Calley Means, who recently stepped down as a senior adviser to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., claimed on Monday that people close to former White House chief of staff Susie Wiles have warned him she “has the capacity to inflict physical harm” on him. Means made the remark on X after accusing Wiles and the lobbying firm Ballard Partners of working against President Trump’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.
Means, who resigned his post last month, has argued that Wiles and Ballard Partners helped derail several MAHA policy goals. Among his claims is that Wiles promoted an executive order declaring glyphosate-based herbicides — which Means believes may be linked to cancer — critical to national security.
“People who know Susie well have warned me that she has the capacity to inflict physical harm,” Means wrote.
In a separate post, he called Wiles “ruthless,” adding, “Anyone who went around her, she sought to destroy.”
Wiles, 69, was replaced by Trump aide Stephen Miller as White House chief of staff last week. She was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year. It is not clear what Means meant by his reference to physical harm.
In a separate interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Means alleged Wiles fostered a “demonic” culture inside the White House, including by blocking an investigation into sugar content in children’s diets because, he claimed, she needed “money from the sugar people to win the midterms.”
A spokesperson for Wiles rejected the accusations in a statement to Axios: “Calley Means’ accusations are outrageous, defamatory, and provably false. Susie has dedicated her career to fighting for President Trump and the American people, and will not allow these lies to go unanswered.”
Other Officials Push Back
Means also said he has received “unhinged threats” from former White House official James Blair, whom he has accused of opposing MAHA efforts to ban fruit-flavored vapes. Means claimed Blair argued that pro-vaping policies were “a core midterm issue” for Republicans.
Blair denied this on X: “You can’t find a single candidate I have ever told to talk about vape policy, because the idea I argued for it as a core midterm issue is a complete and total lie.”
Ballard Partners founder Brian Ballard also issued a statement disputing Means’ characterizations. “I do not ordinarily respond to commentary about our firm. I am making an exception today because Calley Means has made specific claims about Ballard Partners that are false, and the record should be corrected,” Ballard said.
Ballard said no one at his firm advocated to Wiles or White House staff for authorizing fruit-flavored vapes, saying their work instead targeted “illegal, unregulated vapes from China, some of which have been found laced with fentanyl.” He also said no one at the firm lobbied or communicated with Wiles or anyone in the West Wing regarding the glyphosate executive order, and described the firm’s interactions with Wiles as chief of staff as “limited” and “the exception, not the rule.”
Ballard Partners also circulated a May podcast interview Means gave on the firm’s own podcast, which took place months after Trump signed the glyphosate order.
Robert Malone, a former member of a CDC vaccine advisory panel under Kennedy, noted on X that Means had not mentioned that Kennedy’s own daughter-in-law, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, works as a lobbyist at Ballard Partners. “Means wants Americans to scrutinize the family connections of powerful government officials. Fair enough,” Malone wrote. “But why does that scrutiny apparently stop at Kennedy’s own family?”
