Press Releases
REVEALED: 41,000 Pages of Internal COVID-related Communications Between Trump Admin and All 50 States
Records reveal the Trump administration’s dealings with frontline local officials who mounted the initial response to the global pandemic
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, government watchdog Accountable.US released more than 41,000 pages of internal communications and other public records between the Trump administration and all 50 states documenting how local and state officials across the country grappled with the coronavirus pandemic in its early days.
The documents span a host of issues including Operation Warp Speed, testing capacity, the reopening of K-12 schools, PPE requests, SEC and Big 12 athletic programs, the meatpacking industry, university deliberations over operations, and more. Many of the documents include communications between the Trump administration and local or state officials.
“We can only recover from this public health crisis if we have a thorough accounting of the Trump administration’s repeated failures,” said Kyle Herrig, President of Accountable.US. “That is why we are making these documents available to the public. We can only find our way out of this tragedy by shining a light the incompetence and inaction that got us here.”
The new resource is intended to serve both national and local reporters, as well as other accountability and transparency advocates. It will be updated on an ongoing basis as Accountable.US receives additional responses to existing and future public records requests.
More than 200 requests in all 50 states have been filed thus far, resulting in the release of more than 41,000 pages of internal government records and communications.
Accountable.US previously launched its effort to collect records from all 50 states. The results received so far detail how the administration’s incompetence created challenges for officials on the ground already struggling to confront the crisis.
###