Simone Gold (photo, right) is a Stanford-educated doctor, lawyer, purveyor of false Covid-19 conspiracy theories and quack cures, and insurrectionist.
She’ll probably be pissed at me for not putting “Dr.” in front of her name. (When she pleaded guilty, “Never one to let people forget about her elite educational background, she informed the judge, ‘I never go by Ms. Gold. I always go by Dr. Gold.'” See story here.)
But “Dr.” is a title of respect, and she deserves none. In addition to pushing bad health advice, she’s guilty of crimes against our democracy.
Anyway, plead guilty she did. Gone was the defiance, the lying (e.g., claiming she only “followed the crowd” into the Capitol rotunda), and her b.s. about “exercising free speech,” replaced by tears. (It’s striking how many of them cry when they face a judge.)
In exchange, she gets to have a misdemeanor instead of a felony on her record. That’s strategic; a felony conviction would cost her attorney license, and maybe her M.D. license, too. But she potentially still can get jail time when she’s sentence on June 16, 2022.
Gold, a former ER physician, is an activist heading a group calling itself “America’s Frontline Doctors,” which is a misnomer. It has nothing to do with health care, other than tangentially. Wikipedia describes it (here) as “an American right-wing political organization [a]ffiliated with Tea Party Patriots … [that] is opposed to measures intended to control the COVID-19 pandemic … [and] promotes falsehoods about the COVID-19 pandemic and COVID-19 vaccines.”
What a piece of work. How did someone so smart — she graduated from college at age 19 — go so completely off the rails? Maybe because her father forced her into medicine (see her bio here) when, as is now obvious, she really wanted to play around in unhinged politics.
Photo below: Simone Gold (with bullhorn) urging Capitol rioters to storm the building
