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(LifeSiteNews) — White House COVID czar Dr. Anthony Fauci has long been the target for conservative ire regarding the federal government’s heavy-handed COVID-19 response, but it appears his scarf-wearing sidekick deserves equal opprobrium.
Dr. Deborah Birx, who served as the White House’s Coronavirus Response Coordinator during the Trump administration, quietly admitted in a recent book that she engaged in “strategic sleight-of-hand” and “subterfuge” to circumvent the White House’s more limited COVID-19 guidance, instead recommending crippling lockdowns that annihilated civil liberties, kneecapped the economy, and shuttered churches.
In her book Silent Invasion, which purports to tell the “Untold Story of the Trump Administration,” Birx said that immediately after convincing the Trump administration “to implement our version of the two-week shutdown,” she “was trying to figure out how to extend it.”
Birx also admitted to devising ways to circumvent the more moderate COVID-19 advice from the White House, including a “write, submit, revise, hide, resubmit” routine for pandemic reports that even she described as “strategic sleight-of-hand” and “subterfuge.”
SABOTAGE? – Dr. Birx Admits to Revising and HIDING Info From Trump’s COVID Team, While Altering CDC Guidelines Without Approval. https://t.co/voq2SF7DwC
— The National Pulse – RSS Feed (@TheNatPulseRSS) July 17, 2022
In addition to restructuring official reports to slip recommendations past Trump administration approval, Birx said she also deliberately derailed COVID guidance promoted by Trump’s COVID adviser, Dr. Scott Atlas, who had fought lockdowns and promoted a more targeted approach to COVID-19 testing.
RELATED: ‘Lockdowns destroying families’: Trump’s new COVID adviser irks Fauci, CDC
“Immediately after the Atlas-influenced revised CDC testing guidance went up in late August, I contacted [CDC Director Robert] Redfield,” Birx wrote. “He confirmed my suspicions: he had disagreed with the guidance, but had felt pressured by HHS and the White House to post it.”
Noting that many CDC staffers had gotten on board with the idea of “prioritizing symptomatic individuals” rather than issuing blanket guidance, Birx said she “had to find a way around them.”
“Recognizing the damage to public health the Scott Atlas–driven testing guidance could do and was doing with testing rates dropping across the country, Bob and I agreed to quietly rewrite the guidance and post it to the CDC website,” Birx said, admitting, “We would not seek approval.”
According to Birx, she and Redfield “were committed to subverting the dangerous message that limiting testing was the right thing to do.”
“Scarf Lady” committed scientific fraud and misled the president and the nation into unnecessary lock-downs and restrictions based on the false presumption that the virus spread among health people (asymptomatic spread) that was disproved by Cao et al Madewell et al. pic.twitter.com/Doeion4tu7
— Peter McCullough, MD MPH (@P_McCulloughMD) July 20, 2022
The former COVID coordinator said that after White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows found out about her self-described subterfuge, he berated her for rewriting COVID testing guidance without obtaining permission.
“You went around the whole approval process,” Meadows said, according to Birx. “You do not make unilateral decisions. It’s that simple. Period. End of sentence. Understood? Don’t ever do this again.”
Attorney and author Michael P. Stenger argued in a July 14 Substack post that “Virtually every page of Birx’s monstrosity of a book, Silent Invasion, reads like a how-to guide in subverting a democratic superpower from within, as could only be told through the personal account of someone who was on the front lines doing just that.”
Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona also blasted Birx in a Monday tweet, arguing “she falsified COVID data in order to advocate for lockdowns and other draconian measures.”
“She destroyed our country from within,” he said.
Dr. Deborah Birx admitted in her new book that she falsified COVID data in order to advocate for lockdowns and other draconian measures.
She destroyed our country from within.
— Rep Andy Biggs (@RepAndyBiggsAZ) July 18, 2022
Birx’s admissions may give a new complexion to the liberty-crushing lockdowns and restrictions implemented during the Trump administration, as well as the inability of Trump administration officials, including Atlas, to undo lockdowns or backtrack on excessive testing recommendations.