The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention instructed a staffer to delete an email from a Trump political appointee looking to interfere with the agency’s scientific reports, according to congressional testimony from an agency official. Charlotte Kent—the editor of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report—told Congress she received an email from Department of Health and Human Services employee Paul Alexander. “Nothing to go out unless I read and agree with the findings how the CDC wrote it and I tweak it to ensure it is fair and balanced and ‘complete,’” Alexander wrote in an earlier Aug. 8 email, as reported by Politico. Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), the chair of the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, said Thursday that destroying federal records, such as this email, was unethical and “potentially illegal,” according to Politico.
