White House political director Brian Jack and at least one former Trump adviser who attended President Donald Trump’s election night party at the White House, have tested positive for coronavirus — joining a growing list of others, multiple reports have said.
Two people familiar with Jack’s diagnosis told The New York Times on Wednesday that Jack had tested positive for the virus over the weekend.
In a separate report, Bloomberg News said that former Trump campaign aide Healy Baumgardner who appeared at the event as a guest of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, had also been infected with the virus.
The two new COVID-19 cases join three other infections reported earlier in the week, after Trump aides and allies attended festivities at the White House on election night, bringing the total number of COVID-19 cases that may have stemmed from the event to five so far.
Previously reported cases include, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, housing and urban development secretary, Ben Carson, and Trump campaign adviser, David Bossie, who is leading Trump’s legal crusade to contest election results based on false claims of fraud in several states.
The indoor gathering took place in the East Room, where hundreds gathered for several hours to watch the election results roll in and few wore masks according to the Times.
The news comes after an earlier White House event that Dr. Anthony Fauci a leading infectious-disease expert, dubbed a “superspreader” event, after President Trump and more than a dozen in attendance of a ceremony nominating now Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court tested positive for the coronavirus following the event.
