A doctor who ran one of Maryland's biggest COVID treatment operations says he was criminally charged after publicly attacking the Biden administration's handling of the pandemic — a story about government power turned on a critic.

• Ron Elfenbein built the state's largest private COVID testing site and its largest supplier of monoclonal antibody treatments, treating over 200,000 patients.
• After going on Fox News and Newsmax to say the administration was "killing people" by restricting those treatments, he was indicted on health care fraud months later.
• The charges came down to five billing codes out of more than 100,000 patient visits — a dispute worth a few hundred dollars, carrying up to 50 years in prison.
• A federal judge appointed by Obama threw out the jury's guilty verdict in a 93-page opinion, saying no reasonable jury could have convicted; the American Medical Association, which writes the coding rules, filed a brief backing him.
• The Biden Justice Department appealed in its final days, and the case is still alive under Trump, with a new trial set for January.

Outlook: A second trial looms in January unless the Trump administration steps in and drops it, and the antibody treatments at the center of the fight are no longer available in the U.S.