Sam Seder had Carol Leonnig on his show the other day and asked her, “Who was Trump’s top enabler?” She gave a few names, but in the book they reported that someone ordered COVID testing to be halted & delayed the day of Trump’s Tulsa rally. By stopping the testing that person enabled the spread of COVID in the community. I wanted to know their name.
The studies have been done and the stories have been written about the COVID deaths attributed to Trump’s actions and inactions. Yet with all that sickness and death why won’t anyone hold Trump responsible for his horrific actions?
There are many reasons, both political and technical, why Trump isn’t charged with the crimes he commited. Often it’s because he and his people hid from the public the laws they broke. When they did get charged with crimes they blocked investigations, intimidated witnesses and delayed testimonies. Also, Trump usually has someone else doing the morally repugnant and/or illegal acts for him. (See Michael Cohen)
Besides these reasons for no one going after Trump, I’ve seen a real reluctance to enforce any public health laws on anyone. But I think that if you can show that people in the Trump campaign broke specific public health laws, actively covered up their actions and then blocked investigations into the laws they broke, that is a sufficient reason to warrant an investigation.
I’ve been investigating the spread of COVID though Trump’s rallies since before the Tulsa rally. I’ve done the research, talked to the experts and based on public reporting from Leonnig, Rucker and her colleagues; it appears public health laws in Oklahoma and New Jersey were broken during Trump’s rallies. But because of privacy laws, the public can’t know exactly who broke the laws.
Sam didn’t ask my question to Leonnig, but my friend Nicole Sandler was able to ask Philip Rucker the question, “Who gave the orders to halt testing?“
The answer? We don’t know.
I think that Carol Leonnig knows, but she wasn’t asked the question. And if she does, she might not say because she is protecting her sources.
Based on my conversations and emails with the Oklahoma State Department of Health, Tulsa’s Department of Health and public health experts, it appears that this person(s) violated Oklahoma law.
Halting & delaying testing the day of the rally prevented discovery of others who may be infected. This appears to be a violation of Oklahoma state law, Title 63. Public Health and Safety statutes. Specifically, under §63-6103, The Catastrophic Health Emergency Powers Act,
Someone in the Trump campaign prevented Oklahoma state and local officials from gaining immediate access to health information of individuals. Without truthful and timely information the public health authority couldn’t carry out their lawful duty, which is to “prevent, detect, manage, and contain health threats’ ( § 63-6103. Items 3-6)
The Oklahoma State Department of Health had the authority to impose a quarantine, isolation, or halt the event. They could have made an announcement to the people in attendance to self isolate and get tested. They could have told the general public so they could avoid those who attended the event.
They didn’t do any of those things, because they didn’t have all the relevant data about infected individuals.
Oklahoma Heath statutes §63-6103, The Catastrophic Health Emergency Powers Act,
Remember, there was no vaccine in June 2020. Getting COVID could be a death sentence, in fact, it was for hundreds of thousands of Americans. Someone in the Trump campaign broke the laws on the books at the time, Rucker didn’t know who it was, but the Attorney General of Oklahoma can find out. But will he?
The people I’ve been talking to in Oklahoma have been telling me all the ways an investigation will be thwarted. For example, Gov. Stitt called up all the top hospital leaders to complain about the interviews doctors and nurses were giving to the media on the COVID-19 crisis. That’s standard bully Governor stuff, but he took it further. Stitt called Jim Gebhart, president of Mercy Hospital and told him,
..if doctors didn’t stop “fearmongering” about capacity issues it could force him [Gov. Stitt] to impose a ban on elective surgeries, which would be a financial hardship for many hospitals.
Gov. Stitt complained to hospital leaders
about interviews with media on COVID-19 crisis
December 9, 2020. Ben Felder, The Frontier
No wonder none of the doctors or nurses I’ve contacted have been willing to talk on the record about this!
Over 700 people in the medical community in Oklahoma tried to use reason to convince Tulsa’s mayor to cancel Trump’s rally. They failed.
Lawyers sued to prevent the rally from proceeding. They failed.
The venue manager had the campaign sign a contract that included safety measures like social distancing. But it was breached when someone in the campaign ordered staff to remove the social distancing stickers on chairs.
So what if I do find out who gave those orders to halt & delay testing? Someone needs to put together a request to investigate this. Because the rallies involved multiple jurisdictions and agencies, confirming this information and prosecution will require an official investigation by attorneys general, inspectors general and/or a congressional committee. Who’s going to do that? Me?
An entity with subpoena power needs to act on the information in the book. They need to investigate it to see if crimes were committed and who committed them. In this case we also need to know their intention. So often we have seen medical personnel assume that politicians would act to protect people from sickness. But that has been proven incorrect time and time again.
One of my big concerns is that in a narrow investigation lower level medical personnel will will be blamed. Yet we know from news reports that Trump and his people regularly threaten and intimidate people. We know they go after whistleblowers. What kind of political pressure from high up was put on public health officials to hold the rallies?
Could contract nurses hired for the event to do the COVID testing insist that all the individuals that should be tested were tested that day and that the results be sent to OSDH immediately?
Who was in charge of all the testing? A doctor or a campaign staffer?
In my opinion, the people on the campaign who gave those orders and made those decisions should be held criminally liable, at a minimum.for their violations of the Oklahoma law.
Remember the liability waivers that everyone had to sign? The campaign prepared to protect assets, not the lives of Trump’s attendees or the people in the community.
I think the Trump campaign should be held financially liable for the pain and suffering they caused the people in the Tulsa community. If it can be shown that the Trump Campaign was grossly negligent in their safety protocols, then their liability waivers are invalid. If that happens it opens up the campaign to being sued by a large number of people such as venue staff who worked the event. Perhaps the unions representing the camera crews who were assigned to cover the event could sue.
I’ve talked to a lot of really nice people doing this research. One of the people I talked to asked, “You aren’t from Tulsa, you didn’t get sick. Why do you care?” It’s a good question. We are constantly being told to write off “the Red Staters” they made their beds, now that they are deathbeds, they can lie in them.
But I don’t want to write off huge swaths of the country because a small group of people used their power to increase sickness and death.
7,594 have died in Oklahoma.
500,311 have been infected.
Aug 12, 2021: Oklahoma’s pediatric ICUs are full.
At a press conference on August 5, 2021 Dr. Dale Bratzler, the Chief Covid Officer at the University of Oklahoma, was asked about people who were exposed to unvaccinated people without masks inside a building.
(Keep in mind that the Trump campaign knew which people were exposed to those who tested positive that day.)
Then he was asked what happens to the information if someone tests positive.
“So if you test positive the lab is required by law to send the data to the Oklahoma State Health Department. They will forward it to the county health department who has responsibility if they are going to do any contact tracing, case investigation, quarantine or isolation. “
–Dr Dale Bratzler, DO, MPH
Based on public reporting, it appears the campaign broke the law on test reporting when they actively avoided telling the state’s public health department about the infected individuals at their rally. And because there were no consequences for those people, we are seeing political power and threats overruling the doctors & policies designed to protect the health of the people in the community.
If my logical argument pointing to what the public can know isn’t enough, maybe seeing this photo of a child in a pediatric ICU will help people to understand why those with the authority to learn the full story must start an investigation. If it proves members of the Trump campaign are guilty, they should be held accountable.
