The former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who was charged with sexual abuse and pleaded guilty to a lesser charge a year ago, has been called on by Democrats to serve as a witness to testify about the federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Tom Frieden, who served as former President Barack Obama’s CDC head during his entire time in office, was charged in 2018 after a woman claimed he forcibly touched her inappropriately while she was at his Brooklyn apartment in October 2017.
Frieden, who faced up to a year in prison, pleaded guilty in 2019 to a charge of disorderly conduct and received no jail time on the condition that he would have no contact with the woman.
Now the head of a project within the global public health organization Vital Strategies, Frieden shared his excitement to testify before the House Appropriations Committee.
“Looking forward to sharing a forward-looking perspective and unveiling a new way to protect Americans,” he said.
I’ll testify tomorrow before House Appropriations’s Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee as part of the first hearing on #COVID19 since Congress departed. Looking forward to sharing a forward-looking perspective and unveiling a new way to protect Americans. https://t.co/QAilJ7YtI4
— Dr. Tom Frieden (@DrTomFrieden) May 6, 2020
Democrats have called a slew of witnesses that they hope will help them better understand the way President Trump’s administration has dealt with the pandemic. House Democrats had also called Dr. Anthony Fauci to testify before the committee, but the White House blocked that effort.
“The House is a setup,” Trump said Tuesday.”The House is a bunch of Trump haters. … Dr. Fauci will be testifying in front of the Senate, and he looks forward to doing that.”
