Who's Really Calling The Shots At HHS?

Former HHS official Gray Delany discusses the gatekeeper behind RFK Jr.

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Editor’s Note: This is an exclusive article written by former HHS official Gray Delany for Emerald Robinson’s subscribers on Substack.

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Dr. Steven Hatfill was fired abruptly this last weekend. I am told that he was asked to resign but refused, wanting to know the specific reason for his dismissal. When he attempted to access the building the next day, he learned that his key card had been cut off. No reason for his firing has been provided — and Secretary Kennedy never called Dr. Hatfill to explain the move apparently.

This is a disturbing new development for the MAHA movement because it was Hatfill (and his associate John Knox) driving the most substantive reforms at HHS. It was Knox and Hatfill who cut over $1 billion in corrupt biological weapons research from BARDA — including $500 million in contracts that funded the poisonous mRNA technology. It was Hatfill who was pushing for accountability for the approval of the toxic COVID jabs — and it was Hatfill who was pushing NIH to investigate the effect of those shots on women’s fertility.

The sudden firing of Dr. Hatfill mirrors my own experience at HHS as a MAHA loyalist.

Recently after my own departure from HHS, I attended a MAHA social event and was caught off guard at the attention I received. I thought it was odd — as there was nothing I had done to merit such praise. I quickly learned that it was because I had stood up to Secretary Kennedy’s “Deputy” Chief of Staff Stefanie Spear. One former HHS colleague told me in a hushed tone: “You were the first person at HHS to push back against her. Everyone in the building is scared shitless of her. Thank you for acting on our behalf.”

Who is Stefanie Spear? Most of Trump’s MAGA base would fail to pick her out of a lineup. Even most MAHA activists don’t know much about her, but they do know the number one rule in the world of RFK JR: you must go through Stefanie Spear to get to Bobby.

She’s the gatekeeper.

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Stefanie Spear has been a close confidant of RFK Jr. for over 20 years. In 2011, RFK Jr. lent his name and credibility to Spear’s tiny environmental organization EcoWatch, helping launch its online environmental news service. From this platform, Spear spoke of the dangers of global warming — including blaming global warming (without evidence) for Hurricane Sandy and other large storms. She also appeared on a Communist Party USA sponsored panel to rail against “Big Oil” and the Keystone Pipeline.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, she authored a piece called “10 Reasons Bernie Sanders is ‘Rockin’ in the Free World.” In the piece, she praised Sanders and Pope Francis for their views on climate change. Spear’s political philosophy is much closer to a communist than the economic nationalist. Indeed, Kennedy campaign staffers told me she detested President Trump — calling him a fascist and a threat to democracy.

So how did a radical environmental activist — with little political or management experience — come to exert such extraordinary influence over the Secretary of Health and Human Services and, thus, over HHS and its sub-agencies? And why would RFK Jr. trust this person to do that job during the second Trump administration?

I know better than most what happened to Dr. Hatfill because it happened to me. I proudly served Secretary Kennedy, and President Trump, as Director of MAHA Implementation at HHS before my time was cut short by Stefanie Spear.

I lasted 52 days.

My job was to ensure there was a MAHA angle to everything we did at HHS. I loved my job and felt I was making a real difference, so I was disappointed it ended so suddenly. But, truth be told, it was an inevitability because Stefanie Spear never wanted me there in the first place.

Early in my tenure, I texted RFK Jr. about the resignation of UVA’s president, Jim Ryan. Having grown up in Charlottesville, I’d intended nothing more than to share information seemingly of interest to us both — but for Spear it was a gross and impermissible violation of norms. I got a reprimand by text almost immediately: “Please reach out to me on things you think the Secretary should amplify as we have a system for this.”

Translation: I was no longer able to contact the Secretary directly — though I had done so many times in the past.

We all have our failings, of course, and Spear’s personal lack of charm would not be interesting to anyone (myself included) so long as the larger agenda is being served. After all, Washington DC is full of rude gatekeepers. The real question is whether Spear’s shortcomings, and her own bizarre relationship with the man she so slavishly serves, are undermining the Secretary — and the ambitious and vitally important MAHA agenda he represents.

Indeed, Stefanie Spear has ruthlessly sidelined even those people who fought side by side with Kennedy through much of his career against his Big Pharma and establishment foes. I expected Spear to have been close with these long-time activists but, for instance, when we were in Idaho with Health Freedom Defense Fund President Leslie Manookian (a good friend of the Secretary), Spear acted like she barely knew her. Spear’s relationship with her former colleagues at Children’s Health Defense was similarly cold. Her default attitude toward these MAHA activists was basically contempt.

During my brief period at HHS, I argued to Secretary Kennedy that (given the intensity of the opposition) what he desperately needed was a political warfare team to counter the forces tirelessly working against his agenda. After all, his enemies include: the uniparty, the military industrial complex, the pharmaceutical industry, chemical companies, processed food producers and Wall St.

My idea was for this team to map the opposition to Secretary Kennedy in Congress.

But it never came to pass. As Stefanie Spear told me, her strategy — and I use the term loosely — was to rely upon Kennedy’s “special bond” with the President to advance his agenda. (A bond so special that Trump proudly announced that he received a COVID booster in October 2025.) As those of us who have supported Trump since day one, and have been intimately involved in “Trump World” well know, Trump is who he is. He operates largely by whim, and there is never a master plan. He wants to be liked and he often listens to the last person he spoke with.

In fact, we’ve already seen the tragic consequences for MAHA of the Spear/RFK approach with the July 10^th approval of the Moderna SPIKEVAXX Covid vaccine for “high-risk” children. Then, just a couple weeks ago, President Trump rolled out the red carpet for Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, awarding Pfizer $70 billion, praising them for reshoring their poisonous drugs and vaccines, and telling them how great of a job they did during COVID, while Kennedy stood by. Never mind that RFK had previously called the company “a craven, venal, homicidal, morally bankrupt, criminal enterprise that has captured and corrupted its regulators.”

Another sign that Spear’s strategy doesn’t work: the FDA’s Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Center Vinnay Prasad briefly resigned over a sophisticated and coordinated political warfare campaign (likely driven by the pharmaceutical industry) to remove him from his position. I warned my colleagues at HHS, and outsiders like Steve Bannon, that we needed to develop a plan to counter this information campaign — but we left him hanging in the wind instead.

So the sudden firing of Hatfill is part of a disturbing trend. I hope that Stefanie Spear was not immature enough to remove him to settle a personal grievance — but I know she is perfectly capable of that childish blunder. What’s even more troubling is whether Dr. Hatfill’s firing is connected to a larger coup against RFK JR as outlined by Sayer Ji. I was contacted last week by an MSNBC reporter who is writing a profile on John Knox. Why would a reporter be assigned to write a story on Knox — who’s a little-known official — a few days before Hatfill is fired?

This smells like a coordinated operation to me.

I continue to hope that RFK Jr. is aware of all these matters — and that he directed the firing of Dr. Hatfill (a move I would have argued against) after careful consideration.

I fear, however, that something very careless and very stupid happened.

The MAHA movement deserves to know whether RFK Jr. is actually running HHS or whether Stefanie Spear is in charge. Or perhaps it’s Susie Wiles and Big Pharma behind the curtain?

We deserve to know.

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