Fed watch­dog con­firms Trump-era Covid ad cam­paign shenani­gans — and mil­lions mis­spent

Celebri­ty in­trigue, sus­pect re­la­tion­ships and mis­spent mil­lions — the me­dia re­port­ing, and con­gres­sion­al sus­pi­cion, around the De­part­ment of Health and Hu­man Ser­vices’ ini­tial Covid-19 ad cam­paign con­tract awards un­der the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion had it all.

And on Wednes­day, the Gov­ern­ment Ac­count­abil­i­ty Of­fice con­firmed many of the de­tails.

Among them was the $15 mil­lion con­tract award­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2020 to At­las Re­search, which GAO con­firms had per­son­al ties to the As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary for Pub­lic Af­fairs of­fice over­see­ing the cam­paign and was ini­tial­ly the on­ly con­trac­tor sug­gest­ed. (FDA staff pushed back though and a sec­ond one was added.)

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