In the wake of a major controversy over roping in the estranged mother of the rival candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy said on Monday that he did not start this fight. He is ending this after he found himself in it and it wad his mother who got defamed first by the Democrats, Ramaswamy said. “I’ll tell you the advice I was raised in: You never start a fight, but if you find yourself in one, you finish it, and you have to stand for what is right and what is true,” Ramaswamy said. “They’ve attacked me. They’ve defamed my mother to media silence. It’s unbelievable. And yet, at the same time, they’ll trot out anything to attack a Republican.”
Who is Vivek Ramaswamy’s mother? How was she defamed?
Ramaswamy’s rival Amy Acton issued a press release on August 12, calling Ramaswamy a ‘billionaire scammer’ who used his mother to manipulate clinical trials in “pump and dump” scheme. Ramaswamy’s mother is Dr Geetha Ramaswamy who worked at Ramaswamy’s pharma company. In 2014, Ramaswamy founded Axovant, a pharma company. The Democrats alleged that he used the company to “buy the rights to an inauspicious Alzheimer’s drug” thar had repeatedly failed clinical trials. Ramaswamy was accused of hiring his mother who, Democrats said, “despite lacking relevant research experience, helped massage data from old clinical trials to make the drug appear more promising.”“In 2015, touting his mother’s reinterpretation of the data to potential investors and regulators, Ramaswamy led Axovant to a $1.4 billion initial public offering, the largest in biotech history at the time. He spent the ensuing two years promoting the drug intepirdine as a possible breakthrough for the millions of Americans who have Alzheimer’s disease,” Amy Acton’s press release said.“Ramaswamy used his mother’s dubious math to help raise $315 million during Axovant’s $1.4 billion IPO, figures the company reached on no revenue,” it added.The allegation against Ramaswamy that he became an overnight billionaire when he was only 29 by a “pump and dump” scheme is old and he called it “debunked” as many reports established that there was no evidence that Ramaswamy knowingly ran a deliberate scam with the Alzheimer’s drug. Her mother’s role was questioned but there was no official complaint against them. During the campaign, Ramaswamy referred to the issue as “debunked”.Ramaswamy’s campaign, in an eye-for-an-eye move, got Dr Amy Acton’s estranged mother to speak about her daughter. And Donna Arthur called her daughter a liar. “I love my daughter, but when I saw her lying about her opponent—and it’s not easy for a mother to say this—but Amy has a serious problem,” Arthur said in the advertisement for which Ramaswamy’s campaign spent $4 million.“She is a liar. She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She’s lied her entire life,” Arthur said.Amy Acton revealed her childhood trauma and how she was sexually abused by her stepfather, Cledith Arthur. Her mother did not side with her and eventually lost custody of Acton and her brother. The stepfather was charged with rape but he did not plead guilty and fled the state. He remained a fugitive until his death in 2004.
