Ex-GOP Candidate Probed By Dem AG, Could Lose His Medical License Over COVID ‘Disinformation’

The Daily Caller

Ex-GOP Candidate Probed By Dem AG, Could Lose His Medical License Over COVID ‘Disinformation’

Laurel Duggan on February 2, 2023

  • Scott Jensen, a medical doctor who previously served in the Minnesota State Senate and ran for governor as a Republican, is being investigated for the sixth time since 2020 by the state’s medical board after questioning COVID-19 protocols. 
  • Jensen says the complaints against him are politically motivated and are coming from people who disagree with his politics — not from actual patients. 
  • “This is all about raw politics, this is about raw power, this is about punishment,” he said. “There’s an opportunity for dissenting voices to be crushed, literally extinguished. If it can happen to me it can certainly happen to you. It can happen to any of us.”

Scott Jensen, a medical doctor, former state senator and former Republican Minnesota gubernatorial candidate, said the state is attempting to revoke his medical license after he questioned certain components of the response to COVID-19.

The Minnesota Board of Medical Practice is investigating complaints against Jensen to determine if he can continue to practice medicine with the help of Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office, according to documents Jensen shared online. The board is investigating him for the sixth time since 2020; all allegations from the first four investigations were dismissed, and a fifth investigation is still pending, Jensen told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

However, Jensen argues that many of the allegations against him are irrelevant to his ability to practice medicine, focusing on perceived COVID-19 misinformation, and instead are politically motivated.


“This is all about raw politics, this is about raw power, this is about punishment,” Jensen said in a video he shared on Twitter. “There’s an opportunity for dissenting voices to be crushed, literally extinguished. If it can happen to me it can certainly happen to you. It can happen to any of us.”


Jensen challenged Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Walz in the 2022 gubernatorial race after serving as a Republican state senator from 2017 to 2021. He had previously drawn public criticism for COVID-19 positions, such as his support for ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19; the FDA strongly opposes the use of both drugs for COVID-19.

Daniel Schueppert, Minnesota Assistant Attorney General, will serve as an attorney for the medical board, according to a cover letter he signed attached to the notice of conference.

The allegations against Jensen date between April 2020 and 2022, and the attorney general’s office and medical board sent him a notice of conference Jan. 25 noting that he is expected to meet with the board to discuss the complaints against him. The complaints focus primarily on Jensen’s public criticism of the response to COVID-19, including several claims that have been proven correct.

Anyone can submit a complaint through the Minnesota Board medical practice webpage — not just patients — and those complaints can then be investigated, Jensen told the DCNF.

“They can print in, ‘Dr. Jensen’s got bad breath,’ and it appears that it’ll get investigated,” he said. “I’ve had death threats and numerous voice messages left from people who despise my politics. And they’ve told me they’re not going to rest until my license is revoked and I’m out of medicine.”

Most of the 18 complaints against Jensen involve his response to and comments about COVID-19; he didn’t get the COVID-19 vaccine or wear a mask in patient care settings, one complaint in the note of conference read. Jensen told the DCNF that he did wear a mask in patient settings when required and always asks patients if they would like him to wear one, but that many of his patients are elderly and hard of hearing, so they generally prefer for him to take his mask off.

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Many of the complaints center around allegations of “misinformation,” such as one complaint that Jensen said unvaccinated people with prior infections had stronger immunity than vaccinated people, a point supported by a 2021 Israeli study.

Other misinformation complaints against Jensen include accusations that he said masks were ineffective due to their 10% filtration rate, that he compared COVID-19 to the flu and H1-N1 and that he was “deliberately downplaying” COVID-19 deaths. One complaint alleged that he accused hospitals and doctors of falsifying death certificates, a charge Jensen has denied.

“I indicated that the Minnesota Department of Health and CDC changed the rules or suggestions as to how we do death certificates. I do not think doctors are falsifying death certificates,” he said. “I think that we were encouraged to revise the way we do them in the year 2020 in April.”

Jensen’s 2020 claims that hospitals make more money from government funding when they list patients as COVID-19 patients and have them on ventilators was true, according to USA Today; the coronavirus relief legislation added a 20% premium for COVID-19 Medicare patients, and Jensen never claimed hospitals were exaggerating COVID-19 numbers to get more Medicaid money, according to USA Today.

The complaints also alleged Jensen had cautioned against requiring children to wear masks in schools, that he prescribed ivermectin to COVID-19 patients and that he called for the consideration of temporary civil disobedience against the federal employee vaccine mandate. One individual filed a complaint over Jensen filing a restraining order to block emergency use authorization of the vaccine for children under 16.

The Feb. 24 conference is meant to serve as an “information gathering step” and a face-to-face conversation about complaints against Jensen; the complaints only represent allegations, and the board has not made determinations as to the veracity of the claims, according to the cover letters to the notice of conference from the attorney general’s office and the medical board. Jensen said the board’s investigation is not necessarily politically motivated, but that the complaints filed against him are.

“At the end of the day this is about crushing the skeptical narrative,” Jensen said. “If you’re not getting on board, you’re a problem. This is not about a physician providing inadequate services to his or her patients, this is not about a physician engaging in inappropriate behavior, this is about a family doctor … who sat as vice chair of the Health and Human Services committee for four yeas, who ran for governor, who spoke to policy issues, who said we can do healthcare better, we can do inflation differently, we can handle education differently… and here I am.”

The Minnesota Board of Medical Practice and the attorney general’s office declined to release any information on the case.

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