JOCE/Bauer-Griffin (left), Michael Zarrilli (right) / Getty Images
The White House Boots Dr. Oz and Former NFL Player Herschel Walker Off an Advisory Council
Both are running for the Senate, which precludes them from serving on presidential boards under a Biden administration policy.
The White House fired two members of the President's Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition who are running for Congress after they did not resign as requested by Wednesday evening. Both were appointed to the panel under President Trump.
A White House official said on background that former NFL player Herschel Walker and celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz were asked to resign because of a Biden administration policy prohibiting candidates for federal office from serving on presidential boards. Walker and Oz are running for the U.S. Senate in Georgia and Pennsylvania, respectively. Trump appointed Walker as co-chair and Oz as a member in May 2018 and then re-appointed them in December 2020 shortly before he left office.
Oz tweeted about the request on Wednesday, sharing a video with the letter asking him to resign.
“The doctor he should ask to resign is Dr. [Anthony] Fauci, for a multitude of obvious reasons...If President Biden wants to politicize health, he will have to fire me,” he said in the video.
The letter, dated March 23, asked him to submit his resignation to Gautam Raghavan, director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, by the end of the day: “Should we not receive your resignation, your position with the council will be terminated effective 6 p.m. tonight. Thank you.”
On Thursday, Walker tweeted that “President Biden is so scared about us beating Raphael Warnock that he has asked me to resign from my unpaid position on the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition. I’m not a quitter so you are going to have to fire me.”
Since Oz and Walker did not resign by the requested time on Wednesday the terminations are official, the White House official confirmed on Thursday.
Nick Schwellenbach, senior investigator at the Project on Government Oversight, said “it appears the Biden White House has a policy that goes above and beyond the Hatch Act,” which limits the political activities of federal employees. “That's not unheard of or necessarily inappropriate.”
On Wednesday, Biden announced he intends to nominate chef José Andrés and professional basketball player Elena Delle Donne to be co-chairs of the council.
This is not the first resistance to Trump-appointees leaving a commission, council or board.
Kellyanne Conway, former top Trump adviser, refused to resign from the Board of Visitors of the Air Force Academy in September 2021 as the Biden White House was looking to remove multiple members of the military academies’ advisory boards that had been appointed by Trump.