When Trump appointed Michael Caputo to the Dept. of Health and Human Services, the Roger Stone protégé and Putin agent handpicked Paul Alexander as his science adviser. Today, the two are celebrating another successful attempt to influence the CDC’s reporting.
They’ve been at this since May, just a few months after Caputo finished a documentary to push Russian propaganda for the purpose of interfering in the election and US foreign policy.
Before Caputo brought him to HHS, Alexander was an unpaid, part-time health professor at Canada’s McMaster University. He is not a physician.
From The Washington Post:
Then-science adviser Paul Alexander wrote to then-HHS public affairs chief Michael Caputo on Sept. 9, 2020, touting two examples of where he said officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had bowed to his pressure and changed language in their reports, according to an email obtained by the House’s select subcommittee on the coronavirus outbreak.
Pointing to one change — in which CDC leaders allegedly changed the opening sentence of a report about the spread of the virus among younger people after Alexander pressured them — Alexander wrote to Caputo, calling it a “small victory but a victory nonetheless and yippee!!!”
In the same email, Alexander touted another example of a change to a weekly report from the CDC that he said the agency made in response to his demands. The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR), which offer public updates on scientists’ findings, had been considered sacrosanct for decades and untouchable by political appointees in the past.
The Washington Post
External Sources
The Washington Post (Archived)
Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
