President Trump said a spokeswoman for Vice President Mike Pence is the staffer who tested positive for the coronavirus.
Asked about reports Friday about a Pence staffer testing positive for COVID-19, Trump told reporters at the White House that it was Katie Miller who had contracted the illness.
“She’s a wonderful young woman, Katie, she tested very good for a long period of time, and then, all of a sudden today, she tested positive,” Trump said, after which he confirmed it was Pence’s press secretary.
Trump also noted he hasn’t come into contact with Miller.
Miller is married to another top White House aide and senior adviser, Stephen Miller, who allegedly spends “copious” amounts of time alongside the president, the president’s daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump, and the president’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner.
President Trump discusses Katie Miller, the press secretary for Vice President Pence, testing positive today for coronavirus. Trump says she hasn’t come into contact with him, and that Pence has tested negative https://t.co/9T8aUPjUrs pic.twitter.com/xnV8qIOjbl
— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 8, 2020
A senior administration official told the Washington Examiner that Miller had not been in recent contact with the president or vice president, but it caused a delay to Pence’s departure from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to Des Moines as six officials were removed from Air Force Two.
“This morning, we had someone on the vice president’s staff test positive, and so out of abundance of caution, we went back and looked into all the person’s contacts most recently,” the official said. “That’s why we asked some of our staff to deplane. Nobody else was exhibiting any symptoms or having any feeling of sickness. We asked them to go get tested and to go home out of an abundance of caution.”
On Thursday, a valet for Trump tested positive for COVID-19.
The White House said the president and Pence were tested for the virus after the valet was diagnosed, and the tests yielded negative results.
