BREAKING NEWS: The Coup - How Big Pharma's $2 Million War Chest Bought the Upcoming Sept 17 Senate Hearing

With Just 48 Hours Left, America Faces a Scripted Hearing Masquerading as Oversight

By Sayer Ji, Special to The MAHA Report

[Republished from Sayer’s Ji’s Substack with permission of the author]

• 🚨 Action Alert 🚨 The Senate HELP Committee is setting the stage against RFK Jr. this Wednesday. This isn’t about oversight—it’s about silencing dissent and protecting entrenched interests.

We need every voice to counter this narrative. Please share widely and take action now:🔗 https://x.com/sayerjigmi/status/1967365036202152249

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Executive Summary

• Coordinated Industry Strategy: Leaked BIO meeting minutes from April 2025 reveal pharmaceutical lobbyists explicitly planned to "go to The Hill and lobby that it is time for RFK Jr to go," allocating $2 million for the campaign.

• Media Narrative Synchronization: A series of public calls for Kennedy's resignation from medical professionals, HHS employees, and Senator Bernie Sanders followed remarkably similar messaging and timing patterns.

• Foreign Influence Component: UK-based organization CCDH had previously planned "black ops" against RFK Jr., with Sanders' Guardian op-ed appearing on the exact media platform CCDH identified for narrative placement.

• Congressional Convergence: The September 17 Senate HELP Committee hearing represents the culmination where industry lobbying and public pressure campaigns intersect, with Senator Cassidy—previously identified by BIO as a key ally—presiding over proceedings.

An Orchestrated Drive to Remove a Health Secretary

On September 17, 2025, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee will convene a high-stakes hearing that could decide the fate of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The hearing, led by Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), is ostensibly about "Restoring Trust Through Radical Transparency" at the CDC in the wake of recent upheavals.¹ But make no mistake: this is no routine oversight. It represents the culmination of a carefully orchestrated influence operation — one that marries a biotech industry inside game with an outside media and political blitz — all with a singular goal: force RFK Jr. out of office.

Over the past several months, a striking convergence has emerged between BIO's internal lobbying strategy and a seemingly organic public pressure campaign. Leaked documents and public records reveal how powerful pharmaceutical interests and their allies set the stage from within, even as prominent figures and media outlets amplified a synchronized narrative from without. What might appear as spontaneous concern for "science" and "public health" is in fact the execution of a well-coordinated plot — one that raises urgent questions about who really pulls the strings in American health policy.

This investigative exposé lays out the evidence of that coordination: the secret April memo in which the biotech lobby privately strategized Kennedy's ouster; the chorus of outside voices — from Sen. Bernie Sanders' "Vaccines Work" press conference to a Guardian op-ed — that echoed the call for RFK Jr. to "step down"; and the impending Sept. 17 HELP Committee hearing, which stands as the choreographed crescendo when industry's inside game and a foreign-aligned media narrative converge. The picture that emerges is deeply unsettling: a campaign against a sitting U.S. health official that is less about honest policy disagreement and more about protecting entrenched interests through manufactured consensus.

Inside BIO's War Room: "Time for RFK Jr. to Go"

The opening salvo of this operation came from behind closed doors. On April 3, 2025 — barely two months into RFK Jr.'s tenure — the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), Big Pharma's leading trade group, held a Vaccine Policy Steering Committee meeting that, remarkably, plotted how to undo the Senate-confirmed health secretary. Minutes from that meeting, leaked by whistleblowers, read like the blueprint of a political coup. BIO's leadership bluntly concluded that "it is time to go to The Hill and lobby that it is time for RFK Jr to go".² In other words, the industry decided to leverage its influence in Congress to push for Kennedy's removal just weeks after he assumed office — a stunning gambit that has nothing to do with policy nuance and everything to do with power.

