Peter Navarro warned Trump about the country’s lack of supplies to fight Covid-19. He was ignored. Then he created his own patchwork system to obtain respirators, air filters, and drugs by doling out more than a billion taxpayer dollars without adequate oversight.
On Wednesday morning, The Washington Post reported that Navarro’s ad-hoc approach to Covid-19 preparedness is the subject of a congressional investigation.
Navarro, Trump’s trade advisor, spent much of March 2020 urging the White House to get ahead of the Covid-19 crisis, writing in a memo to Trump, “There is NO downside risk to taking swift actions as an insurance policy against what may be a very serious public health emergency. If the Covid-19 crisis quickly recedes, the only thing we will have been guilty of is prudence.”
Later that same month, Navarro said in an email, “My head is going to explode if this contract does not immediately get approved. This is a travesty.” He was referring to a potential deal with a Virginia-based company called Phlow to produce the raw ingredients used in pharmaceuticals. Navarro eventually helped steer $354 million to Phlow.
Navarro’s urgency is commendable, but it may have blinded him to problems with the suppliers he engaged. Phlow, for instance, had never manufactured pharmaceuticals, according to The Washington Post. They only existed on Navarro’s radar because of their public statements saying the U.S. was too dependent on Chinese manufacturing. Navarro is one of China’s biggest critics.
Similarly, Eastman Kodak received a $765 million loan to produce generic drugs to help fight Covid-19, but the company, best known for photography, had never done that type of work. The loan was eventually paused after being scrutinized by congressional committees.
Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), is the chair of the committee now investigating Navarro’s actions. After obtaining Navarro’s memos and emails, he wrote in a letter shared with The Washington Post:
“These documents provide further evidence that the Trump administration failed to react quickly to the coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020 despite urgent warnings, failed to implement a national strategy to alleviate critical supply shortages that were putting American lives at risk, and pursued a haphazard and ineffective approach to procurement in which senior White House officials steered contracts to particular companies without adequate diligence or competition.”
However, Rick Bright, the former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA) who filed a whistleblower complaint related to the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic, called Navarro “his ally in the White House.”
In the whistleblower complaint, Bright wrote that he “found Mr. Navarro to be deeply engaged in the issues confronting the United States in responding to the rapidly approaching pandemic.”
