Official who ran pandemic response team has come forward: No, it was not “eliminated”

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The official who once ran the White House pandemic program dismissed a false Democratic talking point that Trump eliminated the pandemic-response team and criticized reporters for parroting the claim in news stories.


"No, the White House didn’t ‘dissolve’ its pandemic response office. I was there," wrote former National Security Council adviser Tim Morrison for the Washington Post on Monday.

"It has been alleged by multiple officials of the Obama administration, including in The Post, that the president and his then-national security adviser, John Bolton, ‘dissolved the office' at the White House in charge of pandemic preparedness," Morrison wrote. "Because I led the very directorate assigned that mission, the counterproliferation and biodefense office, for a year and then handed it off to another official who still holds the post, I know the charge is specious."


As part of an effort to slim down the historically bloated National Security Council, the directorate of global health and biodefense was merged with two other positions—not eliminated—according to Morrison.

"If anything, the combined directorate was stronger because related expertise could be commingled," he wrote.

Morrison, who testified in the House impeachment inquiry, said media figures and politicians have acted in bad faith to attack the White House.

"It is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented," Morrison wrote.

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