(WASHINGTON) -- The White House on Thursday pulled President Donald Trump's nomination of Dr. David Weldon to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, multiple sources told ABC News.
The withdrawal came just before Weldon was to appear for his confirmation hearing Thursday morning before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, where he was expected to be grilled on his past comments questioning vaccine safety. The room was all set for the hearing before the developments, which was first reported by Axios.
Weldon was pulled because he didn't have the votes to be confirmed, according to Weldon and two sources familiar with his nomination. This was the first time a CDC director nominee had to be Senate-confirmed, after Congress passed a law requiring it in 2022.
"Twelve hours before my scheduled confirmation hearing in The Senate, I received a phone call from an assistant at the White House informing me that my nomination to be Director of CDC was being withdrawn because there were not enough votes to get me confirmed," Weldon wrote in a lengthy four-page statement released Thursday afternoon.
The key support Weldon lost, he said, was Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, chair of the Senate HELP Committee and a longtime physician who has expressed reservations that the incoming administration would sow distrust in vaccinations.
Weldon said both Collins and Cassidy called him "anti-vax" and brought up his past comments suggesting vaccines are linked to autism, a claim debunked by numerous studies. While a Florida congressman, Weldon questioned the safety of the MMR vaccine and fought against using an ingredient called thimerosal in childhood vaccines.
"Clearly, big Pharma didn't want me in the CDC investigating any of this," Weldon wrote.
Weldon said that Collins' staff had turned "hostile" on him during a recent meeting and that the senator told Kennedy at a meeting earlier this week that she was considering voting no.
But multiple sources familiar with the meeting -- attended by staffers for multiple Republicans on the HELP committee -- refuted Weldon's assertion that Collins' staffers were "hostile." Rather, the sources told ABC News, they pressed the nominee on how he planned to address accusations that he held anti-vaccine views.
More concerning, one source said, was Weldon's apparent lack of preparation for the role of CDC director.
According to the source, Weldon said multiple times in the meeting that he did not have a vision for the role and indicated he would develop one only after he was confirmed and could speak to department leaders.
A person familiar with the matter also refuted Weldon's characterization that Cassidy made requests of the White House or told people how he was going to vote on the matter.
"Cassidy was not part of this decision," the person said.
Weldon, a physician who served in Congress from 1995 until 2009, had kept a relatively low profile for years until being nominated by Trump in November.
But his skepticism of established science around vaccines made him a popular pick among allies of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Weldon say Kennedy had told him he was "the perfect person for the job" and was "very upset" that his nomination was withdrawn. Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.
In 2007, Weldon co-authored a "vaccine safety bill" with former New York Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, which sought to give control over vaccine safety to an independent agency within HHS.
The bill, which stalled in a House subcommittee, would "provide the independence necessary to ensure that vaccine safety research is robust, unbiased, free from conflict of interest criticism, and broadly accepted by the public at large," Weldon said in a press release announcing the bill.
Weldon was being considered as CDC director amid a measles outbreak sweeping across the U.S.
Democrat Sen. Patty Murray, former chair of the committee Weldon was going to testify before, said that he raised concerning anti-vaccine sentiment during their private meeting.
"In our meeting last month, I was deeply disturbed to hear Dr. Weldon repeat debunked claims about vaccines -- it's dangerous to put someone in charge at CDC who believes the lie that our rigorously tested childhood vaccine schedule is somehow exposing kids to toxic levels of mercury or causing autism," Murray said in a statement.
"As we face one of the worst measles outbreaks in years thanks to President Trump, a vaccine skeptic who spent years spreading lies about safe and proven vaccines should never have even been under consideration to lead the foremost agency charged with protecting public health," Murray added.