A former Tennessee health official who was fired, in part, for encouraging teens to vaccinate without their parents’ knowledge has been implicated in a hoax over a supposed threat she received for going public.
According to an official investigation, Michelle Fiscus purchased a dog muzzle that she claimed had been sent anonymously following her decision to speak out.
Fiscus and her husband, Brad, repeated the lie in several interviews with outlets including CNN, Axios reported.
“Someone wanted to send a message to tell her to stop talking, they thought it would be a threat to her,” her husband told the Tennessean in July.
After the Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security used a subpoena to trace the credit card used to purchase the Amazon package, the Fiscus doubled down on the claim in a tweet Monday.
Regarding the muzzle: I ASKED Homeland Security to investigate the origin. Just provided a redacted HS report by Axios Nashville. Report says a second account was made under my name from a phone in WA? Waiting on unredacted report. Hold tight. No, I didn’t send it to myself.
— Michelle Fiscus MD,FAAP (@drfixus) August 16, 2021
Fiscus reportedly provided her Amazon account information to investigators, but after she was furnished with a redacted copy of the report by Axios, she said the account used to purchase the muzzle with her credit card was a fake account.
“We have now learned that a second Amazon account had been established under my name using what appears to be a temporary phone, possibly in Washington state,” she said.
Despite the trauma and apparent credit-card theft, Brad Fiscus said his wife had decided to keep the muzzle as a souvenir, the Gateway Pundit reported.
However, she mused that it was for the wrong breed.
“She said, ‘whoever sent that must not know me very well. That’s for a beagle, but I’m a pit bull,’” her husband told the Tennessean.
The dispute began after Fiscus, who was the state medical director for vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization programs, was fired over her aggressive outreach to teenagers concerning the COVID-19 vaccine.
A memo she distributed had argued that there was a legal basis for vaccinating teens without parental notification.
That caused outraged Republicans in the state legislature and the office of Gov. Bill Lee to demand clarification.
“Parents are the only appropriate decider of the health decisions for children,” Lee said in a statement supporting the Health Department’s decision. “We need to do nothing in government to go around that parental decision.”
In addition to her memo promoting the “Mature Minor Doctrine,” health officials cited a litany of issues with past misconduct.
A memo noting Fiscus’s “poor judgment and a substantial conflict of interest” said she had failed to maintain good working relationships, was ineffective in her vaccine leadership and had attempted to reroute funding to a nonprofit she had founded, the Nashville Post reported.
But Fiscus insisted that the accusations were all lies and that she was the victim of a political witch hunt.
“This is about a partisan issue around COVID vaccines and around people in power in Tennessee not believing in the importance in vaccinating the people,” she told the Washington Post, “and so they terminated the person in charge of getting it done.”
After her firing, she pledged to fight back, launching a nationwide media blitz in retaliation.
“I don’t think they realized how much of an advocate I am for public health and how intolerant of injustice I am,” Fiscus told the Associated Press in July.
Brad Fiscus, a member of the Williamson County Board of Education, launched a failed bid in 2020 to challenge Republican House Speaker Glen Casada as an independent.
