Robert Malone

Robert Malone is a major amplifier of medical disinformation and COVID-19 conspiracies. In 2022, he launched the Malone Institute, a Project 2025 Advisory Board member. He has called for a complete shutdown of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and applauded the MAGA-majority Supreme Court’s decision to discard Chevron deference, which he said led to “a massive, arrogant, parasitic administrative state.”

Project 2025 echoes Malone’s anti-vaccine and anti-public health claims, as it calls to:

— Eliminate the ability of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to take a “prescriptive character,” such as stating “school children must be vaccinated or masked.”

— Decommission the CDC Foundation (which supports the CDC) and National Institutes of Health Foundation (which supports the NIH).

— End research using “embryonic stem cells,” which Project 2025 describes as involving “the destruction of human life,” and restore authority for “religious accommodation of people, families, and doctors who cannot in good conscience take or administer vaccines”

Malone rose to notoriety in the early days of the pandemic, while serving as chief medical officer at Alchem Laboratories.. Despite a lack of published data or studies, Malone touted famotidine (aka Pepcid) as safe and effective as a COVID-19 treatment, claiming he was “the first to take the drug to treat my own case.” He successfully locked a $21 million government-funded study from the Trump administration, however following allegations of conflicts of interest and scientific misconduct under Malone’s leadership, the study was dissolved.

Malone’s anti-vaccine rhetoric escalated towards the end of 2021. His public profile rose drastically following a December 31, 2021 interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast, where he promoted a fabricated theory of “mass-formation psychosis.” Malone used this metaphor to suggest that Americans getting the COVID-19 vaccines were under a form of “hypnosis,” drawing an inappropriate and offensive comparison between the U.S. pandemic response and the Holocaust. Youtube removed the episode for violating COVID-19 misinformation policies.

The scientific community widely condemned Malone as one of the most damaging public figures during the pandemic. “Robert Malone is exploiting the fact that data-driven course correction is inherent to the scientific process to peddle disinformation. It’s extraordinarily dishonest and morally bankrupt,” said Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan. Timothy Caulfield, the Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Alberta, characterized Malone by saying he “weaponized bad research.”

In early 2022, Malone claimed that the Omicron variant “is destroying the approved narrative that the vaccines are safe and effective,” despite evidence that the vaccines were effective at preventing severe illness from the Omicron variant. Instead, Malone promoted “natural immunity,” a stance echoed by Republican officials and far-right figures like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, claiming immunity from a COVID infection is unpredictable and far more dangerous than the vaccines.

Malone frequently shared misleading information on social media, including a video falsely linking an athlete’s death to the COVID-19 vaccines, which he deleted after receiving a cease and desist letter from the athlete’s family attorney. He also tweeted a flawed and retracted Canadian study suggesting a high rate of heart inflammation post-vaccine. Despite the retraction, Malone left the tweet up, generating a massive online response. Twitter permanently suspended him for violating the platform’s COVID misinformation policy, but he was reinstated a year later after Elon Musk acquired the company and eliminated the policy.

As Malone’s role in disseminating COVID-19 misinformation became more widely covered, he was defended by noted anti-vax activist and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. “[Media reports on Malone promoting misinformation are] a euphemism for any assertion that departs from government orthodoxies [whether] true or not,” Kennedy stated. “In my experience, Malone’s statements are measured and scrupulously sourced…I know him well enough to know that he would quickly and publicly correct any statement shown to be untrue.” Malone’s 2022 book titled “Lies My Gov’t Told Me,” includes a forward by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Malone has also exaggerated his role in developing mRNA vaccines, claiming for years he invented them. In reality, his contribution is described as “minimal at best” by several coronavirus experts and researchers, including three who worked closely with him.

The Malone Institute runs several projects related to fringe public health conspiracy theories, including related to, the World Economic Forum causing “inverted totalitarianism”, physicians’ rights to “off-label” use of any medicine with regulatory approval, corruption at the Department of Health and Human Services, and the promotion of green energy in developing countries being akin to colonialism.

In one Malone Institute blogpost, Malone called The Guardian “a left-wing socialist rag,” and blasts the outlet over two articles describing the “wellness-to-fascism pipeline,” while he pushes his readers to an article published by the far-right blog The Federalist, which is heavily funded by billionaire Dick Uihlein and has published race-baiting articles with a “black crime” tag, amplified false claims of voter fraud, and routined peddles in Covid-19 and climate misinformation, among other notable controversies.

In another blogpost, Malone applauded the recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to discard Chevron deference, which “has given rise to a massive, arrogant, parasitic administrative state that has come to believe that its actions and motivations are above reproach or questioning. This doctrine has underpinned the arrogance of Dr. Anthony Fauci and colleagues at NIH so recently on display in congressional hearings for all who wish to see it… All of the arbitrary, capricious, and medically unsound administrative actions by FDA, CDC, NIH, and other HHS branches during the COVID crisis derived their authority from Chevron.”

In a Substack post, Malone also discussed how the “the shadow government has been taking down the “alternative” news voices and outlets leading up to the election.” He continues: “The multiple gag orders placed on Trump, starting in the spring of 2024 - meant to keep him quiet at a critical time. Peter Navarro was thrown in jail just months before the election, silencing his voice at a critical time. Steve Bannon is being jailed and will serve from July 1st to October 30th. To be released, just days before the election. Silencing his voice at a critical time. The Epoch Times VP of Finance was indicted six months before the election, even though the crimes were committed years ago with MSM making false and inflammatory allegations about the newspaper itself. This month, it appears that Alex Jones will have his studio shuttered by the Feds.”

In 2024, Trump’s campaign fully embraced the anti-vaccine movement. At rallies, he stated, he “will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate,” echoing Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership. Experts widely expect that if re-elected, Trump will exacerbate America’s backsliding on vaccines, leading to worse outbreaks of preventable diseases, like measles and polio. It is likely he would appoint anti-vaccine officials, like Malone, as a reward for their support. In the HHS chapter of “Mandate for Leadership”, Roger Severino claims that excess deaths during the pandemic were due to isolation and “vaccine-related misfirings,” rather than the deadly disease itself, and criticizes Dr. Antony Fauci and vaccine mandates. The document also calls for splitting the CDC into two legally distinct entities to “severely confine” its ability to make policy recommendations.

Note: Individuals included in the “Supply Chain” risk scenario would have decision-making purview over a regulatory space that greatly influences supply chains in key industries (e.g. agriculture, healthcare, technology, consumer goods), or whose influence on domestic or foreign policy could greatly disrupt aspects of supply chains, including shipping and logistics, trade agreements, and labor availability.

This profile has been updated.