Kushner ordered for Biden to be excluded from COVID planning
3 Min Read
The claim comes in the transcript of former Trump White House aide Alyssa Farah Griffin's interview with members of the Jan 6 committee.
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Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner
The January 6 committee witness claimed that Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, personally ordered that the Biden administration be excluded from Covid-19 planning in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
In the days and weeks following Trump's defeat, Joe Biden repeatedly chastised the administration for failing to engage in a formal transition process, in which new, incoming staff are brought up to speed by their outgoing counterparts.
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With the country gripped by the Covid-19 pandemic, he was particularly outraged that Trump's actions could result in more deaths.
"If we have to wait until January 20 to start that planning, it puts us behind," Biden said in Delaware, two weeks after election day. "If we don't work together, more people will die."
According to new transcripts from the House select committee investigating the January 6 incident, Kushner made the decision to bar the Biden administration from planning.
In her deposition, former Trump White House aide Alyssa Farah Griffin said post-election 2020, Dr. Deborah Birx asked if Biden transition team should be looped into COVID planning
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) December 29, 2022
Griffin told committee: Jared Kushner responded "Absolutely not"
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Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump administration official, told the committee that Deborah Birx, who led the White House's coronavirus task force under Trump, had asked if the Biden team should be included in plans to combat the pandemic in the days following the election day.
“Absolutely not,” Griffin said Kushner had told the meeting. She added, “And then we just moved on."
The transcript of Griffin's interview with committee members on January 6 is one of the hundreds of documents released a week after the committee issued its final report and referred four criminal charges against Trump to the Department of Justice.
A special prosecutor is already looking into various allegations against the former President.
Read next: US Rep. introduces bill to ban Trump from holding future office
Biden took office with the goal of delivering 100 million Covid vaccines in his first 100 days. Despite this, his team did not learn about the development of the vaccine stockpile until well into January 2021.
It finally gained access to Tiberius, the government's tracking software designed to keep track of vaccine distribution and administration, during the week of January 14, 2021.
At least 99 million people in the United States had contracted Covid, with over one million dying, by December 2022.
