Whistleblower: White House ignored warnings

Complaint details failure to prepare, untested drugs pushed and contracts given to cronies

The Trump administration failed to prepare for the onslaught of the coronavirus, then sought a quick fix by trying to rush an unproven drug to patients, a senior government scientist has alleged in a whistleblower complaint.

Dr Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, alleges he was reassigned to a lesser role because he resisted political pressure to allow widespread use of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug pushed by President Donald Trump.

He said the Trump administration wanted to “flood” hot spots in New York and New Jersey with the drug.

“I witnessed government leadership rushing blindly into a potentially dangerous situation by bringing in a non-FDA approved chloroquine from Pakistan and India, from facilities that had never been approved by the FDA,” Bright said yesterday.

“Their eagerness to push blindly forward without sufficient data to put this drug into the hands of Americans was alarming to me and my fellow scientists.”

Bright filed the complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, a government agency that investigates retaliation against federal employees who uncover problems. He wants his job back and a full investigation.

Bright’s complaint comes as the Trump administration faces criticism over its response to the pandemic, including testing and supplies of ventilators, masks and other equipment to stem the spread. There have been nearly 1.2 million confirmed cases in the United States and more than 71,000 deaths.

Bright said his superiors repeatedly rejected his warnings that the virus would spread in the US, missing an early opportunity to stock up on protective masks for first responders.

Representative Anna Eshoo, chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health,

said she planned to hold a hearing into his complaint next week, and Bright’s lawyers said he would testify.

In his complaint, Bright said he “encountered resistance from HHS leadership, including Secretary [Alex] Azar, who appeared intent on downplaying this catastrophic event.”

During a February 23 meeting, Azar, as well as Bright’s boss, Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Robert Kadlec, “responded with surprise at [Bright’s] dire predictions and urgency, and asserted that the United States would be able to contain the virus and keep it out”, the whistleblower complaint said.

Bright said White House trade adviser Peter Navarro was a rare exception among administration officials. He described working with Navarro to break a bureaucratic logjam and set up military transport from Italy for swabs needed in the US.

Navarro was the author of several urgent memos to top officials raising alarms even as Trump publicly assured Americans that the outbreak was under control.

Bright’s allegation that he was removed over his resistance to widespread use of the malaria drug was already public, but his whistleblower complaint added details from emails and internal communications while bringing to light his early attempts to acquire N95 respirator masks, which he said were ignored by superiors.

In late January, Bright said he was contacted by an official of a leading mask manufacturer about ramping up production. It was estimated that 3.5 billion masks were needed, while the national stockpile had about 300 million.

The complaint said that when Bright tried to press the issue with superiors at HHS, he was ignored or rebuffed. “HHS publicly represented not only that Covid-19 was not an imminent threat, but also that HHS already had all the masks it would need,” the complaint said.

As the epidemic spread in the US, Bright alleges political appointees at HHS tried to promote hydroxychloroquine “as a panacea”. The officials “demanded that New York and New Jersey be ‘ flooded’ with these drugs, which had not been inspected by the FDA”.

Last month, the US Food and Drug Administration warned doctors against prescribing the drug except in hospitals and research studies because of potential fatal heart side effects among coronavirus patients taking hydroxychloroquine or the related drug chloroquine.

On January 20, according to the complaint, the WHO held an emergency call that was attended by many HHS officials, and WHO officials advised that “the outbreak is a big problem”.

Top officials also pressured Bright to steer contracts to a client of a lobbyist, he reported.

“Time after time I was pressured to ignore or dismiss expert scientific recommendations and instead to award lucrative contracts based on political connections,” Bright said in the call with reporters.

“In other words, I was pressured to let politics and cronyism drive decisions over the opinions of the best scientists we have in government.”