Biden has removed Sean Conley, the White House physician accused of misleading the public about Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis
- Biden has removed Dr. Sean Conley, Trump's appointed White House physician.
- Biden's longtime physician Dr. Kevin O'Connor is assuming the role instead.
- Conley was criticized for concealing Trump's true condition after he got COVID-19.
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President Joe Biden has removed Dr. Sean Conley, a Trump appointee, from his role as head of the White House Medical Unit, the Associated Press reported Monday.
Biden has named Dr. Kevin O'Connor as the chief White House physician instead.
O'Connor has been Biden's doctor since 2009, ABC News reported, and served while Biden was vice president between 2008 and 2016.
Conley is to start a teaching post at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Maryland, the AP said.
Conley, who was appointed by then-President Donald Trump to be the chief White House physician in April 2018, was later criticized for misleading the public about Trump's coronavirus diagnosis in October 2020.
Conley was criticized for a lack of transparency over Trump's condition, declining to say whether he had been given oxygen. He was also accused of exaggerating the president's good health at the time.
Conley also treated Trump with with hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug that experts say can have dangerous side effects.
The Food and Drug Administration initially approved the drug for emergency use on COVID-19 patients in March 2020, but rescinded that permission in June.
"When President Trump took the initial course of hydroxychloroquine, there was ample evidence already - and now there's even more - that there was no benefits, in fact, there was a lot of potential harm in cardiac arrhythmias or other adverse effects," Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious-disease specialist at University of California, San Francisco, previously told Insider.
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Two sources had told NBC News in May 2020 that some people in the White House Medical Unit thought that Conley was unfairly promoted without proper vetting.
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The top White House physician is often drawn from the military and O'Connor is a retired colonel with the US Army.
O'Connor was recently called into action after Biden tripped, fell, and fractured his foot while playing with one of his dogs at his Delaware home in December 2020.
Following attacks from Trump, who called Biden senile, the Biden campaign released an assessment from O'Connor on December 19 that described Biden as "fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency, to include those as chief executive, head of state and commander in chief."
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