraska
Retired Army officer pleads guilty to sharing classified info on Russia-Ukraine war on dating site
A retired Army officer who worked as a civilian for the Air Force has pleaded guilty to conspiring to transmit classified information about Russia’s war with Ukraine on a foreign online dating platform.
David Slater, 64, who had top secret clearance at his job at the U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, pleaded guilty to a single count before a federal magistrate judge in Omaha on Thursday. In exchange for his guilty plea, two other counts were dropped.
Slater remains free pending his sentencing, which is scheduled for Oct. 8. Prosecutors and his lawyers agreed that he should serve between five years and 10 months and seven years and three months in prison, and the government will recommend a term at the low end of that range. The charge carries a statutory maximum of 10 years behind bars.
U.S. District Judge Brian Buescher will ultimately decide whether to accept the plea agreement and will determine Slater’s sentence.
“I conspired to willfully communicate national defense information to an unauthorized person,” Slater said in a handwritten note on his petition to change his plea.
Slater had access to some of the country’s most closely held secrets, John Eisenberg, assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement.
“Access to classified information comes with great responsibility,” said Lesley Woods, the U.S. attorney for Nebraska, said in the same statement. “David Slater failed in his duty to protect this information by willingly sharing National Defense Information with an unknown online personality despite having years of military experience that should have caused him to be suspicious of that person’s motives.”
Slater retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel in 2020 and worked in a classified space at the base from around August 2021 until around April 2022. He attended briefings about the Russia-Ukraine war that were classified up to top secret, court documents say. He was arrested in March of 2024.
In his plea agreement, he acknowledged that he conspired to transmit classified information that he learned from those briefings via the foreign dating website’s messaging platform to an unnamed coconspirator, who claimed to be a woman living in Ukraine. The information, classified as secret, pertained to military targets and Russian military capabilities, according to the plea agreement.
“Defendant knew and had reason to believe that such information could be used to the injury of the United States or the advantage of a foreign nation,” the agreement states.
According to the original indictment, the coconspirator regularly asked Slater for classified information. She called him, “my secret informant love!” in one message. She closed another by saying, “You are my secret agent. With love.” In another, she wrote, “Dave, I hope tomorrow NATO will prepare a very pleasant ‘surprise’ for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin! Will you tell me?”
Court documents don’t identify the coconspirator, or say whether she was working for Ukraine or Russia. They also don’t identify the dating platform.
Amy Donato, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Omaha, said Monday that she couldn’t provide that information. Slater’s attorney, Stuart Dornan, didn’t immediately return a call seeking further details.
Charges dropped against doctor accused of throwing away $28,000 in COVID vaccine doses
The federal government on Saturday dismissed charges against a Utah plastic surgeon accused of throwing away COVID-19 vaccines, giving children saline shots instead of the vaccine and selling faked vaccination cards.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a post on the social media platform X that charges against Dr. Michael Kirk Moore, of Midvale, Utah, were dismissed at her direction.
Moore and other defendants faced up to 35 years in prison after being charged with conspiracy to defraud the government; conspiracy to convert, sell, convey and dispose of government property; and aiding and abetting in those efforts. The charges were brought when Joe Biden was president.
“Dr. Moore gave his patients a choice when the federal government refused to do so,” Bondi wrote. “He did not deserve the years in prison he was facing. It ends today.”
Felice John Viti, acting U.S. attorney for Utah, filed the motion Saturday, saying “such dismissal is in the interests of justice.”
The trial began Monday in Salt Lake City with jury selection. It was expected to last 15 days.
Messages sent to the U.S. Department of Justice, Viti’s office in Salt Lake City and to Moore were not immediately returned Saturday to The Associated Press.
A federal grand jury on Jan. 11, 2023, returned an indictment against Moore, his Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah Inc., others associated with the clinic and a neighbor of Moore’s. The indictment alleged more than $28,000 of government-provided COVID-19 vaccine doses were destroyed.
They were also accused of providing fraudulently completed vaccination record cards for over 1,900 doses of the vaccine in exchange for either a cash or a donation to a specified charitable organization.
The government also alleged some children were given saline shots, at their parents’ request, so the minors believed they were getting the vaccine.
Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., a leading anti-vaccine activist before becoming the nation’s top health official, posted his support for Moore in April, saying on X that Moore “deserves a medal for his courage and his commitment to healing!”
During his confirmation hearings in January, Kennedy repeatedly refused to acknowledge scientific consensus that childhood vaccines don’t cause autism and that COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives.
In a follow-up X post on Saturday, Bondi said Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene brought the case to her attention.
Colorado
Dentist accused of poisoning his wife’s protein shakes going on trial for murder
DENVER (AP) — Just days before she died after suffering symptoms that mystified her doctors, Angela Craig confronted her husband, James, in their suburban Denver kitchen over his lack of support.
In that 2023 argument captured on home surveillance video, she accused him of suggesting to hospital staff that she was suicidal, court documents show.
Prosecutors say James Craig caused the ailments that ultimately killed his wife by poisoning her protein shakes and trying to make it look as if she killed herself. His trial on murder and other charges is set to begin Monday with the questioning of potential jurors.
Angela Craig, 43, died in March 2023 during her third trip to the hospital that month. Toxicology tests later determined she died of poisoning from cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, an ingredient that is found in over-the-counter eye drops.
The couple were married 23 years and had six children.
Craig has pleaded not guilty to charges including first-degree murder, solicitation to commit murder and solicitation to commit perjury.
Police say Craig tried to fabricate evidence to make it appear his wife killed herself
The 47-year-old dentist allegedly bought arsenic online around the time his wife began to experience symptoms like dizziness and headaches for which doctors could find no cause, prosecutors say.
