An infant drinks from a baby bottle (Vyacheslav Argenberg / Wikimedia Commons)
By Lucy Dean Stockton, More Perfect Union
The Department of Justice just dismissed a years-long criminal probe investigating potentially life-threatening contamination at an Abbott Laboratories facility, an Illinois-based health care and technology company that donated more than $500,000 to President Donald Trump’s inauguration funds and has extensive financial connections to one of Trump’s top cabinet members.
The DOJ this week confirmed that it had dismissed its investigation into potential negligence from Abbott Laboratories, which manufactures popular formula brand Similac, over its mismanagement of a baby formula production facility that potentially endangered infants’ lives — and may be connected to two infant deaths.
The probe, which began under the Biden administration, followed an incident in which regulators discovered potentially deadly bacteria on equipment in the facility in February 2022. The facility resumed production in June of that year, but tight industry concentration strained the baby formula market, contributing to a national shortage in 2022, which forced families to seek assistance from food banks, friends and doctor’s offices.
According to reporting from The Wall Street Journal, some DOJ prosecutors believed they had evidence to criminally charge the company, but the agency’s top decision-makers closed the probe instead, now opting to pursue financial clawbacks and civil penalties.
Abbott faced another legal battle in January 2023, when Biden’s Federal Trade Commission began formally investigating the company for collusion in the baby formula market. The agency alleged that Abbott may have colluded in bidding for contracts with the USDA’s Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) food assistance program. The company is also facing legal penalties of nearly $500 million in a Missouri lawsuit related to its formula for premature infants.
Abbott previously won a $750 million federal contract in 2020 to deliver 150 million COVID-19 rapid test kits, and won another under Biden. In his first term, Trump’s administration also fought on behalf of the baby formula industry, arguing against international resolutions that would have limited companies’ ability to advertise and sell baby formula abroad, threatening Abbott’s part in a $70 billion global industry. Last May, Trump publicly celebrated Abbott’s $500 million investment in its Illinois and Texas manufacturing facilities as a step towards reviving American drug manufacturing.
In the 2024 election, Abbott’s former CEO Miles White — who stepped down from the company in 2021 after a 38-year tenure — chaired former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum’s presidential campaign. White, Abbott employees and their families gave $4 million in donations to the Best Of America PAC, which was created to support Burgum’s presidential run. Of that, White gave at least $2 million. In February 2025, Burgum was confirmed as Trump’s Secretary of the Interior.
Abbott also donated at least $35,000 to Trump’s inaugural event in 2016, and White publicly expressed he was “optimistic” about Trump’s presidency.
No unopened, distributed Abbott baby formula products have tested positive for the bacteria that sickened the babies, an Abbott spokesperson told More Perfect Union in an email. Abbott declined to comment on the company’s political donations.
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