Abbott Laboratories Federal Formula Safety Probe Quietly Shelved Following Massive Cash Injection To Donald Trump Fund

The US Justice Department has quietly walked away from a years-long criminal investigation into Abbott Laboratories over a contaminated baby formula plant, around 17 months after the company handed half a million dollars to Donald Trump's inauguration.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on 28 June 2026 that prosecutors had dropped the case even though some believed they had gathered enough evidence to charge the maker of Similac. Department leaders opted for civil clawbacks rather than criminal counts, a far softer landing for a firm tied to a national formula shortage in 2022 and to a recall of products from a plant where regulators found dangerous bacteria.

No public record shows that the donation purchased the outcome, yet the order of events has drawn pointed scrutiny from corporate accountability watchdogs.

A Criminal Inquiry Built On A Contaminated Michigan Plant

The roots of the case lie in early 2022, when inspectors examined Abbott Nutrition's plant in Sturgis, Michigan. The FDA investigation logged four infant illnesses, four hospitalisations and two deaths among babies who had consumed powdered formula from the facility, prompting a sweeping recall of Similac, Alimentum and EleCare. Regulators recorded that Cronobacter infection 'may have contributed to the cause of death for both patients,' language that stops well short of a proven link.

The evidence on causation was, in fact, mixed. FDA testing found the Cronobacter bacteria in five environmental samples at the plant, yet genetic sequencing did not match those strains to the samples taken from the sick infants, and product samples collected at the facility tested negative.

Abbott has maintained throughout that no unopened, distributed formula has ever tested positive for the bacteria that sickened the babies. The plant shutdown and recall still rippled outward, draining supply and forcing parents towards food banks, doctors' offices, and friends during the 2022 shortage.

Out of that wreckage grew a federal criminal inquiry, opened under the Biden administration, into how Abbott had managed the facility. Prosecutors weighed whether the company could be charged under a statute used before against businesses that sell contaminated food. The question hanging over the department was whether to press that theory in court.

How The Justice Department Let The Case Drop

According to the Journal's account, the answer from the top was no. Some line prosecutors, and even some supervisors, reportedly judged it a strong case, but senior decision-makers closed the criminal probe and turned instead to a lighter remedy, clawing back money Abbott had earned selling formula through federally funded nutrition programmes.

The newspaper framed the climbdown as one example of a wider retreat by the Trump-era Justice Department from aggressive corporate prosecution.

The shift happened without any public announcement, which is part of why the resolution landed as a surprise. Reuters relayed the Journal's reporting the same week and noted that the Justice Department and Abbott had not immediately responded to requests for comment.

For a company that had faced the prospect of criminal liability, a quiet pivot to civil penalties marked a substantial reprieve.

The Donations And Connections Fuelling Suspicion

The political backdrop is what has turned a regulatory story into a corruption question. The progressive outlet More Perfect Union was among the first to tie the closed probe directly to Abbott's inauguration cheque, casting the decision as a favour repaid. A Public Citizen analysis published in April 2025 listed Abbott among 58 corporations facing federal investigations or enforcement that together gave $50 million to Trump's inauguration, with Abbott's own contribution recorded at £379,000 ($500,000).

The group's researcher, Rick Claypool, argued that such gifts may act as 'down payments for pardons or decisions to drop enforcement actions,' though he framed that as a concern rather than a proven exchange.

Abbott's ties to the administration reach further than the cheque. The company's former chief executive, Miles White, who left in 2021, chaired Doug Burgum's presidential campaign and gave at least £1.5 million ($2 million) to a political action committee backing that run, according to OpenSecrets data. Burgum now serves as Trump's Secretary of the Interior. Those connections are circumstantial, and White's personal giving is separate from Abbott's corporate accounts, but they have sharpened the suspicions of the administration's critics.

Abbott declined to comment on its political donations. The dropped criminal probe also leaves the company far from free of legal jeopardy, since it is still fighting a separate civil verdict of £375 million ($495 million) in Missouri over a different product, its specialised formula for premature infants, a matter unrelated to the Sturgis contamination. An Abbott spokesperson has said the firm stands by 'the safety of our preterm infant nutrition products.' The narrative of a donation followed by a vanished prosecution belongs, for now, to the outlets and watchdogs drawing the line, not to any court or investigator who has found one.

What stays undisputed is the sequence of events, even as the question of whether one thing caused the other remains unanswered.