President Trump’s favorite dubious COVID doctor kicked the battle over his own credentials up a notch on Wednesday.
A lawyer for Scott Atlas, a member of the White House’s COVID-19 task force, threatened a defamation lawsuit against a group of 78 Stanford Medical School researchers and doctors who sent a letter last week that accused him of hawking “falsehoods and misrepresentations of science.”
But Atlas, who lacks experience with infectious disease treatment or research, didn’t turn to just any lawyer to make the threat.
He enlisted Marc Kasowitz, the longtime Trump attorney known for his beligerent email persona, who penned the missive, purportedly to every signatory of the letter.
“Accordingly, your letter, which you wrote and sent with no regard for the truth, maliciously defames Dr. Atlas,” the note reads. “We therefore demand that you immediately issue a press release withdrawing your letter and that you contact every media outlet worldwide that has reported on it to request an immediate correction of the record.”
As of this writing, TPM had received no such request from anyone associated with Stanford Medical School.
Michale Fischbach, a signatory to the letter, posted it on his Twitter account on Wednesday.
“I stand by everything we said,” he wrote.
Quick recap: We posted a public letter saying, basically: "Scott Atlas is giving the president bad advice. It will hurt people."
Today, we got this love note from @SWAtlasHoover.
I stand by everything we said.
More facts, more science. Less Kasowitz. pic.twitter.com/h7aY9yvp5b
— Michael Fischbach (@mfgrp) September 17, 2020
