EXCLUSIVE: COVID Crusader Calls On Paxton To Investigate The Texas Medical Board

Dr. Mary Talley Bowden turned the tables on the Texas Medical Board but will Paxton follow through?

Houston ENT Dr. Mary Talley Bowden has called on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to launch multiple investigations into the conduct of the Texas Medical Board.

"I am writing to formally request that your office investigate the Texas Medical Board (TMB) based on recent troubling events that suggest possible misuse of authority, selective enforcement, and retaliation against myself," the doctor said in a letter addressed directly to the Attorney General on December 13th.

Then the physician enumerated the unlikely circumstances shrouding her audit. "In October 2024, I was subjected to a “randomized audit” of her Continuing Medical Education (CME) records. While the TMB claims that the selection process is entirely random, the timing and circumstances surrounding my audit raise serious concerns. Internal TMB records obtained via Public Information Requests show that this audit batch was unusually small, comprising only 48 doctors, and it was the smallest audit conducted in six years. Moreover, I had never before been audited, and the audit came just nine days after I was questioned about my CME status during a deposition related to a legal case with the Board," she said.

Given the halted audits and reduced auditee pools, there was only roughly a .25%, one-quarter of one percent, chance Bowden would be audited this year, The Dallas Express previously reported.

"This sudden and highly irregular audit comes on the heels of an ongoing investigation into my medical practices, particularly my attempts to treat a Fort Worth sheriff’s deputy with ivermectin during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic," she continued. "The TMB's actions suggest the possibility of retaliation against me for my controversial stance on COVID-19 treatments and my public opposition to vaccine mandates, which could undermine the integrity of the audit process."

Bowden asked the State's top cop to investigate whether the audit had truly been random, if it had been influenced by her positions against COVID mandates or if it was part of a broader targeted action against COVID dissidents, and whether "the TMB’s selective enforcement and audit practices violate principles of fairness and due process."

Her second letter was addressed to Justin Gordon, Paxton's Open Records Division Chief. In it, she asked Gordon to "investigate the Texas Medical Board (TMB) for potential violations of the Texas Public Information Act (PIA)."

Section 552 of the Texas Code, also known as the Public Information Act, is a law that allows citizens to obtain most documents produced by any state executive agency, including the TMB.

The 2024 edition of the Texas Attorney General PIA handbook describes the law as anchored on the "basis in “the American constitutional form of representative government” and “the principle that government is the servant and not the master of the people.”"

When a citizen requests a document that a state agency believes should be withheld, the agency notifies the Attorney General and the citizens of their objections pursuant to 552. Then the citizen is given a chance to respond and the Attorney General makes a decision about whether the documents should be withheld.

In Bowden's case, TMB's counsel raised litigation and confidentiality exceptions as reasons for withholding documents related to how much an expert witness that the board is using against Bowden is being paid and how many times he has been used by the board for various cases.

Board counsel told Bowden they could not release the invoices for the expert witness because some of the documents contained his Social Security number and home address. Bowden asked the Board to redact the personal information and release the documents.

Redaction is not a novel action when agencies are releasing public records and the Texas Attorney General's website provides guidance to agencies on it. Subsequently, the matter was elevated to the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) for review

In TMB lawyer's briefs to the OAG, they only briefly broached the topic of redaction.

The agency lawyer argued that the entire document had to be withheld rather than redacted because "this particular expert’s address on their public profile with the Board and on their expert designation publicly filed at SOAH differs from the home address they provided in the representative documentation. Therefore, that portion of the documents should be deemed excepted from disclosure."

Then the counsel came to its conclusion on this point. "The Board respectfully requests the OAG rule that pursuant to Texas Government Code, Section 552.103 and 552.11765, the Board should withhold the requested information in total," the brief said.

Regarding the litigation exception, the counsel argued in part that the information should be withheld because they are expecting to fight about it with Bowden's lawyers in court. "The requested documents detail the time spent to review a confidential investigative file, the rate, the date the expert completed the service and the expert’s contact information to include his mailing address. The bona fides and experience of a designated expert in a contested case is generally something that parties challenge and hash out through discovery and motion practice," the lawyer wrote.

Completing this thought he told Gordon that "the entirety of the [requested] documents should be withheld."

Bowden responded to each of these arguments by noting that they were overbroad and alleging an abuse of the Public Information Act.

Previous open records requests have raised questions about the conduct of members of the Texas Medical Board. DX obtained emails between the Board members and staff that showed figures within the agency watching Bowden for years, starting just after she became nationally recognized for her opposition to COVID vaccine mandates at Houston Methodist Hospital.

DX also printed text messages between board members that appeared to show that some of the members who presided over Bowden's case harbored strong negative sentiments about her.

Ultimately, the medical board launched the case against Bowden in 2023 over her attempted treatment of an ailing sheriff's deputy with ivermectin in 2021. While ivermectin became a point of disagreement between pandemic-era physicians with regards to its efficacy against COVID, Bowden says she found the anti-parasitic drug to be effective when used early, in the several thousand COVID cases she treated.

Her pleadings for investigations are not the first time someone has called on the Attorney General to take action, DX reported.

Rep. Steve Toth (R-The Woodlands) posted a letter addressed to Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton on X in May.

“Dr. Bowden has been the victim of the reckless actions of the Texas Medical Board,” reads the social media post. “The TMB violated the basic tenets of her due process rights. Why? Because she dared to use FDA-approved ivermectin and saved 6,000 lives in the process. @GovAbbott and @KenPaxtonTX, we need your help to stop this injustice.”

He condemned the TMB for what he called its “non-stop harassment campaign against Mary Talley Bowden for her efforts to treat patients with an FDA-approved medication.”

He added that he believed the Board could be acting “in defiance” of SB 773, also known as the "Right to Try" law, which allows “access to certain investigational drugs, biological products, and devices used in clinical trials by patients with severe chronic diseases.”

Rep. Tony Tinderholt (R-Arlington) quickly joined Toth’s call, asking Abbott and Paxton to intervene and “investigate and hold … TMB accountable for their abuse of a medical professional who saved lives!”

Both the President of the Texas Medical Board, Sherrif Zaafran, and the Attorney General were contacted for comment in the production of this story. Neither party responded by the time of publication.

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