(WASHINGTON) — Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez on Wednesday said she was fired by President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for “holding the line on scientific integrity.”
Monarez gave a detailed timeline before the Senate’s Health committee on the chain of events that she said led to her abrupt ousting.
A pivotal moment, she said, was an August meeting in which she said Kennedy told her to preemptively accept recommendations from a CDC vaccine advisory panel and to fire career officials overseeing vaccine policy.
“I would not commit to that, and I believe it is the true reason I was fired,” Monarez said. Monarez said Kennedy was “very upset” when she pushed back in the meeting.
Kennedy, in a hearing before a different Senate panel earlier this month, disputed Monarez’s version of events. He denied telling Monarez to accept vaccine recommendations without scientific evidence, and claimed she was fired in part because she told him she was untrustworthy.
“I told her that she had to resign because I asked her, ‘Are you a trustworthy person?’ And she said, ‘No,'” Kennedy replied. “If you had an employee who told you they weren’t trustworthy, would you ask them to resign, Senator?” Kennedy had told Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren in a fiery exchange at that hearing.
Republican senators pressed Monarez on Wednesday on that point. “Did you tell the secretary you were untrustworthy?” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, asked Monarez.
“He told me he could not trust me because I had shared information related to our conversation beyond his staff. I told him, if you cannot trust me, then you can fire me,” Monarez replied.
Monarez was referring to her outreach to Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, the chair of the committee, whom she contacted in between meetings with Kennedy to alert him to the growing tension.
In one dramatic exchange, Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin accused Monarez of being dishonest in her characterization of her private conversation with Kennedy and claimed the meeting had been recorded.
Cassidy then requested if such materials had been provided to Mullin that they be made available to all of the senators on the committee. Cassidy also called on HHS to release a recording if it had one.
“If a recording does not exist, I ask Senator Mullin to retract his line of questions,” Cassidy said.
Moments later, Cassidy interrupted the hearing to say that there were reports that Mullin had told reporters he was “mistaken in saying that the RFK-Monarez meeting was recorded.”
“But in case he was mistaken that he was mistaken, if there is a recording, it should be released,” Cassidy said.
Cassidy, a doctor from Louisiana who was one of the key votes to confirm Kennedy, said Wednesday’s hearing was in the aim of “radical transparency.”
“Part of our responsibility today is to ask ourselves, if someone is fired 29 days after every Republican votes for her, the Senate confirms her, the secretary said in her swearing in that she has ‘unimpeachable scientific credentials’ and the president called her an incredible mother and dedicated public servant — like what happened? Did we fail? Was there something we should have done differently?” Cassidy said.
Cassidy told Monarez and Deb Houry, the former chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science at the CDC who also sat for testimony, that “the onus is upon you to prove that the criticisms leveled by the secretary are not true.”
Houry was one of four top CDC officials who resigned in protest after Monarez was ousted. The high-profile departures raised alarm over Kennedy’s vaccine policy agenda, which the public health officials said they were being asked to endorse without adequate science.
“How did Dr. Monarez go from being a public health expert with unimpeachable scientific credentials, who had the full confidence of Secretary Kennedy into being a liar and untrustworthy in less than a month. That is quite a transformation. Well, I think the answer is fairly obvious. Dr. Monarez was fired because she refused to act as a rubber stamp to implement Secretary Kennedy’s dangerous agenda to substantially limit the use of safe and effective vaccines that would endanger the lives of the American people and people throughout the world,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, said on Wednesday.
Kennedy stood by the recent shakeups at CDC, saying they were “absolutely necessary adjustments to restore the agency to its role as the world’s gold standard public health agency with a central mission of protecting Americans from infectious disease.”
Monarez on Wednesday expressed concern on Kennedy’s changes to HHS, including his replacement of all members on the CDC vaccine advisory committee.
The CDC advisory committee is scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss vaccine recommendations more broadly, including the measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (MMRV) vaccine, and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV).
“Based on what I observed during my tenure, there is real risk that recommendations could be made restricting access to vaccines for children and others in need without rigorous scientific review. With no permanent CDC director in place, those recommendations could be adopted,” Monarez said.
According to Monarez, Kennedy told her the childhood vaccine schedule would be changing in September and “I needed to be on board with it.”
“To be clear, he said there was not science or data, but that he still expected you to change the schedule?” Sen. Cassidy asked.
“Correct,” Monarez said.
HHS officials pushed back against Monarez’s testimony Wednesday, saying it contained “factual inaccuracies and left out important details.”
In a statement, a spokesperson also accused her of acting “maliciously to undermine the President’s agenda,” alleging that she limited badge access for Trump’s political appointees and removed one of Kennedy’s appointees without telling anyone.
ABC News has asked for more details about the specific allegations.
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