Why target RFK Jr. so urgently? Inside the memo, pharmaceutical executives fretted that Kennedy's "anti-vaccine"stance and reform agenda were "direct threats" to their business. One BIO member warned that vaccine investors were fleeing because of the "unpredictable" new environment.³ "Investors have stated they are leaving until the next data readout," reported Jim Wassil of Vaxcyte, noting there was "no opportunity to raise capital in the current environment" due to Kennedy's policies.⁴ In BIO's eyes, RFK Jr.'s push for tougher safety reviews and transparency — demands like restored liability for vaccine manufacturers, long-term trials, and an end to revolving-door conflicts — threatened to "render their current profit model obsolete".⁵ The "#1 priority at BIO" was vaccines,⁶ and a health secretary questioning any aspect of vaccine policy was an intolerable risk to their bottom line.

Equally telling is who BIO identified as assets in this fight. The April 3 memo names a cast of "strategic voices and allies" the lobby could deploy. Celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz was floated as a potential White House insider voice—though Oz's unwavering loyalty to RFK Jr. has since made clear that BIO fundamentally misjudged where his allegiances lie—and former GOP Senator Richard Burr as a conservative ally.⁷ Notably, BIO flagged Sen. Bill Cassidy as an "emerging influential advocate" on public health issues.⁸ Cassidy — a physician-turned-politician — was seen as a key figure who could champion CDC and vaccine causes in Congress. It is no coincidence that Cassidy now chairs the very Senate committee poised to hold the Sept. 17 hearing that will scrutinize RFK Jr.'s leadership. In April, BIO saw Cassidy as a friendly conduit for its agenda; five months later, he is presiding over the pivotal forum that could make or break Kennedy's role. The synergy is hard to ignore.

The leaked minutes also reveal BIO's broader strategy to "neutralize" Kennedy without ever addressing the substance of his critique. Rather than openly debating RFK Jr.'s points about vaccine safety or regulatory capture, the lobby planned to deploy surrogates and co-opt influencers across the political spectrum. By enlisting ostensibly independent voices — including conservative institutions like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and even union leaders — BIO intended to create a "veneer of bipartisan legitimacy" for its anti-Kennedy campaign. The goal was to make the pressure on RFK Jr. appear broad-based and principle-driven, rather than originating in Pharma's C-suites.

Crucially, BIO committed serious money to this influence operation. The minutes describe a dedicated $2 million war chest — half of BIO's entire cash reserve — for vaccine "communications".⁹ This included launching a PR blitz branded "Why We Vaccinate" in the D.C. area, aimed at moving the "movable middle" with emotionally charged messaging.¹⁰ The memo is explicit that this campaign was not about education but behavioral influence, designed to "inspire and frighten" the public and lawmakers in the service of BIO's goals.¹¹ In BIO's own words, the messaging would emphasize "efficiency," "transparency," and "national security" — focus-grouped buzzwords to recast industry's self-interest as the public's interest.¹² The trade group even discussed not engaging RFK Jr. directly but instead targeting other officials around him and "using their words — safety, efficiency, health resilience, transparency — to communicate".¹³ In short, it was a classic influence campaign: hijack the language of public health and national security to undermine an official they viewed as a threat, all while hiding the industry's hand behind trusted messengers.

When a private trade association plans, in essence, to overturn a presidential appointment to protect its profits, it raises grave issues of democratic subversion. "When the nation's leading pharmaceutical trade group convenes a closed-door strategy meeting and openly discusses the need to 'go to The Hill' to push out a cabinet official, the issue is no longer health policy — it is democratic integrity," observed one analysis of the leaked memo. Indeed, BIO's April plotting came eerily close to condoning a coup in all but name — using lobbying might to negate the choice of the elected President and the Senate that confirmed RFK Jr. The memo even hinted at a timeline: it spoke of spending millions to ensure Kennedy would be out of office by September. That timeline is now upon us.

