Select Subcommittee Uncovers Trump White House’s Extreme Pressure Campaigns Targeting FDA’s Coronavirus Response
The report is the second to reveal the Select Subcommittee’s findings from its investigation into the Trump Administration’s political interference with the federal coronavirus response.

Washington, D.C. (August 24, 2022) – Today, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, chaired by Rep. James E. Clyburn, released a staff report revealing extensive new evidence of the Trump White House’s relentless pressure campaigns targeting the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) coronavirus response.

[OCS: Committee Chair Clyburn is a virulent anti-Trump antagonist and hyper-partisan. I would suggest that evidence is the wrong word to describe cherry-picked information designed to support an anti-Trump political narrative. As for the suggestion of “relentless pressure,” let us remember the panicked response to the spread of the original virus and the glacial slowness of the bureaucratic government response, including the CDC and FDA – both of which refused to release contemporary documents on the ongoing crisis.]

This staff report is the second installment in a series of reports documenting the Select Subcommittee’s findings from its investigation into the Trump Administration’s rampant political interference with the federal public health response to the coronavirus pandemic. The first installment chronicled the Trump White House’s embrace of a dangerous and discredited herd immunity via mass infection strategy well before vaccines were available, in an effort to prioritize then-President Trump’s political prospects at the expense of public health.

[OCS:  Instead of investigating the origins of the coronavirus, which appears to have been genetically engineered in a program funded by the government, and the perversion of scientific findings to support a political narrative designed by bureaucrats, they chose to focus on Donald Trump. Interesting because they did not and apparently cannot demonstrate where Donald Trump overrode the recommendations of his credentialed advisers. As for any discussion of herd immunity through mass infection, it was one scenario among many and deserved consideration given the rapidity of disease spread.]

Chairman Clyburn released the following statement about today’s report:

“The Select Subcommittee’s findings that Trump White House officials deliberately and repeatedly sought to bend FDA’s scientific work on coronavirus treatments and vaccines to the White House’s political will are yet another example of how the prior Administration prioritized politics over public health. As today’s report makes clear, senior Trump Administration officials undermined public health experts because they believed doing so would benefit the former president politically—plotting covertly with known conspiracy theorists to dangerously push a disproven coronavirus treatment, bullying FDA to change its vaccine guidance, and advocating for federal investigations into those who stood in their way. These assaults on our nation’s public health institutions undermined the nation’s coronavirus response—and are precisely why we must never again settle for leaders who prioritize politics over keeping Americans safe.

[OCS: There is little doubt that the leadership of the major public health agencies was politicized and behaved in a partisan manner that resisted the Trump Administration’s demand for urgency. Those that deviated from the partisan narrative of the public health bureaucrats were labeled as “conspiracy theorists” and censored or de-platformed in an attempt to control the politicized narrative. A narrative based, not on science, but leveraging the crisis for political advantage by those that did not support the Administration. There is no doubt in my mind that the leaders that need to be sanctioned and replaced are those who ignored scientific findings and opted for ineffective masking and economy-disrupting lockdowns. Likewise, disparaging findings from community practitioners who were equally educated, experienced, and possessed significant subject-matter knowledge.]

“Today’s report also contains extensive new evidence that Trump White House officials, including Peter Navarro, conducted government business using private email accounts. Unless these officials took steps to preserve these records, this conduct may have violated the Presidential Records Act—a conclusion the Department of Justice reached when it recently filed a lawsuit against Mr. Navarro based on evidence first uncovered by the Select Subcommittee last year. No one is above the law, no matter how high up in the White House they worked, and I applaud the Department of Justice for seeking to uphold the law and hold Mr. Navarro accountable.”

[OCS: Nobody is above the law except Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the cadre of bureaucrats who did the same thing and were never recommended for prosecution or escaped being held accountable. Again, note the attention given to the anti-Trump political aspect of an inquiry that has turned into a political attack mechanism.

In a statement emailed to CNN, Navarro said: “The partisan House Select Subcommittee report ‘wrongly’ perpetuates one of the most deadly lies of the pandemic, namely that the safe and powerful therapeutic to treat COVID, hydroxychloroquine, was somehow dangerous. This lie persists despite abundant scientific evidence now to the contrary.”]

Today’s staff report is entitled “A ‘Knife Fight’ with the FDA: The Trump White House’s Relentless Attacks on FDA’s Coronavirus Response,” and is available in full here.

[OCS: Note the inappropriate and derogatory nature of the report’s title, and you can see it reeks of blatant hypocrisy and politics.]

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Perhaps the most telling motivation for this worthless report can be found in the report’s last paragraph…

If not meaningfully addressed, this hyper-politicization of public health—and reflexive embrace of anti-scientific dogma pushed by those who have trusted President Trump, his top advisers, and his most prominent supporters—will continue to constrain the country’s ability to overcome public health threats, especially from a novel highly infectious disease that requires a concerted, collective response.

[OCS: Translation: Trump can never be trusted to hold any high office or the public’s health is at risk]