FOR THE SON-IN-LAW, THIS IS A DEADLY SCREW UP

…The President’s Senior Advisor & Son-In-Law, Jared Kushner

Why put inexperienced volunteers in charge of obtaining life-saving materials & supplies?

This is apparently the first time that the United States has been run by a family’s nepotism.  Yes, the main advisers to the President of the United States are his family members.  In fact, if any of the president’s children do not like anyone that the president has appointed to a Trump administration position, they will probably end up being fired by a tweet, or driven out of their job.

The real problem is that the president’s family has no experience in governing or in government in general.  In addition, they seem to think that their friends and Trump loyalists are better than those with long-time experience in the nation’s government.

As an example, the coronavirus response is today being spearheaded by President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.  But instead of using seasoned individuals within the government with experience with national tragedies, Kushner relies in part on volunteers from consulting and private equity firms with little expertise in the tasks they were assigned.  They have increased the chronic problems in obtaining supplies for hospitals and other needs.  This isn’t just my observation, this is according to numerous government officials and a specific volunteer involved in the effort.

Kushner has chosen about two dozen employees from Boston Consulting Group, Insight, McKinsey and other consulting firms.  Some have worked durring their paid vacation leave from their jobs, and others have worked without pay.  This effort is only for aiding the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.  Unfortunately, instead of utilizing those that have experience in obtaining special medical supplies and equipment, these volunteers were given assignments with little or no guidance in how to do these jobs.

Yes, some of the volunteers did have a bit of relevant backgrounds and experience, but many others were poorly matched with their assigned jobs, including those given the task of securing personal protective equipment (PPE) for hospitals nationwide.  In fact, a whistle-blowers complaint was filed last month with the House Oversight Committee about these volunteers not knowing how to do their jobs.

This volunteer team was to play a significant role in helping the government vet their job leads, and they sent the results to a procurement team at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), where government officials make the final decisions about purchases and procurement's.  Two senior administration officials have said that the team’s problems show a broad pattern of missteps that has plagued the Trump administration’s struggles to cope with the pandemic.

The filed complaint, obtained by The Washington Post, was submitted by a volunteer who has since left the group and of course, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.  But this time the anonymity was for the fear of retribution from the Trump administration.  Key elements of the complaint were confirmed by six administration officials and one outside adviser to the effort, many of whom who also spoke on the condition of anonymity for their discussing internal deliberations.  As expected, the spokeswoman for the oversight panel has also declined to comment.

The complaint alleges that the team responsible for PPE has had little success in helping the government secure such equipment.  This is in part, because none of the team members had significant experience in health care procurement, or supply-chain operations. In addition, none of the volunteers had relationships with manufacturers or a clear understanding of customs requirements and Food and Drug Administration rules.  That was part of the filed complaint and it is according to two senior administration officials.

“Americans are facing a crisis of tragic proportions and there is an urgent need for an effective, efficient and bold response,” reads the complaint, which was sent to the committee on April 8. “From my few weeks as a volunteer, I believe we are falling short. I am writing to alert my representatives of these challenges and to ask that they do everything possible to help front-line health-care workers and other Americans in need.”

Supply-chain volunteers were instructed to fast-track protective equipment leads from “VIPs”.  VIP’s also included conservative journalists friendly to the White House.  This is according one senior administration official.

As an example, “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade is one of the “VIP’s”.  He called two people he knew in the administration to pass along a lead about PPE in an effort to be helpful.  Fox News host Jeanine Pirro repeatedly lobbied the administration for a specific New York hospital she supported, and that facility received a large quantity of masks due to her efforts.

Kilmeade and Pirro have said that they were not aware that their tips were being prioritized.

The volunteer group tasked with securing personal protective equipment (PPE) is part of a broader coronavirus team set up by Kushner that spans the White House, FEMA and the Department of Health and Human Services. Much of this effort is run out of office space at FEMA headquarters.

Kushner and other key administration officials praised the volunteers’ efforts, which they said have helped the virus response, but the results show they have done more damage than being helpful.

“The bottom line is that this program sourced tens of millions of masks and essential PPE in record time and Americans who needed ventilators received ventilators,” Kushner said in a statement. “These volunteers are true patriots.”

But some government officials have expressed alarm at the presence of the volunteers, saying that their role in the response is unclear and that they have needed guidance on basic questions.  Health experts said procuring PPE requires expertise in the different types of equipment hospitals need, experience dealing with manufacturers.  They need to have an understanding of which types of masks, for instance, have FDA approval.  Many unapproved masks were obtained.

“That’s the danger…there may be decisions being made that are not fully informed and that’s going to lead to downstream effects on the response,” said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an infectious-disease physician. “The people that are volunteering, they are donating their time and we have to be grateful for that, but whoever is supervising them needs to match their skills with what the needs are.”

Even as the volunteer group struggled to procure PPE, 30% of “key supplies,” including masks, in the national stockpile of emergency medical equipment, that wasn’t the only issue.  

Kushner-led an  effort to establish drive-through testing sites nationwide.  This is according to a March internal planning document obtained by The Post and was confirmed by one current and one former administration official.  Kushner had originally promised thousands of testing sites, but only 78 actually materialized; the stockpile was used to supply 44 of those over 10 days, the document said.

One White House official denied that a third of the stockpile went to Kushner’s initiative, but he declined to provide any proof or details.

The team of volunteers focusing on PPE had trouble developing manufacturer relationships and making inroads with equipment brokers, in part because they were using personal email accounts, rather than official government email addresses.  The House Oversight Committee complaint states this and three senior administration officials confirmed the volunteers’ use of personal email addresses.

The manufacturers did not consider that a person they didn’t know and that used a “gmail” address, definitely wasn’t a government sponsored procurement agent.

In addition to the already challenging circumstances, the complaint also says that some of the teams, performed “minimal attempts at social distancing”.

Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said that the volunteers should be classified as “special government employees” and that the Kushner arrangement raises many concerns. “This is the problem with operating off the books,” he said. “We just don’t know if they’re following the law or not.”

The volunteers were told to save and share a copy of all of their official emails, to comply with the Federal Records Act, according to the volunteer and administration officials.  But Libowitz said that “by using private email accounts, we have no assurances that their emails are being preserved. . . . This doesn’t prove anything nefarious is going on, but if something nefarious was going on, this is how they would do it.”

Some of the volunteers were asked to create models projecting how much protective equipment the government would need to address the crisis, while others worked to project potential drug shortages that hospitals could face, this is according to four people familiar with the effort.  But the administration officials deemed some of their models were “too catastrophic,” a person familiar with the situation said.

As expected, the Trump administration finally decided to rely primarily on a model created by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.  This model has had some of the most optimistic projections of the number of virus cases and American deaths.

Those directly involved in Kushner’s effort were stressing that the team members, many of whom relocated to Washington, upended their lives to try to help the administration manage the deadly pandemic.

“In the face of this unprecedented crisis, these volunteers dropped everything to help our country,” Boehler said in a statement. “This is not a partisan issue, this is an American one, and I am proud of these patriots.”

Yes, they were being very patriotic, but the nation needed much more that being patriotic, they needed expertise in obtaining the necessary medical equipment and supplies. This is a case of life or death.

Once again, this was just more examples for why this president, and his family, are not qualified to run the most powerful nation in the world.

Copyright G. Ater 2020