President Trump was repeatedly warned about the threat of the coronavirus in his daily intelligence briefing books in January and February.
U.S. intelligence agencies conveyed the threat more than a dozen times in the President’s Daily Brief, a classified report that is given each morning to the president and a number of top-level officials on the most serious security threats, according to the Washington Post.
The briefing books tracked the virus’s spread around the world, asserted China was covering up the disease’s transmissibility and death toll, and warned of political and economic consequences. The warnings came as Trump downplayed the virus, and his administration failed to plan for the scale of the threat.
Officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified material said Trump often skips reading the President’s Daily Brief and has shown impatience when receiving the oral briefing.
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley denied Trump was slow to respond to the virus, which has killed nearly 56,000 people in the United States as of Monday afternoon.
“President Trump rose to fight this crisis head-on by taking early, aggressive historic action to protect the health, wealth, and well-being of the American people,” Gidley said.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is responsible for the daily briefing, said in response to questions about the repeated mentions of the coronavirus: “The detail of this is not true.” The official did not elaborate further.
But U.S. officials said the daily briefing included comprehensive articles on the outbreak and smaller pieces of information meant to keep Trump and top administration officials updated on the course of the disease.
One official said the virus was being mentioned in the briefing book more frequently by mid- to late January, either as a main article or in the “executive update.” Trump’s first step in combating the contagion came in late January, when he cut off travel between the U.S. and China.
Trump then downplayed the virus, insisting in late February that the number of cases would be “close to zero” within “a couple of days.” His administration waited until mid-March to start placing bulk orders of personal protective equipment, according to the Associated Press, which reviewed federal contracts.