Manufacturing the Narrative: "RFK Jr. Must Step Down"

What began in secret within BIO soon burst into public view through a seemingly unrelated series of events. By late summer 2025, Americans were witnessing a chorus of authoritative voices — respected doctors, public officials, media outlets — all hammering a remarkably unified message: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is endangering the country and must go.While these calls appeared organic, each coming from a different angle, they in fact dovetailed perfectly with the insider strategy mapped out in BIO's memo. This was the outside game in motion, a narrative offensive to soften the ground for Kennedy's removal.

Consider the crescendo of public condemnations that unfolded in quick succession:

• August 2025: A newly formed "grassroots" organization of health professionals called Defend Public Health released a report outlining "horrifying" dangers under RFK Jr.'s HHS and explicitly called for him to be removed from his post.¹⁴ The group, comprised of 3,000 doctors and health workers, timed its report to pre-empt Kennedy's own "Make America Healthy Again" policy announcements, accusing his initiatives of "distracting the public"from real health issues. The message: public health experts find Kennedy unfit.

• Early September 2025: More than 1,000 HHS employees (past and present) took the extraordinary step of signing an open letter demanding Secretary Kennedy's resignation.¹⁵ "Our oath requires us to speak out... we demand Secretary Kennedy's resignation," the letter declares, accusing him of installing "ideologues" and endangering Americans by undermining vaccines.¹⁶ Addressed to Congress and co-signed by a half-dozen medical organizations, the letter (from a group styling itself "Save HHS") cites the chaos at the CDC — including the firing of its director — as justification for Kennedy's ouster.¹⁷ It is virtually unprecedented for such a number of federal health staff and veterans to so openly rebuke a sitting HHS Secretary. The fact that they went straight to Congress with their plea is telling — perfectly aligning with BIO's directive to lobby Capitol Hill for Kennedy's removal.

• September 9, 2025: In Washington, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), ranking member of the HELP Committee, hosted a dramatic press conference with the explicit theme "Vaccines Work". Sanders assembled dozens of clinicians and researchers in white lab coats behind him — a carefully crafted tableau of scientific authority — and proceeded to excoriate RFK Jr. for "sowing doubt about the efficacy of vaccines".¹⁸ Flanked by three prominent medical organization leaders, Sanders and his allies drove home two points: vaccines save lives, and Kennedy must resign. "We need an HHS Secretary who believes in science, not conspiracy theories...who listens to doctors," Sanders proclaimed, "Bottom line... Secretary Kennedy is not that person".¹⁹ AAI News, the outlet of the American Association of Immunologists, noted that Sanders' invited speakers all emphasized the proven success of vaccines and "the need for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign his position as Health and Human Services Secretary."²⁰ This press event was essentially a public shaming ritual, casting Kennedy as anathema to science. And notably, it put medical professionals — "white-coat messengers" — front and center, exactly as the BIO memo suggested doing via trusted surrogates.

• September 12, 2025: Sanders then took his campaign a step further — and overseas. In a move that raised eyebrows in Washington, Bernie Sanders published a blistering op-ed in the Guardian, the London-based international newspaper, headlined: "RFK Jr does not just reject vaccines. He rejects science — and must step down."²¹ In the column, Sanders catalogued Kennedy's alleged sins (from questioning germ theory to firing CDC officials) and concluded unequivocally: "Secretary Kennedy must step down." He wrote that America needs an HHS secretary who "will not engage in a war on science", pointedly saying Kennedy is "unfit to be our nation's leading public health official".²² It is difficult to overstate how unusual this was — a sitting U.S. senator using a prominent foreign newspaper to call for the ouster of a U.S. Cabinet official. Sanders' piece landed just days before Cassidy's HELP hearing, amplifying the drumbeat that Kennedy's tenure had to end. The op-ed gave an international megaphone to what had been brewing in D.C., ensuring that the narrative "RFK Jr. must go" dominated headlines on the eve of the Senate showdown.

