Del Bigtree

Del Matthew Bigtree is an American television and film producer who is the CEO of the anti-vaccination group Informed Consent Action Network. He produced the film Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe, based on the discredited opinions of Andrew Wakefield, and alleges an unsubstantiated connection between vaccines and autism. He was communications director for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s 2024 presidential campaign and subsequently took a leading role in two groups associated with Kennedy's political career. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bigtree propagated conspiracy theories about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 vaccines and urged his audience to ignore the advice of health authorities.

Early career

Bigtree grew up in Boulder, Colorado, the son of Jack Groverland, a minister at the Unity of Boulder Church. He attended the Vancouver Film School and eventually worked in the television industry.

He briefly worked on Dr. Phil and was credited as a field producer for five episodes. After a gap of two years, he worked on the production team of the medical talk show The Doctors for which he produced 30 episodes over five years, although he has no medical training.

While he was working on The Doctors Bigtree learned of Andrew Wakefield's opposition to the MMR vaccine and his later-discredited claims that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) hid proof of a link between vaccines and autism. In October 2020, he speculated to an audience of anti-vaccination activists that the developing COVID-19 vaccines may cause diabetes, lupus, and other autoimmune diseases, although there was no evidence to support those claims. Bigtree spoke at the January 6, 2021, pro-Trump rally preceding the storming of the Capitol. He took this opportunity to attack federal health authorities and to contest the results of the 2020 United States presidential election. Other anti-vaccination activists were also present at this "Stop the Steal" rally, such as Ty and Charlene Bollinger. He was one of the main speakers at the Defeat the Mandates rally in Washington, D.C., on January 23, 2022, saying physicians and journalists should be convicted in Nuremberg-like trials.

By 2023, Bigtree was calling for the imprisonment of public health officials and executives of pharmaceutical companies for favoring vaccination against COVID-19 over the use of ineffective drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, alleging people have been murdered in order to further the agenda of sinister globalist interests.

Bigtree teamed up with Mikki Willis, the producer of the Plandemic conspiracy films, to exclusively stream the third Plandemic film on The Highwire.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s presidential campaign and MAHA

Bigtree provided fundraising assistance for the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 2024 presidential campaign in 2023. Among other activities, he participated to an online event bringing together several prominent anti-vaccination activists, such as Mikki Willis, Sayer Ji, Charles Eisenstein, Sherri Tenpenny and Joseph Mercola. Bigtree is the sole managing member of KFP Consulting LLC, a firm established in May 2023. In July, the Kennedy campaign had paid $13,500 to KFP; by the end of Kennedy's campaign in 2024, that amount had reached $350,000, even though Bigtree still took in a $234,000 paycheck from ICAN in 2023.

In early January 2024, Bigtree replaced Stefanie Spear as communications director for the campaign. With Kennedy dropping out of the presidential contest and endorsing Trump in late August 2024, Bigtree ended up leading two new organizations linked to both Trump including the Kennedy: MAHA Alliance, a political action committee, and the related nonprofit MAHA Action. "MAHA" refers to the slogan Make America Healthy Again, Kennedy's variation on the Trump campaign's Make America Great Again.

Filmography