The escalating feud between former White House adviser Calley Means and fired chief of staff Susie Wiles has taken a nastier turn, with Means publicly accusing Wiles of disloyalty to President Trump and deliberately leaking to the press to shift blame onto him.

Means, a close confidant of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who until recently served as a top White House health policy adviser, said in a lengthy post on X that Wiles was feeding stories to reporters so that the president, rather than Wiles herself, would take the blame. “I want everyone in the White House to know that Susie is executing a systematic strategy to throw President Trump under the bus,” he wrote.

Means singled out a reporter he described as Wiles’s “stenographer,” alleging that the journalist was publishing her leaks as though they came from Trump rather than Wiles. He also claimed that Wiles had been “captured” by Ballard Partners, the lobbying firm she previously worked with.

He reserved pointed criticism for the firm’s founder, Brian Ballard. According to Means, Ballard stated in writing that he had not lobbied Wiles or White House staff on glyphosate — a widely used herbicide — but the firm’s own disclosure tells a different story, showing Ballard personally lobbying the White House in the quarter in which a pertinent executive order was issued. Such disclosures are public quarterly filings, which means the discrepancy Means describes can be checked against a document rather than left to dueling recollections. “He is either lying or throwing President Trump under the bus,” Means wrote of Ballard. He further alleged that Ballard is running a public relations campaign to defend Wiles and argue “that President Trump is the sole reason the administration has caved to the tobacco and pesticide industries.”

Means also took aim at James Blair, the former deputy chief of staff, saying Blair has been angrily texting in no uncertain terms that “my problem is obviously with President Trump,” and sending quotes to the media holding the president to account for corporate capture in the administration’s first two years.

In his message to Wiles, Means wrote, “I’m not intimidated and you will not scare me,” before asking her to stop sending “emotional texts.” “This is not personal — this is civilizational,” he added. “If America doesn’t move on from the revolting version of politics you represent, our country will cease to exist.”

The former adviser called on current and past administration officials to go public, writing, “It is time to speak to the press about what you saw,” while adding that Stephen Miller and President Trump will “solve” it. Of the new, controversial chief of staff, he said: “Whatever side of the aisle we are on, we should pray for Miller’s to exorcise Susie’s culture of corruption from the admin and get us on a posture advocating for voters, not Ballard.”

Ballard Partners has dismissed Means’s claims as false and characterized its interactions with Wiles as “limited.” Blair, in a statement to The Wall Street Journal, called the talk of corruption “scurrilous, false, and defamatory” and is considering legal action. Wiles told CBS News that Trump has done more for the MAHA movement — Make America Healthy Again, the health agenda championed by Kennedy — than any other president.

The dispute burst into public view after Means appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and accused Wiles of putting the interests of corporate donors ahead of the administration’s healthy-eating platform, recalling her remark that she required “sugar money” to win the midterms. The feud, at its core, turns on a question that has animated the MAHA movement from the start: how much influence corporate lobbying should have over the government’s health decisions.

Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the Democrat expected to run the House Oversight Committee beginning in January, responded to Means’s claims that White House aides placed corporate interests ahead of Americans’ health and promised an investigation. The panel holds broad authority to investigate the executive branch, and the promised probe — together with Blair’s consideration of legal action — would give both sides formal venues to press or contest the allegations beyond social media.

This article is based on reporting first published by Alternet.