Department of Health and Human Services General Counsel Mike Stuart is no longer serving in that role, three agency sources familiar with the matter confirmed to NOTUS.
Stuart continues to work at the agency in an unknown capacity, the sources added.
Stuart’s apparent reassignment follows NOTUS reporting from last week that detailed how Stuart recently bought six-figures’ worth of stock in Corning Inc. — a major HHS contractor — while also trading stock shares of other government contractors.
The trade prompted a federal ethics official to state that Stuart was in “continued non-compliance” with an ethics agreement he signed last year, in which he pledged to “avoid any actual or apparent conflict of interest.”
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After publication of NOTUS’ report, Stuart’s HHS general counsel biography page disappeared from the agency’s website. Other references to Stuart as general counsel disappeared, too.
Stuart did not respond to messages left this week by phone and email.
Gretchen H. Weaver, HHS’s associate general counsel for ethics, declined to comment and referred questions to agency spokesperson Andrew Nixon. Nixon and HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard also declined to comment.
President Donald Trump tapped Stuart to lead HHS’s legal department in February 2025. The U.S. Senate confirmed Stuart in October.
In his role, Stuart oversaw legal affairs for an agency whose components include the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
His brief tenure quickly grew turbulent. Citing agency sources, Politico reported in February that Stuart would leave his job as general counsel for another role in the Trump administration.
But that didn’t happen, at least immediately. Nixon said at the time that Stuart would continue to serve as general counsel pending appointment to an undefined administration position “fighting fraud for hardworking taxpayers.”
Through March, April and most of May, HHS continued to list Stuart as its general counsel. Stuart personally listed “general counsel” as his title in signed reports he submitted to the Office of Government Ethics. Stuart’s official government X account, which he hasn’t posted on since March, still refers to him as HHS general counsel, as does his LinkedIn page.
HHS’s website, however, now lists Principal Deputy General Counsel Robert Foster as the agency’s “acting general counsel.”
In an interview last week with NOTUS, Stuart defended his personal stock-trading practices.
“I don’t use any information I would glean inappropriately. If I see something I like, I buy it,” Stuart told NOTUS, adding that he makes his own individual stock trades — without the assistance of a broker or financial adviser.
Stuart — a onetime U.S. attorney and state senator in West Virginia — said that he immediately sold his Corning stock after ethics officials questioned him.
“My whole career, I’ve never had even a whiff of an ethical issue,” he said. “I’m extra careful that I am completely in compliance.”
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