House COVID-19 panel questioning Deborah Birx

Deborah Birx, the Trump administration’s coronavirus response coordinator, is being questioned today by a key House panel investigating the nation’s pandemic response, a person familiar with the process confirmed.

The questioning, first reported by Politico, comes amid the House select committee on the coronavirus’s investigation into political interference in the pandemic response from the Trump administration.

Birx was one of former President Trump’s top health advisers. Since leaving the administration, she has expressed regret for how she handled her role as head of the White House coronavirus task force and has accused former administration officials of censoring her warnings about the severity of the pandemic.

Birx drew criticism last year for praising Trump’s understanding of the data on the pandemic despite his tendency to spread misinformation, as well as her failure to push back in spring of last year when Trump made false claims about people injecting disinfectant as a means to treat the virus.

Birx has argued that if the Trump administration had acted more decisively, tens of thousands of deaths could have been prevented. To date, more than 710,000 Americans have died from COVID-19.

She retired from government when President Biden took office and has since joined the George W. Bush Institute as a fellow.