Jared Kushner blocked Biden's access to COVID-19 planning in the final days of the Trump era, former aide says
Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Concordia Summit
- Jared Kushner denied Biden's team access to COVID-19 plans in late 2020, a former aide said.
- Kushner said Biden's team should "absolutely not" be looped in, claimed Alyssa Farah Griffin.
- She made the claim in a newly released transcript of her interview with the Jan. 6 House panel.
Jared Kushner ordered that the incoming Biden administration be excluded from COVID-19 planning in the aftermath of the 2020 election, a former aide said.
Alyssa Farah Griffin made the claim in an interview with the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot, according to a newly released transcript.
Farah Griffin told the panel that Kushner shot down the a suggestion to include President Joe Biden's transition team in planning discussions after the election had been called for Biden, per the transcript.
At the time, Trump was angrily refusing to concede defeat, and hyping his baseless theory that the election had been stolen. Though he left office in January 2021, he continues to claim he won the 2020 vote.
In the transcript, Farah Griffin described former COVID Task Force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx asking whether they should be "looping" the incoming Biden transition in.
"Jared just said, 'Absolutely not,'" Farah Griffin told the panel. "And then we just moved on."
Farah Griffin's allegation, which was first reported by The Independent, is the first to directly put blame for the stonewalling on Kushner.
Biden officials complained at the time that the Trump administration was refusing them access to COVID-19 data in the weeks after the election.
Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told "Fox News Sunday" on November 15, 2020, that the Trump administration had stonewalled crucial COVID-19 data and plans.
Biden also said that week that Trump officials were harming the US by denying them access, per The New York Times.
"If we have to wait until January 20 to start that planning, it puts us behind," Biden told reporters, referring to the date of his inauguration. "More people may die if we don't coordinate."
In the same speech, Biden pressed the Trump administration to provide more details about the allocation of COVID-19 vaccinations. "The sooner we have access to the administration's distribution plan, the sooner this transition would be smoothly moved forward," Biden said, per Politico.
It comes from one of the dozens of witness transcripts released by the January 6 committee in the past week.
Kushner did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
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