Sen. Markwayne Mullin accused fired CDC Director Susan Monarez of lying about the circumstances leading to her dismissal at a hearing Wednesday — and that he had a recording to prove it.
Soon thereafter, the Oklahoma Republican told reporters he was mistaken, according to the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee’s chair, Bill Cassidy (R-La.). Cassidy called on the Department of Health and Human Services to release the recording if it had one, prompting HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon to say there wasn’t one. “This was incorrectly stated at the hearing. There is no recording,” Nixon said.
Mullin’s claim injected some drama toward the end of Monarez’s appearance before Cassidy’s panel, at which she restated her claim that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had fired her last month, after just four weeks on the job, because she’d refused to fire career staff without cause and to rubber-stamp the recommendations of a panel of vaccine advisers chosen by Kennedy.
During his turn to question her, Mullin pressed Monarez on her account. Kennedy has offered a competing one in which he asked Monarez if she was trustworthy and she said she was not.
When Monarez repeated her version of events, Mullin said the conversation had been recorded.
“It was a recorded meeting, so you can testify one way, or you can prove that you’re lying … and I’m giving you the opportunity to be honest here, because you’ve been really walking around the edges and not being truthful,” he said.
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