A news report revealed that an unnamed 79-year-old man received Eli Lilly's unapproved weight-loss drug retatrutide through the FDA's compassionate use program. Democratic lawmakers questioned whether the patient is President Donald Trump, who turned 80 on June 14 and weighed 238 pounds at his May…
A report that an unnamed 79-year-old man received an unapproved weight-loss drug through a special Food and Drug Administration program has led Democratic lawmakers to question whether the patient is President Donald Trump. The White House has denied that the president was the recipient, but the speculation continues.
The news article, first published by STAT on June 23, described how a single 79-year-old man was the only person receiving retatrutide, an experimental weight-loss drug from Eli Lilly, through the FDA's compassionate use program. Three anonymous sources familiar with the matter told STAT that the request for the drug “drew the interest of top health officials, suggesting the person receiving this drug was well connected.” The sources requested anonymity due to fear of reprisals.
The program, also called expanded access, is intended for patients with serious or immediately life-threatening conditions who cannot participate in clinical trials. STAT noted that it was unusual for just one person to receive a weight-loss drug through compassionate use. In interviews, 18 bioethics experts, obesity clinicians, and current and former government health officials told STAT that the application was uncommon because obesity is so widespread. Drugmakers typically establish compassionate use programs for large groups of patients, not individuals.
President Trump turned 80 years old on June 14. According to STAT, the person in question was 79 when the drug was requested in April. At his May physical this year, Trump weighed 238 pounds, which was 14 pounds more than his weight at a checkup in April 2025. During a January interview with the New York Times, Trump said he had never taken a weight-loss drug but added that he “probably should.”
The identity of the 79-year-old patient remains unknown. STAT reported that because of the patient’s demographics and the unusual nature of the application, the news outlet asked the White House whether the anonymous man was Trump. The White House did not provide a clear answer at first but did so after the story was published.
On June 23, STAT reporter Lizzy Lawrence posted on X that she had asked the White House if the patient was President Trump, who had turned 80 a week earlier. She wrote that she did not get a direct answer. In response that same day, White House Senior Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai posted: “Because this has to be spelled out for @LizzyLaw , who has proven herself to be an unserious gossip columnist, this application was not for the President.”
White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung also commented, telling Lawrence that she “certainly made a name for yourself by completely embarrassing yourself at the expense of being thirsty for clicks and peddling falsehoods.”
Despite these denials, Democratic lawmakers continued to question whether the president was the recipient. The news article prompted Rep. Ted Lieu of California and Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire to raise the issue.
Speaking during a press conference on June 24, Lieu stated: “What we know is there’s a report saying that one person in America got this special, new drug. It was a 79-year-old person who’s very high-profile, and this drug can only be given to someone under the compassionate use provision, meaning you do that if someone basically has a terminal illness. So we need to know did Donald Trump get this special drug from Eli Lilly, and did he get it under that provision? And if he did, why is that the case? The White House needs to come clean and tell the American people about Donald Trump’s health.”
On the same day, Senator Hassan wrote a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. She expressed deep concern about new reporting that suggested “you may be bending the rules of a federal program, and exerting improper political pressure, in order to provide a well-connected individual with free access to an exclusive prescription drug.” Like Lieu, Hassan questioned whether the individual was the president. In her letter, she wrote that “reporting clearly suggests that this individual was the President or someone closely connected to him.”
Reporters reached out to the offices of Lieu and Hassan to ask why they continued to question whether Trump received the drug even after the White House denied it. Sahil Mehrotra, a spokesperson for Hassan, responded by pointing to work done by fact-checking organizations that have catalogued the president’s statements over time. “This President and his Administration have repeatedly misled and lied to the American people, as catalogued by Factcheck.org,” Mehrotra said. “They also have a long record of corruption and self-dealing to benefit the Administration’s friends and family.” He added that granting access to the drug in this case “is clearly outside the norm.” Mehrotra explained that Hassan is asking Kennedy “to provide answers about whether the President, another Administration official, or one of the President’s donors or friends is receiving this special access to weight-loss medication as families struggle to pay for prescription drugs. The Administration has thus far refused to respond.”
Lieu’s office did not respond to inquiries.
The FDA uses the term “compassionate use” as an alternative name for the expanded access program. According to the agency, it is “a potential pathway for a patient with a serious or immediately life-threatening disease or condition to gain access to an investigational medical product.” This program is different from Right to Try, a law that Trump signed in 2018. Right to Try allows terminally ill patients to obtain experimental drugs from manufacturers without FDA approval. As fact-checkers have reported, there is no evidence for Trump’s repeated claim that Right to Try has “saved thousands of lives.”
The compassionate use program has a high approval rate. For fiscal years 2019 through 2023, the FDA approved 99% of approximately 18,000 single-patient expanded access Investigational New Drug requests, according to FDA data.
In this case, the drug in question is retatrutide. It has shown effectiveness in clinical trials for weight loss. In May, Eli Lilly reported results from a phase 3 randomized controlled trial. Participants who took the once-a-week injectable drug for 80 weeks lost between 19% and 28.3% of their body weight, on average, depending on the dosage level. The placebo group lost 2.2% of body weight on average. A total of 2,339 people were enrolled in that trial. The manufacturer also reported “meaningful improvements” in subsets of patients with knee osteoarthritis pain or moderate-to-severe obstructive sleep apnea. Another trial evaluated the drug’s efficacy and safety in treating patients with type 2 diabetes. Eli Lilly notes that the drug is currently only available to those participating in its clinical trials.
However, one person has been given retatrutide through the FDA’s expanded access program, according to STAT. The news outlet reported that Ranganath Muniyappa, a senior clinician at the National Institutes of Health, requested retatrutide under the program “to treat the patient for refractory obesity with obstructive sleep apnea and pulmonary hypertension, a severe version of the disease. Pulmonary hypertension is high blood pressure in the lungs, which can be life-threatening.” As STAT noted, Trump’s latest medical exam memo does not mention either of those conditions.
It is not unprecedented for a high-profile individual to receive an unapproved drug through the FDA program. In 2020, Trump received an experimental antibody treatment after testing positive for COVID-19.
Peptides referenced: Retatrutide.
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