Driven by politics, Trump administration officials repeatedly interfered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s efforts to provide the public with information about the COVID-19 pandemic, a report released Monday by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis found.

The Democratic-led panel charged that the Trump White House blocked the CDC from conveying accurate information to the public in the early months of the pandemic, installed political operatives who sought to downplay the risks of the coronavirus and retaliated against CDC scientists who contradicted the administration’s talking points.

“This prioritization of politics, contempt for science, and refusal to follow the advice of public health experts harmed the nation’s ability to respond effectively to the coronavirus crisis and put Americans at risk,” Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., said in a news release. “As we continue to recover from the coronavirus crisis, we must also continue to work to safeguard scientific integrity and restore the American people’s trust in our public health institutions.”

According to the report, a Feb. 25, 2020, CDC telebriefing that warned of the severe impact the virus could have on the U.S. “angered” then-President Donald Trump, leading to the White House taking control of COVID-19 communications from the agency. The Trump administration also blocked the CDC from holding telebriefings on critical public health issues for three months and restricted scientists from participating in interviews as the virus spread rapidly, the panel found.

Dr. Robert Redfield, then director of the CDC, told the subcommittee that during that time “none of our briefings were approved” despite the agency believing Americans “should have heard from the public health leaders,” according to the report, which is based on more than 2,100 pages of transcribed interviews with 13 current and former CDC officials. 

Kate Galatas, a senior CDC communications officer, told the subcommittee Michael Caputo, then the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services who was put in charge of approving coronavirus communications, used “bully-ish behavior” to make CDC personnel “feel threatened.” 

In a newly obtained email, Dr. Paul Alexander, a senior adviser to Caputo, called a forthcoming CDC report that he believed contradicted the administration’s messaging “garbage” and said it was designed “to hurt the public and the administration,” the report said. He called for mass firings at the CDC, adding, “This agency is working against the President daily!”

In an email to Spectrum News, Caputo said the report is partisan and its release was timed to try to hurt Republicans in next month’s midterm elections.

“This House Democrat report is just campaign season misinformation, which is no surprise to anyone,” he said. “I was not invited to interview for this garbage report. They also have all my emails including exculpatory messages which prove they are lying.”

Alexander did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The Trump administration also repeatedly sought to alter CDC and HHS press materials to downplay virus risks and attempt to redirect blame for the mishandling of the pandemic away from the administration, the subcommittee found. In one example, Alexander suggested changes to a CDC draft statement in May 2020 about the virus’ death toll to make it “more positive” by removing wording that was too “heavy,” the report said.

Administration officials also weakened public health guidance by overruling scientists’ recommendations involving religious communities, a meatpacking plant, polling locations, restaurants and bars, and virus testing, the report said.

The House panel accused the Trump administration of exploiting CDC’s Title 42 authority to close the southern border “under the guise of mitigating spread of the virus.” Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, told the panel the order “was not drafted by me or my team,” but was instead “handed to us.” Cetron said he remembered participating in calls about the order in which White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, an immigration hard-liner, spoke, the subcommittee said.

The Trump administration also blocked the CDC from mandating masks on public and commercial transportation ahead of the 2020-21 winter surge and from extending its No Sail Order for cruise ships through that winter, the report found. Cetron said the mask requirement “could have made a significant contribution” to saving lives, and Redfield told the subcommittee “human life was dependent” on the sailing moratorium. 

Meanwhile, Trump appointees attempted to change the publication process, manipulate content or block the dissemination of at least 19 of the CDC’s scientific reports on COVID-19, according to the subcommittee. They were successful in altering or delaying the release of at least five reports, the panel found. 

In May 2020, former HHS Secretary Alex Azar directed the CDC to change the CDC’s editorial process for its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report because he and other Trump aides were upset that one report “did not draw a politically advantageous conclusion desired by the officials,” the House panel said.

In a statement to The Washington Post, Azar said he “never pressured Dr. Redfield to modify the content of a single MMWR scientific article. Azar said he worked with Redfield to “protect the integrity” of the report’s peer-review process after a “defect” was identified, but he did not elaborate on what the “defect” was.

The panel’s report also accused the Trump administration of redirecting hundreds of millions of dollars from the CDC’s budget to launch “what amounted to a celebrity vanity campaign to ‘defeat despair and inspire hope’ about the state of the pandemic in the direct lead up to the November 2020 presidential election.”

The Trump administration’s politicization of the CDC and efforts by officials to discredit the integrity of the agency took a significant toll on the morale of the agency’s career scientists, the report added.  

The subcommittee’s report was its third on the Trump administration’s pandemic response. Earlier reports focused on how the White House pressured the Food and Drug Administration to authorize unproven COVID-19 treatments and how the administration’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election distracted from its work on the pandemic.

Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the subcommittee’s top Republican, blasted the panel as a "sham" that "never was about credible oversight—it was all about creating yet another forum to continue their [Democrats'] partisan vendetta of attacking President Trump."

Scalise accused Democrats of refusing to investigate the origins of COVID-19, alleged efforts by Dr. Anthony Fauci to suppress the theory that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, President Joe Biden's own handling of the pandemic, and the decisions by Democratic governors, including former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, to send infected patients back into nursing homes early in the pandemic. The subcommittee's Republican members released a memo detailing their own findings.

Note: This article was updated with Rep. Steve Scalise's statement.