At the time of his arrest, police said Craig was trying to start a new life amid financial troubles and appeared to be having an affair with a fellow dentist. Prosecutors said he had affairs with two other women, but they have not detailed a motive in his wife’s death.
Craig’s attorneys have argued police were biased against him and claimed testing of his wife’s shake containers did not turn up signs of poison. They’ve questioned the reliability of a jail inmate who said Craig offered him $20,000 to kill the case’s lead investigator, an alleged plot for which Craig is also on trial.
To avoid being held accountable, prosecutors said, Craig tried to fabricate evidence to make it appear his wife killed herself.
He tried to get another fellow inmate to plant fraudulent letters at Craig’s home to make it look like his wife was suicidal, prosecutors said. Then, in the weeks before Craig had been set to stand trial in November, prosecutors said he also sent letters to the ex-wife of the inmate he allegedly tried to get to kill the investigator, offering her $20,000 for each person she could find to falsely testify that his wife planned to die by suicide, they said.
Previous Craig attorneys withdraw from case
As jury selection was about to begin, his lawyer at the time, Harvey Steinberg, asked to withdraw, citing a rule allowing lawyers to step down if a client persists in actions considered criminal or that they disagree with.
Another attorney for Craig, Robert Werking, later argued that investigators did not look into whether Craig wrote the letters or check them against his handwriting.
Werking also said that the inmate and his ex-wife were prosecuted for forgery for their roles in an alleged fraud ring in 2005, suggesting they could not be trusted.
Werking withdrew from the case himself this month after being charged with arson of his own home, leaving his wife and law partner, Lisa Fine Moses, to defend Craig.
Werking’s attorney, David Beller, said he was getting mental health treatment and asked the public to show him grace.
Moses did not immediately return telephone and email messages seeking comment.
Prosecutors plan to show video of couple’s argument
Over the objections of the defense, prosecutors plan to show the video of the argument in the kitchen to jurors.
“It’s your fault they treated me like I was a suicide risk, like I did it to myself, and like nothing I said could be believed,” Angela Craig told her husband after her first trip to the hospital.
Prosecutors convinced the judge jurors should see the video because they said it disproves potential claims that Angela Craig poisoned herself — possibly while trying to dissuade him from divorcing her — or to frame him and gain an advantage over him if they did divorce.
“Her mental state is anger and frustration, not suicidality or desperation to keep the defendant in the marriage,” Senior Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Mauro wrote in a recent court filing.
One of Angela Craig’s siblings, Mark Pray, said last year that James Craig not only orchestrated the “torment and demise” of his sister but had shown disregard for others, including their children.
An online search
Prosecutors say James Craig searched online for answers to questions such as “how to make murder look like a heart attack” and “is arsenic detectable in an autopsy?”
After Craig’s initial attempts to kill his wife failed, prosecutors allege, he ordered a rush shipment of potassium cyanide, supposedly for surgery. The shipment was
accidentally discovered by an employee at his dental practice in the Denver suburb of Aurora on March 13, 2023. The employee reported it to the office manager two days later when Angela Craig returned to the hospital for a third and final time.
Craig’s business partner, Ryan Redfearn, told a nurse treating Angela Craig that he was concerned she could have been poisoned with the cyanide. The nurse reported that to police, who began their investigation the same day.
Angela Craig died days later.
Nebraska
Retired Army officer pleads guilty to sharing classified info on Russia-Ukraine war on dating site
A retired Army officer who worked as a civilian for the Air Force has pleaded guilty to conspiring to transmit classified information about Russia’s war with Ukraine on a foreign online dating platform.
David Slater, 64, who had top secret clearance at his job at the U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, pleaded guilty to a single count before a federal magistrate judge in Omaha on Thursday. In exchange for his guilty plea, two other counts were dropped.
Slater remains free pending his sentencing, which is scheduled for Oct. 8. Prosecutors and his lawyers agreed that he should serve between five years and 10 months and seven years and three months in prison, and the government will recommend a term at the low end of that range. The charge carries a statutory maximum of 10 years behind bars.
U.S. District Judge Brian Buescher will ultimately decide whether to accept the plea agreement and will determine Slater’s sentence.
“I conspired to willfully communicate national defense information to an unauthorized person,” Slater said in a handwritten note on his petition to change his plea.
Slater had access to some of the country’s most closely held secrets, John Eisenberg, assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement.
“Access to classified information comes with great responsibility,” said Lesley Woods, the U.S. attorney for Nebraska, said in the same statement. “David Slater failed in his duty to protect this information by willingly sharing National Defense Information with an unknown online personality despite having years of military experience that should have caused him to be suspicious of that person’s motives.”
Slater retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel in 2020 and worked in a classified space at the base from around August 2021 until around April 2022. He attended briefings about the Russia-Ukraine war that were classified up to top secret, court documents say. He was arrested in March of 2024.
In his plea agreement, he acknowledged that he conspired to transmit classified information that he learned from those briefings via the foreign dating website’s messaging platform to an unnamed coconspirator, who claimed to be a woman living in Ukraine. The information, classified as secret, pertained to military targets and Russian military capabilities, according to the plea agreement.
“Defendant knew and had reason to believe that such information could be used to the injury of the United States or the advantage of a foreign nation,” the agreement states.
According to the original indictment, the coconspirator regularly asked Slater for classified information. She called him, “my secret informant love!” in one message. She closed another by saying, “You are my secret agent. With love.” In another, she wrote, “Dave, I hope tomorrow NATO will prepare a very pleasant ‘surprise’ for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin! Will you tell me?”
Court documents don’t identify the coconspirator, or say whether she was working for Ukraine or Russia. They also don’t identify the dating platform.
Amy Donato, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Omaha, said Monday that she couldn’t provide that information. Slater’s attorney, Stuart Dornan, didn’t immediately return a call seeking further details.
