Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield stated in his testimony to House investigators that the CDC’s role during the early days of the COVID pandemic was shut down by the Trump administration, reported by The Washington Post. Redfield noted the CDC could not get approval from the Health and Human Services Department to hold its own news briefings and that the agency should be its own independent entity.
“I’ve said this publicly before, this is one of my great disappointments. That HHS basically took over total clearance of briefings by CDC,” Redfield testified before the House panel tasked with investigating the federal government’s response to the pandemic.
“I think it impacts trust of the American public on the agency,” Redfield said. “[CDC] didn’t really quite know how to function when every decision they wanted to make had to be reviewed by multiple different parties, and multiple different this and multiple different that. I think it would be much more easy if the public health agency was independent.”
In addition to that revelation, the House select subcommittee also released evidence noting how Trump administration officials involved themselves in CDC guidelines involving faith-based communities–particularly between then administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Paul Ray and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, who offered edits.
“The new CDC draft includes a significant amount of new content, much of which seems to raise religious liberty concerns. In the attached, I have proposed several passages for deletion to address those concerns. … If these edits are acceptable to you all, we could tell CDC, as early in the morning as possible, that they are free to publish contingent on striking the offensive passages.”
“Paul — Thanks for adding our colleagues who have been central to this effort. Thanks, also, for holding firm against the newest round of mission creep,” Conway replied.
Chairman James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said it’s clear the public message around the COVID-19 was obstructed, thus the confusing and sometimes contradictory language given.
“As today’s new evidence also makes clear, Trump White House officials worked under the direction of the former president to purposefully undercut public health officials’ recommendations and muzzle their ability to communicate clearly to the American public,” Clyburn said in a statement.