In an announcement to POLITICO, Navarro known as the congressional investigation and the subpoena a “witch hunt.” “I shall be delivering a case of my new e-book ‘In Trump Time’ to members of the committee which explains why that is certainly a witch hunt,” he mentioned.
Navarro joined the administration initially of President Donald Trump’s time period as director of the Workplace of Commerce and Manufacturing Coverage. When the pandemic hit, Navarro grew to become an more and more influential member of the White Home crew responding to the virus, advising the president on provide shortages and strategies to maintain the American financial system operating throughout lockdowns. His testimony and private supplies would assist make clear how the Trump administration reacted to early warnings in regards to the virus, its potential financial penalties and the way it went about securing items resembling masks, robes and ventilators.
By prior doc requests, the committee discovered that Navarro saved a every day journal about his time within the White Home and used an encrypted private e mail account to speak with White Home personnel between February 2020 and January 2021.
In emails launched by the committee in September, Hatfill is proven warning Navarro about how little scientists understood about Covid-19 and pushed for “frank honesty.” “In fact we should not have a clue what number of are contaminated within the USA. We predict the primary wave to unfold within the U.S. inside the subsequent 7 days,” Hatfill mentioned. A number of days after Hatfill’s notice, Navarro penned a notice to Trump, who on the time was calling the virus a Democratic hoax, that acknowledged the administration’s actions on the pandemic have been “NOT quick sufficient.”
Regardless of these early warnings, Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), chair the choose panel, mentioned Navarro “pursued a haphazard and ineffective strategy to procurement,” in response to a notice he despatched committee members on Thursday.
Navarro helped lead the method of buying medical provides and medicines for the U.S. throughout 2020, pushing a lot of the accountability to states to safe their very own merchandise on the open market. For the aim of build up the federal authorities’s stockpiles, Navarro handed out contracts to firms with shut ties to the administration with out going by way of the conventional open-bidding course of and prioritized securing private protecting tools that was manufactured within the U.S. regardless of a scarcity of producing capability within the nation.
Throughout his time engaged on the pandemic response, Navarro additionally pushed Covid-19 insurance policies and science that have been inaccurate and sparred with high well being specialists within the administration.
In August of 2020, Navarro started pushing hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment for Covid-19 regardless of a scarcity of scientific proof. Within the months prior, the Meals and Drug Administration had issued a warning towards utilizing it outdoors of medical trials and revoked the emergency use authorization. However Navarro, typically citing unreliable medical research, continued to assert that the drug labored and bashed docs and scientists for not advocating for its use.
Maybe most notably, Navarro developed an adversarial relationship with Anthony Fauci, one of many leaders of the Covid-19 job power. Fauci typically publicly pushed again towards Navarro’s concepts for find out how to handle the unfold of the virus, particularly on the usage of hydroxychloroquine. Navarro overtly criticized Fauci on nationwide tv, erroneously claiming that he was liable for the emergence of Covid-19 due to monetary ties between the Nationwide Institutes of Well being and a lab in Wuhan, China.