Christopher Neuwirth filed a lawsuit today alleging he was fired from the state Health Department after refusing to provide test kits to family members of George Helmy, chief of staff to Governor Phil Murphy.

NJ.com has that story here.

Governor Phil Murphy said neither he nor State Police Colonel Pat Callahan would comment on the case.

But he did add:

“I literally don’t know where we would be in this state without Pat Callahan and George Helmy. They are heroes. I can’t even fathom what our state would look like without them and without Judy [Persichilli].”

According to the NJ.com story:

Neuwirth said he was abruptly fired after raising concerns within the department about the ethics of providing scarce specimen collection supplies to people connected to the governor.

At the time, New Jersey was testing only those with symptoms of COVID-19 because of a shortage of supplies and manpower. Hundreds of people were still driving to the public testing site at Bergen County College in Paramus in the middle of the night to sit in their cars for hours, hoping to qualify for one of the 500 tests that were available each day.

“Clearly, we cannot say no, or advise them that this test doesn’t matter, and it’s a complete waste of an AC’s (assistant commissioner’s) time to spend literally 6-hours collecting one specimen,” Neuwirth wrote in an email sent to the chief of staff of Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli as the alleged incident was playing out, the lawsuit said. “I’m sharing this with you simply for documentation and in case this continues to spiral out of control.”