In order to align guidance with the president’s public downplaying of the crisis, senior staff at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told investigators that Trump aides bullied staff and attempted to rewrite their reports.
According to the study, officials took “extraordinary steps to integrate political appointees into the publishing process and refute CDC’s scientific studies, including crafting op-eds and other public messaging intended to directly refute CDC’s results.”
For the 91-page report on the coronavirus outbreak issued by the House select panel, investigators spoke with a dozen current and former CDC personnel as well as senior administration figures.
The panel explains how Trump appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) attempted to monopolise the CDC’s weekly scientific magazine, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), by altering or preventing items they thought may be detrimental to Trump.
At least five times, Trump appointees were successful in their attempts to “change the substance, contradict, or postpone the distribution” of 18 MMWRs and a health alert.
According to the report, a CDC communications officer reported that an HHS employee who supports Trump had displayed “bully-like conduct” and made CDC officials “feel frightened.”
The CDC’s deputy director for infectious diseases, Jay Butler, said that after his comments were judged “too worrisome,” he was “not actually requested back to give telebriefings.”
The investigation conducted by the Select Subcommittee, led by Democrat Jim Clyburn, “has demonstrated that the previous administration engaged in an unprecedented campaign of political interference in the federal government’s pandemic response, which undermined public health to benefit the former president’s political goals.”
As today’s report demonstrates, President Trump and his closest advisers often assaulted CDC researchers, undermined the organization’s public health recommendations, and hid scientific findings in an effort to minimise the severity of the coronavirus.
An earlier article described the Trump administration’s attempt to prevent federal health authorities from discussing the epidemic in public.
Another explained its efforts to persuade the US Food and Drug Administration to renew the emergency permission for the anti-malaria medication hydroxychloroquine, which Trump was supporting despite the fact that it was unsuccessful in treating Covid-19.
If they take back control of the House or the Senate in November’s midterm elections, Republicans have threatened to launch their own investigation and have rejected the most recent report as political.
