Radical Transparency: Susan Monarez and Senator Bill Cassidy Echo Industry Plan

President Trump fired CDC Director Susan Monarez after she banned experts from examining vaccine harms and then ran to Senator Cassidy, industry’s “strategic ally."

5 minute read

Former CDC Director Susan Monarez is testifying today before the Senate health committee run by Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Senator long known for wallowing in pharmaceutical industry campaign donations. President Trump fired Monarez several weeks ago for failing to align with his policies. Testifying alongside Monarez is another ousted CDC official, Debra Houry.

Senator Cassidy has titled the hearing: “Restoring Trust Through Radical Transparency.”

Well, if Senator Cassidy wants “radical transparency” let’s give him that.

Last June, the agenda for a Spring meeting of the powerful lobby Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) leaked all over the internet. BIO represents large corporations in the biotechnology sector such as Bayer (which bought Monsanto) and many of the vaccine makers.

After the strategy document leaked, BIO immediately denied any knowledge of the document—of course!—to the pharmaceutical-funded website STAT News. However, industry’s lobbying strategy for vaccines is quite interesting to read.

On the document’s first page, industry reveals that a “strategic voice and ally” is none other than Senator Bill Cassidy, who runs the Senate health committee.

Page two notes that BIO is diversifying their lobbying strategy’s input to include conservative voices such as the think tank/lobby shop AEI and former Republican Senator Richard Burr.

“[I]t is time to go to The Hill and lobby that it is time for RFK Jr to go,” reads the document. (Surprise! This is exactly what Monarez and industry allies are doing.)

Before he retired to become a lobbyist at DLA Piper for the biotechnology industry, Richard Burr had Cassidy’s job as top Republican on the Senate health committee. I’ll explain the American Enterprise Institute and former Senator Richard Burr at the end of this post.

So let’s get back to what Monarez did to get fired.

Monarez got into a dispute with independent experts who sit on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a group which develops vaccine recommendations. The ACIP members wanted to look at possible vaccine harms, but CDC officials and Susan Monarez didn’t want this. ACIP members then began complaining and this eventually reached the ears of Secretary Kennedy. Kennedy then ordered Monarez to allow ACIP experts to look at vaccine harms.

But Monarez refused to let the ACIP experts look at vaccine harms. And guess what Monarez did then? As reported by Politico and the New York Times, Monarez mirrored BIO’s lobbying strategy and ran to their “strategic ally” Senator Cassidy. Here’s the New York Times:

But it gets even more interesting. As she was about to get fired, Monarez found two Democratic Party lawyers, Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell to advocate for her. Zaid and Lowell then dashed out a statement to characterize Monarez as a “person of integrity and devoted to science.”

Call me crazy, but if a federal scientist is “devoted to science” why would they run to embrace industry’s strategic voice and ally, Senator Cassidy? Doesn’t that raise some rather obvious red flags?

Of course it does.

I’m not going to get into the entire back story of Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell, the two Democratic Party operatives who magically appeared to represent Susan Monarez when she ran afoul of President Trump’s policies. But here’s what Business Insider reported on Abbe Lowell: he started a law firm specifically to oppose President Trump’s policies.

When Senator Cassidy starts the hearing, look for Susan Monarez testifying that she is “standing up for science” even as her actions mirror an industry plan, now spilling all over social media.

Perched behind Monarez, look for attorneys Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell pretending to defend truth, when their ties to the Democratic Party and opposition to President Trump have already spilled all over the internet as well.

BTW, here’s what Mark Zaid posted on X, shortly after Trump was sworn into office. Do Democratic operatives really believe that when American voters elected Trump that this was a “coup” that requires “rebellion”?

Who thinks like this? Absolutely wild.

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Here’s the background on AEI, called the American Enterprise Institute, the group BIO seems to be working with, along with Senator Cassidy.

Back in 2019, a whistleblower leaked documents to ProPublica showing that Oxycontin manufacturer Purdue Pharma paid AEI hundreds of thousands of dollars over several decades. During this same time period, AEI resident scholar Dr. Sally Satel published multiple essays in the New York Times and other outlets downplaying the dangers of opioids.

Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb is a fellow at AEI and a board member of Pfizer. Democratic Party House investigators exposed Gottlieb for his work with Purdue allies during his time at the FDA.

Finally, here’s a prior story on Senator Burr and his work on behalf of the biotechnology sector while he was leading the Senate health committee, before he retired to lobby on behalf of the biotechnology sector.