Former US President Donald Trump’s administration has barred health officials from providing accurate information about Covid-19 in an attempt to support its optimistic view of the pandemic, according to a congressional report published Monday.
Officials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told investigators that White House workers bullied staff and tried to rewrite their reports.
Officials took “unprecedented steps” to get Trump emissaries to participate in “publishing and refuting the CDC’s scientific reports, including writing opinion pieces and other public messages to directly counter the CDC’s findings,” the document reads.
Investigators interviewed a dozen current and past CDC officials, as well as senior government officials, to craft the 91-page document published by the United States House of Representatives Select Oversight Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.
The panel describes how Trump nominees at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) tried to take over the CDC’s weekly scientific journal, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Bulletin (MMWR), by editing or blocking articles they believed could be harmful to the former president.
Trump emissaries attempted to “alter the content, refute or delay publication” of 18 issues of the MMWR and a health alert, succeeding in doing so on at least five occasions.
The report cites a CDC communications official who complained that a Trump ally at HHS had resorted to “intimidating behavior.” This attitude made CDC employees “feel threatened.”
Jay Butler, deputy director of infectious diseases at the CDC, said he was asked not to report further after his remarks were deemed “too alarming” by the White House.
“The Select Subcommittee’s investigation showed 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 policy goals,” the panel chair said. , Democrat Jim Clyburn, in a statement.
“As today’s report shows, President Trump and his top aides have repeatedly attacked CDC scientists, compromised the agency’s public health guidance, and suppressed scientific reporting in an effort to downplay the severity of the disease. coronavirus,” he added.
Republicans rejected the report as biased and vowed to carry out their own investigation if they regain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the midterm legislative elections in November.
