Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen speaks at a news conference outside the State Capitol in St. Paul on Thursday, June 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Steve Karnowski)

In audio which surfaced earlier this month, Scott Jensen, the presumptive GOP nominee for Minnesota governor, threatened to retaliate against the state’s Board of Medical Practice for investigating complaints against him.

“If I get elected in November, do you think their jobs are secure? I get to appoint them,” he said as an audience cheered.

Jensen made his remarks on June 13 at a meet-and-greet in Spicer. Minnesota Public Radio reported.

According to Jensen, this is the fifth time Minnesota’s Board of Medical Practice — tasked with protecting the public’s health and safety by assuring medical professionals are competent, ethical, and possess the correct skills and knowledge for their job — has “come after” him.

Jensen said at the event he had “almost quit caring” when he found out about the current investigation, now in its ninth month. But he told the audience, “We’ll have picks. I promise you guys, we’ll take care of that juggernaut.”

DFL Party Chairmen Ken Martin called Jensen’s remarks “despicable” and “disqualifying.”

“Anyone who repeatedly promises to use the governor’s office to jail or fire their personal enemies is unfit for public service,” Martin said. “The doctors who serve on the board investigating Scott Jensen are not anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists, which is what makes them different from him. Scott Jensen’s extremism and disturbing enthusiasm for political retaliation don’t belong anywhere near the governor’s office.”

While information regarding the complaints is not public, Jensen chose to detail the complaint in a Facebook video last December.

Reading from a letter, purportedly sent to him in October by the Board of Medical Practice, Jensen said the accusations included him not being vaccinated, politicizing public health, spreading misinformation, and promoting the use of Ivermectin.

As previously reported by Heartland Signal, Jensen’s COVID misinformation has played even better abroad than at home.

While speaking at a Faith & Freedom meeting at Minnesota’s Word of Life Church last September, Jensen bragged he’d become Minnesota’s “most investigated doctor” after falsely claiming during a Fox News Segment that doctors were being encouraged to diagnose patients with COVID-19 for money.

In April 2020, the Minnesota-based Star Tribune found the Kremlin-controlled RT news network (formerly Russia Today) amplified comments Jensen made to Fox News questioning New York City’s death toll.

RT was part of a wider disinformation campaign including Russian, Iranian and Chinese actors to sow doubt about the U.S. response to the pandemic while distracting from their own challenges, experts told the Star Tribune.

“Moscow’s making a big deal about, in America, they’re so afraid of the truth that a doctor who tells the truth gets in trouble,” Jensen told the church audience last September. “I thought, ‘Well, I never really expected any help from Mr. Putin, but I’m getting it.’”