In order to support the optimistic vision of the former American president, members of Donald Trump’s team when he was in the White House prevented health officials from providing certain information on Covid-19 , says a parliamentary report published on Monday 17 October.
Senior officials from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), the United States’ main federal health agency, have told investigators that members of the Trump administration intimidated staff and tried to rewrite their reports in order to align them with the statements of the president, who minimized the epidemic crisis.
Investigators interviewed a dozen former and current CDC officials, as well as senior government officials, for this 91-page report released by a congressional committee looking into the Covid-19 crisis. In it, the parliamentary panel describes how Health Department officials, appointed by Donald Trump, attempted to take control of the CDC’s weekly scientific journal, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reportby editing or censoring articles they considered harmful to the Republican president.
These officials sought to “alter the content, contradict or delay publication” of eighteen of these weekly reports, as well as a health alert, and this with success on five occasions, according to the parliamentary report.
“An unprecedented campaign of political interference”
The commission’s investigation “showed that the previous administration embarked on an unprecedented campaign of political interference in the federal government’s response to the pandemic, which undermined public health to the benefit of the political goals of the former president”said in a press release the chairman of the commission, the elected Democrat Jim Clyburn.
Previous reports have already highlighted attempts by the Trump administration to censor senior health officials or to pressure the United States Medicines Agency to reissue emergency authorization for hydroxychloroquine. This malaria drug was touted by Donald Trump as a cure for Covid-19, despite evidence to the contrary.
Republicans rejected the report’s findings on Monday, calling it partisan, and vowed to conduct their own investigation if they win back a majority in any house of Congress in November’s election.