A Chicago hospital is reportedly under investigation by the FBI after they allegedly gave vaccines meant for communities of color to ineligible Trump Tower employees in March, according to Insider.
Loretto Hospital COO and CFO Dr. Anosh Amhed resigned in March after reports that he provided vaccines to employees at Trump Tower in Chicago ,where he reportedly owned a $2 million condo, even though they did not meet the requirements to get vaccinated under Protect Chicago Plus, a city program focused on getting minority communities vaccinated.
As the pandemic tore through low-income communities of color, officials decided in December that the city’s first Covid-19 vaccines were to be administered at Loretto hospital because of the need in the community that it serves, CNN reports.
However, an internal audit in May showed that even though the neighborhood is 79 percent Black, a majority of the hospital’s early on-site coronavirus vaccine doses went to white and Asian people.
Days later the FBI issued a subpoena to the Illinois Department of Health seeking information on 107 people that got the shot at the hospital on March 10 and 11. It indicated that there was an “official criminal investigation” into vaccines than hospital gave out over the course of those two days.
The second subpoena sent in September asked health officials more broadly for all records on any COVID-19 vaccinations administered by Loretto at any location on those two days in March, according to Block Club Chicago.
The hospital’s CEO, George Miller, said in March that he authorized 72 people to be vaccinated at Trump Tower on March 10 and 11. They were mostly employees at the hotel who lived on Chicago’s West Side.
“We were, at the time, under the impression that restaurant and other frontline hospitality industry workers were considered ‘essential’ under the city of Chicago’s 1b eligibility requirements,” Miller wrote in a memo at the time.
Trump Tower was not located in any of the zip codes eligible to receive vaccines through the Protect Chicago Plus program. Furthermore, its employees were not eligible because of their employment status, Insider noted.
Dr. Allison Arwady, the commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, told CNN at the time that some people who received the shot were not qualified.
“The biggest concern here is they were vaccinating people who were not eligible yet but then added to that of course is the larger concern that it seems they were prioritizing people that were well connected and allowing them to jump the line,” Arwady said. “It’s disappointing where providers we are prioritizing are not choosing to live by their mission.”
Though the names of the individuals who received vaccines were redacted, Ahmed boasted about vaccinating Eric Trump on March 10. He took a photo with Eric Trump and texted it to his friends, saying that he vaccinated the former president’s son, who he called a “cool guy.”
Ahmed later claimed he was joking.
“Eric Trump happened to be in the building but we did not vaccinate him,” he said in a statement.
