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In a letter last week to Council Chair Rita Heard Days, Dr. Faisal Khan, acting director of the Department of Public Health, said he was the target of racial slurs and was “shoulder-bumped� and pushed as he left council chambers after answering questions on the county’s new mask mandate.

But two videos circulating on social media Monday — one from KSDK (Channel 5) showing Khan as he leaves the chamber and one from a county security camera showing him walking through the lobby — did not show him making any physical contact with anyone.

And, at a council committee hearing held later Monday to discuss security and decorum at council meetings, law enforcement officers, including one who escorted Khan from the chamber to an elevator, said they didn’t see anyone touch him or hear any racial slurs.

By the end of the day, some of Khan’s critics were calling for his ouster.

“How do I ever trust anything Dr. Khan says ever again?� asked Councilman Tim Fitch, R-3rd District. “With him at the helm of the department, I’m not sure people can.�

Khan, who did not participate in the committee meeting Monday, later dismissed the questioning of his account as a transparent sham.

“I stand by my letter to the council chairperson,� he wrote in a text message to the Post-Dispatch. “This charade of an inquiry is designed only to impugn my character and credibility.�

A spokesman for County Executive Sam Page backed Khan, casting the criticism as the product of “political operatives� and “cherry-picked witnesses.� The spokesman, Doug Moore, also noted the administration’s separate investigation of the allegations is ongoing.

The comments capped a full day of back-and-forth in what could prove a turning point in Khan’s story. Once a side note to the battle over a new mask mandate, the fight over the health director’s letter has evolved into one of the hottest controversies in county government. And without further proof of Khan’s allegations, calls for his dismissal seem likely to only get louder.

The firestorm began last Wednesday when the county released Khan’s letter to Days roughly 24 hours after Khan took questions on a controversial new mask mandate from a council dead-set on ending it in a chamber full of opponents egging them on.

In his letter to Days, Khan acknowledged he gave a protester the middle finger on his way out, but said he did so only after being surrounded, shoved and berated with racial slurs. He accused Fitch of helping stoke the anger with a “dog-whistle� question. He also said Republican politicians in the audience heckled him, and Days had failed to do enough to stop them.

After it was released, Khan’s letter to Days elicited an outpouring of sympathy from supporters and garnered national attention from the likes of The Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC.

But those criticized in the letter quickly began firing back. Fitch dismissed a claim that his questions about Khan’s medical credentials — “Why are you called Dr. Khan? Are you a physician in the United States?� — were intended to emphasize Khan’s foreign heritage.

A spokesman for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark McCloskey called allegations his boss heckled Khan “fictitious.� And when asked about Khan’s claims that she failed to keep order in the meeting, Days, the council chair, noted that at one point in the meeting, Khan “threw a little threat� at her, saying he would leave unless she imposed decorum.

Other critics also claimed that television footage showing Khan approaching the chamber exit untouched proved he was lying about an assault, but they lacked any evidence about what happened outside.

That changed early Monday after Gregg Keller, a well-known Republican operative, shared via Twitter security camera footage showing Khan walking through the lobby without any physical altercation. Khan’s critics immediately seized on the footage as proof of deception. “The St. Louis County Dir of Health stoked racial tension based upon a complete lie,� Jane Dueker, a lobbyist and frequent critic of County Executive Sam Page, Khan’s boss.

Khan stood his ground Monday afternoon when asked about the videos during an appearance on St. Louis Public Radio.

“One segment of one video or whatever it may be does not capture my experience that evening,� he said on “St. Louis on the Air,� a program that airs on KWMU (90.7 FM).

Asked by program host, Sarah Fenske, if there was anyone with him who could corroborate his assertions, Khan said there was not.

“It was me, myself and I, thrust into the middle of this situation,� he said.

At the committee meeting Monday, council members heard from multiple law enforcement officers who were there, including Clayton police Capt. Alfred Thuet, who was standing at the back of the chamber at the July 27 council meeting, and security officer Michael Neal, who escorted Khan from the chamber to an elevator.

In response to questions from council members, both men said they did not see or hear what Khan said he experienced.

Thuet said he didn’t see anyone touch Khan on his way out of the chamber, consistent with the KSDK video.

Neal said that there were “a couple of people booing, heckling, telling him he was wrong� on the way out and after Khan gave them the middle finger, one woman came over to the elevator to tell him he’d been rude.

But he said he did not see anyone touch Khan, hear any racial epithets or note any other security threat.

If he had, Neal said, he would have intervened.

After hearing that, Fitch declared the letter’s credibility shot.

“It’s clearly one big lie,� he said.

Fitch, a frequent critic of the Page administration, added he’d moved on from blaming Khan and started blaming his boss. “Sam Page owns this,� Fitch said.

Moore had a different target for the blame.

“People are jumping to conclusions and political operatives are pushing back because Dr. Khan has made serious allegations,� he said. “That’s what you do, you tend to go after the victim. And Dr. Khan is a victim here.�

Khan also received support from a dozens of local physicians who wrote council members Monday urging them to stand up for the health director.

They noted that public health is struggling as workers leave the profession due to public harassment over COVID-19 restrictions and suggested the county could help turn it around.

"We are grateful for Dr. Khan’s leadership and commitment and saddened by the reality that engaging in scientific dialogue has made him a target," the letter read. "We implore you to investigate every threat of violence and every racist or xenophobic slur our public health servants face in the tireless execution of their jobs."