• Also in September: Adding to the pile-on, nine former CDC directors — officials spanning administrations from both parties — authored a joint op-ed in The New York Times warning that Kennedy's leadership was "endangering every American's health" and was "unlike anything we had ever seen" at the agency.²³ And in late August, Sen. Sanders (along with other Democrats) formally urged a bipartisan investigation into Kennedy's firing of CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez,²⁴ calling it an abuse that demanded congressional oversight. In other words, by early September, the political and media establishment — left, right, and center — was uniformly echoing the message that RFK Jr. was a menace to public health and had to be removed. From respected medical journals to cable news, the narrative synchronization was striking.

Far from being spontaneous, these developments show a clear through-line back to BIO's spring strategy. In April, BIO strategists talked about leveraging "trusted messengers" and third-party validators to carry their message, rather than the industry speaking for itself. Sure enough, the public case against RFK Jr. was made primarily by doctors, scientists, and bipartisan officials — those with built-in credibility. The use of white coats at Sanders' presser was a literal stage prop to signify scientific authority. The 1,000-strong HHS staff letter and the ex-CDC directors' op-ed draped the call for resignation in the gravitas of career public servants and luminaries of epidemiology. These voices gave cover to politicians like Sanders (and soon, others in the Senate) to demand Kennedy's head in the name of "science" and "public health," rather than corporate interest. It's a textbook example of astroturfing: constructing a facade of grassroots consensus to achieve a predetermined outcome.

Even the framing of the narrative was prefigured by the BIO memo. Recall that BIO planned to emphasize "national security" and a "healthy workforce" to rally conservatives and centrists. Lo and behold, the rhetoric from Kennedy's critics hit those notes. Sanders and the medical spokespeople painted Kennedy's stance on vaccines as a threat to children's health and national well-being. One former CDC official testifying to Congress described Kennedy's approach as undermining America's "health security" in a time of pandemic risk. By focusing on children, national security, and the "war on science", the narrative architects tapped into broad societal values, exactly as the lobbyists anticipated.

And of course, the explicit call for resignation — the demand that RFK Jr. "step down" — was repeated in almost every statement. It's as if all these disparate actors had the same memo (in one case, literally: Sanders' Guardian op-ed and the HHS staff letter both used the phrase "Kennedy's actions are endangering lives" and directly demanded his resignation). Such uniformity is not coincidence; it's coordination.

The timing of this coordinated campaign becomes even more striking when viewed against RFK Jr.'s actual standing with the American public. At the very moment that pharmaceutical lobbyists, foreign operatives, and political figures are declaring him unfit for office, recent CNN polling reveals that Kennedy enjoys the highest net favorable rating of any Trump administration official.

While critics paint him as a dangerous outlier threatening public health, voters tell a different story - RFK Jr. sits at minus 7 in net favorability, significantly outperforming other key officials like Pete Hegseth (minus 14), JD Vance (minus 11), and Marco Rubio (minus 10). This disconnect between elite opinion and public sentiment underscores a central irony of the campaign against Kennedy: those demanding his ouster are operating against the grain of popular opinion, confirming that their coordinated assault has nothing to do with public will and everything to do with protecting entrenched pharmaceutical interests.

A Foreign Hand: The CCDH Connection and "White Ops" Tactics

One especially disturbing aspect of this campaign is the involvement of foreign influence networks in shaping the anti-RFK Jr. narrative. Evidence indicates that the outside push against Kennedy was not only industry-driven but also assisted by a UK-based dark money group known as the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — raising questions of foreign interference in U.S. domestic affairs.

CCDH, which fashions itself as a watchdog against "misinformation," had long targeted RFK Jr. due to his vaccine dissent. In fact, internal CCDH communications from January 2024 (months before Kennedy was appointed to HHS) show the group was planning "black ops" tactics against him. At a Jan. 8, 2024 meeting, CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed explicitly said: "RFK --- black ops being set up to look at RFK. [There's] nervousness about the impact of him on the election."²⁵ In intelligence parlance, "black ops" implies covert, often unethical operations. Here was a foreign activist declaring a covert campaign against an American figure — an extraordinary admission that foreshadowed what was to come.

