Tag: Michael Caputo

Kremlin Assets Aided Pro-Trump 2020 Documentary Featuring Caputo, Nunes

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Russian government proxies “helped produce a documentary that aired on a US television network” as part of the Kremlin’s wide-ranging effort to influence the 2020 presidential election by falsely accusing President Joe Biden of corruption in Ukraine, the U.S. intelligence community revealed in a report Tuesday. 

The report does not explicitly identify the documentary or network in question. But the timeline and subject matter match The Ukraine Hoax: Impeachment, Biden Cash, and Mass Murder, which the pro-Trump One America News Network aired in late January 2020. Former Trump aide Michael Caputo hosted that one-hour special, which featured separate interviews with a former Ukrainian official later sanctioned by the federal government for his role in a Russian influence operation and with Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), at the time the chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

According to the report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized Russian influence operations aimed at undermining Biden’s campaign and supporting then-President Donald Trump during the 2020 election cycle. The report assesses that Russian intelligence services and their Ukraine-linked proxies — including “Russian influence agent” Konstantin Kilimnik and Ukrainian legislator Andriy Derkach — sought to use U.S. media outlets and prominent Americans to launder allegations of corrupt ties between Biden, his family, and Ukraine, and to falsely accuse Ukraine of interfering in the 2016 presidential election. Continue reading.

‘We want them infected’: Trump appointee demanded ‘herd immunity’ strategy, emails reveal

Then-HHS science adviser Paul Alexander called for millions of Americans to be infected as means of fighting Covid-19.

A top Trump appointee repeatedly urged top health officials to adopt a “herd immunity” approach to Covid-19 and allow millions of Americans to be infected by the virus, according to internal emails obtained by a House watchdog and shared with POLITICO.

“There is no other way, we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD,” then-science adviser Paul Alexander wrote on July 4 to his boss, Health and Human Services assistant secretary for public affairs Michael Caputo, and six other senior officials.

“Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc. have zero to little risk….so we use them to develop herd…we want them infected…” Alexander added. Continue reading.

E-mails detail effort to silence CDC and question its science

Experts were challenged when virus science didn’t align with rosy narrative. 

WASHINGTON – On June 30, as the coronavirus was cresting toward its summer peak, Dr. Paul Alexander, a new science adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services, composed a scathing two-page critique of an interview given by an experienced CDC scientist.

Dr. Anne Schuchat, a 32-year CDC veteran and its principal deputy director, had appealed to Americans to wear masks and warned of “too much virus across the country.” But Alexander, a part-time assistant professor of health research methods, appeared sure he understood the virus better.

“Her aim is to embarrass the president,” he wrote, commenting on Schuchat’s appeal in an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association. Continue reading.

‘It just created a public relations nightmare’: Inside Michael Caputo’s time at HHS

Installed by Trump himself, the bombastic spokesman seized control of Covid-19 messaging, with disastrous results.

After it became clear in mid-April that his administration’s response to Covid-19 was threatening his reelection, President Donald Trump considered a leadership shake-up within a health department whose rivalries and battles with the White House had hampered efforts to contain the virus.

Instead, Trump made a different move: He personally intervened to place his campaign aide Michael Caputo — a confidant of disgraced operative Roger Stone who had himself come under scrutiny for his ties to top Russian officials — as assistant Health and Human Services secretary for public affairs. Trump — not HHS Secretary Alex Azar — approached Caputo about the job, and Caputo has repeatedly emphasized that he works for the president, health officials told POLITICO.

Trump’s calculation seemed clear: If he couldn’t easily move aside the health professionals who led the agencies, he could dramatically alter what the public learned about their work on the coronavirus. Continue reading.

Trump Health Aide Pushes Bizarre Conspiracies and Warns of Armed Revolt

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Michael R. Caputo told a Facebook audience without evidence that left-wing hit squads were being trained for insurrection and accused C.D.C. scientists of “sedition.”

WASHINGTON — The top communications official at the powerful cabinet department in charge of combating the coronavirus made outlandish and false accusations on Sunday that career government scientists were engaging in “sedition” in their handling of the pandemic and that left-wing hit squads were preparing for armed insurrection after the election.

Michael R. Caputo, the assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of harboring a “resistance unit” determined to undermine President Trump, even if that opposition bolsters the Covid-19 death toll.

