House Report Shows Trump ‘Deliberately and Repeatedly’ Undermined Covid-19 Response

White House officials during the tenure of former President Donald Trump “deliberately and repeatedly” pressured the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to authorize unproven and potentially dangerous Covid-19 treatments, while working to derail the agency’s vaccine guidance ahead of the 2020 presidential election, a congressional report published Wednesday revealed.

The report, published by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, is the second installment in a series documenting what the panel calls the Trump administration’s “rampant political interference with the federal public health response” to a pandemic that has now killed more than 1,040,000 people in the United States.

The publication states that “the Trump administration’s nearly yearlong crusade against FDA resulted in damaging consequences for the coronavirus response: Morale inside the agency cratered, and public confidence in FDA’s scientific integrity was shaken in the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic.”

Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn told the committee that Peter Navarro, who headed the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, “exerted inappropriate pressure” on the FDA to renew the emergency use authorization for the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a Covid-19 treatment, even after it was shown to be ineffective and possibly dangerous.

Additionally, Trump officials “sought to generate outside support for hydroxychloroquine by engaging known extremists and prolific conspiracists like former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, Dr. Jerome Corsi, and the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.”

Furthermore, the report contains extensive new evidence that Trump officials, including Navarro, conducted government business using private email accounts—a potential violation of the Presidential Records Act.

Originally published at Commondreams.org.