Rob Wittman Lies Virginia

Rob Wittman Ran an Ad Blaming His Opponent for Babies Hurt in a Henrico NICU. A Fact Check Rated It False — the Hospital Put the Nurse Back to Work.

Rob Wittman's campaign ad claims prosecutor Shannon Taylor let a NICU nurse go back to work, leading to more injured babies. WWBT's fact check rated it false: the hospital returned her to work, and Taylor's prosecution began with the nurse's arrest months later.

MAGA Report Cards · Oct 16, 2026

Rob Wittman is in a close race to keep Virginia's 1st District seat. His campaign's answer has been an ad that uses a horrifying case — premature babies with broken bones in a hospital nursery — against his opponent.

The ad is false.

WWBT's 12 On Your Side fact-checked it this week and gave it a flat rating: false.

What the ad says

Wittman's opponent is Shannon Taylor, the Henrico County Commonwealth's Attorney — the county's top prosecutor. Her office prosecuted Erin Strotman, a nurse at Henrico Doctors' Hospital who hurt premature babies in its neonatal intensive care unit.

According to WWBT, the Wittman ad claims Taylor let the nurse go back to work, and that more babies were harmed as a result.

What actually happened

The timeline, as WWBT laid it out:

In the summer of 2023, four premature babies at Henrico Doctors' were found with unexplained fractures. After an internal investigation, the hospital put Strotman on administrative leave.
Child Protective Services investigated but couldn't identify a suspect at the time.
In late 2024, Henrico Doctors' Hospital let Strotman return to work. Within weeks, three more babies suffered broken bones and severe injuries.
Taylor's criminal case began with Strotman's arrest in January 2025.

In other words, the decision to put Strotman back on the unit was the hospital's, and Taylor's prosecution didn't begin until months later. WTVR reported that prosecutors also faulted the hospital for not reporting the 2023 injuries to the state agency that licenses nurses and for having no reliable system to track which nurses cared for which babies.

"With that explanation we will rate this ad as false," WWBT said.

How Taylor's case ended

The same station checked Taylor's response ad, which features a parent of one of the injured babies, and rated it true.

Strotman pleaded no contest to nine felony child-abuse counts, according to WTVR. Virginia's sentencing guidelines recommended no more than six months behind bars. A Henrico judge sentenced her to three years of active prison time — six times the guideline. Taylor also backed a new state law that toughens penalties for hospital officials who don't immediately report suspected child abuse.

So Wittman picked the one part of this case that a prosecutor didn't control and blamed it on the prosecutor.

Not his first stunt

When Wittman doesn't want to deal with a question, he has a track record of avoiding it. He once faked a phone call for 90 seconds rather than answer a question about Social Security. He bragged about voting 60 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, then wouldn't say whether he'd do it again.

The race is tight. A late September/early October poll cited by WWBT showed Taylor narrowly ahead.

What the fact check found

Rob Wittman's campaign is running an ad that blames Shannon Taylor for letting a NICU nurse return to work before more babies were hurt. WWBT rated it false: Henrico Doctors' Hospital returned the nurse to work in late 2024, and Taylor's prosecution — which ended in a sentence six times Virginia's guideline — began with the nurse's arrest in January 2025.