House Oversight Committee Chair: Testimony Points To Political Interference At CDC

Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., who chairs the House’s panel on the coronavirus, warned that if the Department of Health and Human Services failed to produce all missing documents by Dec. 15, the panel “will have no choice but to issue subpoenas to compel production.”

Kevin Lamarque / AP

A new kerfuffle is unfolding in a House oversight committee with the Democratic chair accusing White House appointees of political meddling and attempting to influence the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention strategies on the coronavirus pandemic in a manner that paints the administration in a more favorable light.

In a Thursday letter to the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Rep. James Clyburn expressed “serious concern about what may be deliberate efforts by the Trump Administration to conceal and destroy evidence that senior political appointees interfered with career officials’ response to the coronavirus crisis” at the CDC.

Clyburn, a Democrat from South Carolina, chairs the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. In addition to HHS Secretary Alex Azar, the letter was also addressed to CDC Director Robert Redfield.