What's more, CCDH's own strategic documents singled out The Guardian as a key outlet for disseminating their narratives.²⁶ The CCDH playbook literally identified the Guardian (a British paper) as the platform to place stories that further their aims. Fast forward to September 2025: Bernie Sanders chooses the Guardian to publish his op-ed lambasting RFK Jr., fulfilling CCDH's script to the letter. This is not a conspiracy theory — it's a documented linkage. The Guardian piece represents the culmination of a documented foreign influence operation that started with CCDH's planning and was executed through the very foreign media platform [the Guardian] explicitly named in those plans.²⁷ In other words, what looked like a Vermont senator simply sharing his views in an op-ed was, in effect, the final move in a UK-based campaign years in the making.

From 'Black Ops' to Bernie's Byline: The Documented Foreign Campaign Against RFK Jr.

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The fingerprints of this foreign influence go beyond just the choice of newspaper. CCDH's efforts were coordinated with British intelligence and censorship bureaus that actively trained U.S. officials in techniques to quash "anti-vaccine" speech.²⁸ A leaked UK government presentation from 2021 (obtained via FOIA) revealed how British agents advised the U.S. National Security Council on establishing "trusted flagger" programs to censor content deemed anti-vax. Imran Ahmed and CCDH were at the center of these transatlantic censorship collaborations. Instead of being scrutinized as unregistered foreign agents in the U.S., CCDH operatives received awards and funding — including pharmaceutical industry money. Indeed, CCDH's funding streams trace back to pharma-aligned foundations,²⁹ meaning the group that helped orchestrate the narrative against Kennedy was bankrolled by the very interests who stood to gain from his downfall. This is a pharmaceutical-information cartel operating across borders.

Seen in this light, the Sanders "Vaccines Work" presser and op-ed take on a darker significance. A U.S. senator — famed for railing against corporate power — was effectively weaponized as the mouthpiece for a foreign-directed propaganda campaign. Sanders likely believed he was simply defending science, but the talking points he echoed ("war on science," "conspiracy theories," "unfit for office") were precisely the narrative frames developed by CCDH and allied operatives in what some have called a "censorship-industrial complex." The very language of labeling RFK Jr. a purveyor of "misinformation" and "hate" was popularized by CCDH in their 2021-2023 reports. Now those labels were being used by Senators and the press to justify removing a public official. It is the realization of a strategy where information warfare replaces open debate: reputational destruction and manufactured consensus take the place of democratic deliberation.

To be clear, foreign involvement in and of itself does not invalidate criticisms of RFK Jr. But it casts a troubling shadow over the legitimacy of this campaign. American citizens did not spontaneously decide en masse that a cabinet secretary should be deposed for wrongthink; they were influenced by a narrative machine that had roots in London think tanks and pharma PR budgets. When the Guardian op-ed hit, it was the triumph of this influence operation — "not journalism, but the public face of a coup," as one commentator put it bluntly. A quiet coup, waged with press releases and op-eds instead of tanks, but a coup nonetheless — aimed at subverting the decisions of American voters and their elected government. The convergence of BIO's lobbyists, CCDH's foreign "black ops," and high-profile U.S. politicians forms a case study in 21st-century power brokering. This is how sovereignty gets eroded: not always through elections or laws, but through coordinated narrative pressure that makes it politically impossible for certain officials to govern.