Mr. Caputo, who has faced intense criticism for leading efforts to warp C.D.C. weekly bulletins to fit Mr. Trump’s pandemic narrative, suggested that he personally could be in danger from opponents of the administration. “If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get,” he urged his followers. Continue reading.

Trump’s political henchmen are corrupting the administration to keep Americans in the dark

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September 12, 2020

Last night, at about 10:30, reporter Dan Diamond posted another blockbuster story in Politico. Political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services have been altering the weekly scientific reports issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) following the course of the coronavirus pandemic. They believe the reports are undermining Trump’s cheery pronouncements about the disease, and claim there is a “deep state” at the CDC determined to hurt the president.

Since 1981, career scientists have compiled weekly Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports to inform Americans about trends in disease. These records are not controversial. But in April, Trump passed over scientists to install one of his campaign advisers as assistant secretary of HHS for public affairs. Michael Caputo was a long-time Republican operative, an associate of Roger Stone who had worked for Russia’s Gasprom Media to improve the image of Vladimir Putin in the US.

Caputo promptly began trying to change the CDC reports on Covid. Although he has no background in medicine or science, he and his team claim that the scientists are exaggerating the dangers of Covid-19. An aide, Paul Alexander, wrote an email to CDC Director Robert Redfield calling for retroactive modifications to two reports, saying, “CDC to me appears to be writing hit pieces on the administration.” Alexander, recruited by Caputo from his position as an assistant professor of health research at Hamiliton’s McMaster University in Canada, has demanded that the CDC stop issuing reports until he is given the right to review them before publication and to make line edits. Continue reading.

We asked right-wing flack Michael Caputo why he’s in charge of Dr. Fauci’s schedule. His response: ‘What’s with the attitude?’

AlterNet logoLast week the Washington Post published a report titled “Fauci is sidelined by the White House as he steps up blunt talk on pandemic,” which revealed that President Trump had not sought the counsel of the government’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, in more than a month.

But as the Trump administration has strayed from the advice of many of its scientists and public health experts, the White House has moved to sideline Fauci, scuttled some of his planned TV appearances and largely kept him out of the Oval Office for more than a month even as coronavirus infections surge in large swaths of the country.

The 2,500-word report only briefly touches on the official who does that scuttling: a man named Michael Caputo, a 2016 Trump campaign aide who has been described as a conspiracy theorist with racist views and is closely allied with former Trump adviser Roger Stone. Continue reading.

New HHS spokesman Michael Caputo deleted racist tweets related to the coronavirus

WASHINGTON – Michael Caputo, the new Department of Health and Human Services spokesman, allegedly deleted xenophobic tweets before starting his new role last week.

Caputo, a Republican political operative who worked on President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, deleted nearly his entire Twitter feed before April 12, according to a report by CNN. He started his new position as assistant secretary for public affairs at HHS on April 15.

Many of the now-deleted tweets reviewed by CNN included xenophobic comments and were about coronavirus.  Continue reading.

Newly Appointed Trump Official Deleted Scores Of Conspiracy And Racist Tweets

Michael Caputo is a former adviser to Donald Trump’s 2015-2016 presidential campaign. He is now the brand new spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). A New York Republican operative, you may remember Caputo from his very worried and somber post-Mueller investigation interview in May of 2019. Since the Republican Party is unwilling to do anything to remedy the issue of our treasonously impeached and corrupt president, people like Caputo continue to rise.

CNN reports that Mr. Caputo has all kinds of conspiracy-laden, illogical, and bigoted ideas that we have come to expect from the Trump administration, the Tea Party, and their conservative base. In a series of tweets, which Caputo deleted—but exist forever because it’s the internet, stupid—Caputo has all kinds of truly terrifying ideas about the COVID-19 pandemic. According to CNN’s KFile, Caputo did away with his entire Twitter history of over 1,300 tweets and retweets. And none of these ideas are good or smart or remotely helpful to the public health in general.

Using an internet archive, some of Caputo’s statements have been saved here. So what sort of things does one of Trump’s “best people” think? On Feb. 28, 2020, Caputo had this to say about the novel coronavirus:

“Bottom line, a lot of Americans have to get sick and die for coronavirus to tank the Trump economy.
The Democrats’ only hope for 2020 victory is a sunk economy. They’re talking it down right now.
But their strategy only works if a lot of Americans get sick and die.”

Continue reading.