These officials sought to “alter the contents, contradict or delay the publication” of 18 of these weekly reports, as well as a health alert.
Members of Donald Trump’s team when he was in the White House prevented health officials from providing certain information on the Covid-19, in order to go in the direction of the optimistic vision of the former American president , says a parliamentary report published on Monday 17 October.
Senior officials from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), the main federal health agency in the United States, 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.
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In it, the parliamentary panel describes how officials from the Department of Health, appointed by Donald Trump, tried to take control of the CDC’s weekly scientific journal, the “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report“, by editing or censoring articles that they considered harmful to the Republican president.
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Alteration of content
These officials sought toalter the contents, contradict or delay the publication” of 18 of these weekly reports, as well as a health alert, and this successfully on five occasions, according to the parliamentary report.
The commission’s investigationshowed 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“, adds in a press release the chairman of the commission, the elected Democrat Jim Clyburn.
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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 anti-malaria drug was touted by Donald Trump as a cure for Covid-19, despite evidence to the contrary.
Republicans dismissed 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.