Senate health committee ranking member Patty Murray (D-WA) on Monday called for Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar to demand the resignation of Michael Caputo, HHS assistant secretary of public affairs, after he reportedly claimed that a “resistance unit” of “seditious” government scientists at the CDC are working to undermine President Trump.
According to a New York Times report, Caputo claimed during a histrionic Facebook livestream on Sunday that anti-Trump government scientists at the CDC “haven’t gotten out of their sweatpants except for meetings at coffee shops” to plot “how they’re going to attack Donald Trump.”
“There are scientists who work for this government who do not want America to get well, not until after Joe Biden is president,” Caputo said, according to the Times, before going on to claim that his own life is at risk.
“You understand that they’re going to have to kill me, and unfortunately, I think that’s where this is going,” Caputo said, before launching into a dramatic rant about the “shadows on the ceiling in my apartment, there alone, shadows are so long,” according to the Times.
Caputo, a longtime vocal Trump loyalist who has no background in health care, told the Times that his family had been “continually threatened” since he joined the administration in April.
Responding to the Times’ report on Caputo’s remarks in a series of tweets, Murray urged Azar to demand Caputo’s resignation because as HHS secretary, Azar has a “basic responsibility to ensure our public health experts are able to do their jobs” especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Murray also tore into Azar for failing to “meet his basic responsibilities” by allowing Caputo to “continue serving in such an influential role,” citing reports over the weekend that surfaced of Caputo’s attempts to skew weekly bulletins from the CDC to fit Trump’s baseless assertions that the COVID-19 pandemic is subsiding.
If @SecAzar believes his responsibility is to the American public and not to President Trump, he should demand Michael A. Caputo’s resignation today. https://t.co/oFAdW8IjOH
— Senator Patty Murray (@PattyMurray) September 14, 2020
It's clear Sec. Azar can't meet his basic responsibilities while allowing Caputo, a yes-man for President Trump with no scientific expertise who publicly attacked CDC scientists & privately interfered with key CDC reports, to continue serving in such an influential role.
— Senator Patty Murray (@PattyMurray) September 14, 2020
Murray’s tweets came shortly after the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus announced an investigation into efforts by political appointees at HHS to “block the publication of accurate scientific reports” by the CDC amid the coronavirus crisis that has killed nearly 200,000 Americans thus far.
