Jared Kushner personally ordered the Biden administration to be excluded from Covid-19 planning after Biden won the 2020 election, a Jan 6 committee witness told investigators. Via The Independent:
In the days and weeks after Joe Biden defeated Mr Trump, he frequently castigated the Trump administration for failing to enter a formal transition process, in which new, incoming staff are brought up to speed by their outgoing counterparts.
With the nation gripped by the Covid-19 pandemic, he was particularly angered that by slowing the transition process, Mr Trump’s actions could lead to more deaths.
Speaking in Delaware, two weeks after election day, Mr Biden said: “If we have to wait until Jan 20 to start that planning, it puts us behind. More people may die if we don’t coordinate.”
Now we know. According to new transcripts from the House Jan. 6th committee, that decision was Jared Kushner's.
A former Trump administration official, Alyssa Farah Griffin, told the committee that Dr Deborah Birx, who headed the White House’s coronavirus task force under Mr Trump, had in the days after election day, asked if the Biden team should be looped in to plans to combat the pandemic.
“Absolutely not,” Ms Griffin said Mr Kushner had told the meeting.
She added: “And then we just moved on”.
Althought Biden announced a plan to deliver 100 million Covid vaccines in his first 100 days, his team did not get access to information about the vaccine stockpile until January 2021.
