Lawmaker: CDC director ordered email over virus deleted

WASHINGTON — The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allegedly ordered the destruction of an email written by a top Trump administration health official who was seeking changes in a scientific report on the coronavirus’s risk to children, the head of a congressional oversight subcommittee charged Thursday.

In a letter to CDC Director Robert Redfield and his superior, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., expressed “my 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 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

The report was not altered or withdrawn. But Clyburn, chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, cited an interview three days ago with the editor of the CDC’s most authoritative publication, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Charlotte Kent, editor-in-chief of that report, told investigators that while on vacation in August, she received instructions to delete the email written by Paul Alexander, a senior adviser to Azar. When Kent went to find the email, it had already been deleted, she said. When she inquired about who had ordered its deletion, she was told that the instructions had come from Redfield.

“I heard from [REDACTED], who, as I understood, heard from Dr. [Michael F.] Iademarco, who heard from Dr. Redfield to delete it,” Kent told investigators, according to a transcript. Iademarco is director of the Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology and Laboratory Services at the CDC.

In a statement Thursday, Redfield said, “Regarding the email in question, I instructed CDC staff to ignore Dr. Alexander’s comments. As I testified before Congress, I am fully committed to maintaining the independence of the MMWR, and I stand by that statement.”