All Roads Lead to the HELP Committee — and Sept. 17

With the stage thus set both in D.C. and in the court of public opinion, we arrive at the Senate HELP Committee hearing of September 17, 2025. This hearing now looms as the culmination of the inside-outside campaign against RFK Jr., the moment when the threads are pulled together. Inside that hearing room, the BIO lobby's inside game and the foreign-aligned outside narrative will finally meet — and if their coordination is not exposed, they may achieve their objective.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, the HELP Committee chair, will gavel in the session. Remember, Cassidy's emergence as a key player was anticipated in the BIO memo. Back in April, BIO saw Cassidy — a Republican doctor with a generally pro-vaccine stance — as an influential ally who could carry water for their agenda. True to form, Cassidy quickly positioned himself as a leading congressional critic of RFK Jr.'s CDC shake-up. In late August, Cassidy publicly called for a scheduled CDC vaccine advisory committee meeting to be postponed amid the leadership tumult — a move that aligned with concerns raised by vaccine advocates about Kennedy's new appointees. And when announcing the Sept. 17 hearing, Cassidy struck a careful tone: he praised President Trump and RFK Jr. for aiming for "radical transparency" at CDC, but insisted the Committee must ensure children's health is protected.³⁰ This dual messaging is telling — Cassidy is giving a nod to Kennedy's stated goals, even as he convenes a forum likely to undermine Kennedy's execution of them.

Crucially, the witness list for the hearing underscores how the outside narrative will be injected directly into the congressional record. Two former top CDC officials — Dr. Susan Monarez (the recently fired CDC Director) and Dr. Debra Houry (former CDC acting principal deputy) — are set to testify. Both have been outspoken about their alarm at Kennedy's actions. Monarez, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed after her firing, accused RFK Jr.'s HHS of demanding pre-approval of vaccine recommendations by a panel stacked with anti-vaccine voices.³¹ Houry, who resigned amid the turmoil, co-authored the New York Times piece that said Kennedy's behavior was "unacceptable" and dangerous. In short, the hearing witnesses will be delivering the same talking points found in Sanders' op-ed, the Save HHS letter, and other elements of the media campaign — but now under oath, with C-SPAN cameras rolling. We can expect testimony along the lines of: "Secretary Kennedy's actions have jeopardized public health and broken trust, and Congress must act to restore confidence." This will provide fresh soundbites to feed the news cycle (which, of course, will dutifully echo the "reckless disregard for science" narrative).³²

One cannot script it much better: the hearing's title about "Restoring Trust" in the CDC implies that trust has been destroyed by Kennedy's leadership; the witnesses will illustrate that claim with their personal accounts; and Senators from both parties will likely use their five-minute question slots to pile on. Already, in a Sept. 4 Senate Finance Committee hearing, multiple Democratic senators grilled RFK Jr. and openly called for his resignation, citing the CDC chaos and his vaccine stance.³³ That was a preview skirmish. The HELP hearing on Sept. 17 — dedicated solely to the CDC issue — will be the main event. It is designed to generate headlines and momentum, potentially forcing the White House to consider firing Kennedy or compelling RFK Jr. to voluntarily step aside.

In effect, September 17 is the endgame that BIO envisioned. The inside game (lobbying key Senators like Cassidy) and the outside game (molding public opinion via media and experts) converge in that single room. Cassidy holds the gavel that BIO wanted him to use, and the white-coat validators will be sitting at the witness table instead of behind Bernie Sanders at a podium. The entire affair has the feel of a show trial — not in the legal sense, but in the political sense — where the verdict (that RFK Jr. is guilty of incompetence and malfeasance) has been determined long before the hearing convenes. The operation's architects are counting on the spectacle to deal a final blow to Kennedy's credibility.

It's important to note that RFK Jr. himself will not be testifying on Sept. 17 (he wasn't invited to this hearing). This is quite deliberate: the goal is to condemn the accused without giving him a direct platform to defend himself. Kennedy did appear in early September at a different Senate hearing where he staunchly defended his decisions — insisting the CDC shake-up was "absolutely necessary" to fix a broken agency³⁴ and that he was removing those with "conflicts of interest and ... political agendas" at CDC.³⁵ He argued he was restoring evidence-based, transparent science, not undermining it.³⁶ But those arguments have largely been drowned out by the torrent of criticism. On Sept. 17, Kennedy's side of the story will be an afterthought, if present at all. Instead, the Cassidy-led hearing will effectively put "Science itself vs. RFK Jr." on trial, and with only one side represented, the outcome is preordained.

For more, please see Sayer’s Ji’s Substack