HHS Fires Adviser Critical of COVID-19 Vaccines

Dr. Steven Hatfill said he was removed from his position after being asked to resign.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at the Hubert H. Humphrey building in Washington on April 28, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

A senior adviser in Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s department has been fired, the agency confirmed.

Dr. Steven Hatfill, a senior adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, was fired “for cause,” a spokesperson for HHS told The Epoch Times in an email on Oct. 29.

The move came several months after the firing of Gray Delany, a former HHS official who had worked with Hatfill.

An HHS official told The Epoch Times that Hatfill and Delany were fired at the direction of Kennedy.

“Secretary Kennedy was fully aware of the problems with both employees and personally ordered their dismissal,” the official said.

Hatfill did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.

Hatfill, who joined HHS after Kennedy took over the department earlier in the year, said in a podcast interview with epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher released on Oct. 29 that HHS Chief of Staff Matt Buckham told him Kennedy asked for his resignation because of a desire to take the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response in a different direction. Hatfill said he would not resign. He was then fired.

Buckham became chief of staff over the summer, after HHS fired Heather Flick Melanson.

Hatfill said he was brought on board to provide science to back up decisions Kennedy made, including moves regarding COVID-19 vaccines that contain messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology. He said he did not think Kennedy wanted him fired.

“Mr. Kennedy picked us as a group. He selected us to come and help him. We were given a task. Mine was pandemic preparedness. And every step of the way, we seem to be being blocked by Matt Buckham,” Hatfill said.

Other senior advisers have been isolating Kennedy, according to Hatfill and Delany.

Delany told The Epoch Times that Hatfill’s termination was concerning and that Kennedy does not have enough people in place in HHS who are focused on helping enact his agenda.

“It is the political naïveté of Kennedy’s people that is holding him back,” Delany wrote on X. “He doesn’t have his people at HHS, and you can’t implement historic change without your people. And now he has one less with Hatfill gone.”

An adviser to White House official Peter Navarro during 2020, Hatfill advocated for COVID-19 treatments such as hydroxychloroquine.

Hatfill became a suspect in anthrax attacks that took place in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Hatfill sued the government and was cleared in 2008. The government agreed to pay him millions of dollars to settle the lawsuit.

Hatfill has recently appeared in the media to defend Kennedy’s actions, including the decision to cancel $500 million in funding for mRNA projects.

Hatfill went on Steve Bannon’s show “War Room” several days after the funding cancellation announcement and said that meta-analyses of the available mRNA COVID-19 vaccines found that “there was no benefit-to-risk ratio” for them.

“In fact, it was more dangerous to take a vaccine than it was to contract COVID-19 and be hospitalized with it,” he alleged.

The Food and Drug Administration, which is part of HHS, issued new approvals for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in August. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention later said it was up to each individual to decide whether he or she would receive one of the shots.