By Sharon Lafraniere

WASHINGTON — The top communications official at the powerful Cabinet department in charge of combating the coronavirus made outlandish and false accusations Sunday (13) that career government scientists were engaging in “sedition” in their handling of the pandemic and that left-wing hit squads were preparing for armed insurrection after the election.

Michael R. Caputo, assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, accused the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention of harbouring a “resistance unit” determined to undermine President Donald Trump, even if that opposition bolsters the COVID-19 death toll.

Caputo, who has faced intense criticism for leading efforts to warp CDC weekly bulletins to fit Trump’s pandemic narrative, suggested that he personally could be in danger from opponents of the administration.

“If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get,” he urged his followers.

He went further, saying his physical health was in question, and his “mental health has definitely failed.”

“I don’t like being alone in Washington,” Caputo said, describing “shadows on the ceiling in my apartment, there alone, shadows are so long.” He also said the mounting number of COVID-19 deaths was taking a toll on him, telling his viewers, “You are not waking up every morning and talking about dead Americans.” The United States has lost more than 194,200 people to the virus. Caputo urged people to attend Trump rallies, but only with masks.

To a certain extent, Caputo’s comments in a video he hosted live on his personal Facebook page were simply an amplified version of remarks that the president himself has made. Both men have singled out government scientists and health officials as disloyal, suggested that the election will not be fairly decided, and insinuated that left-wing groups are secretly plotting to incite violence across the United States.

But Caputo’s attacks were more direct, and they came from one of the officials most responsible for shaping communications around the coronavirus.

CDC scientists “haven’t gotten out of their sweatpants except for meetings at coffee shops” to plot “how they’re going to attack Donald Trump next,” Caputo said. “There are scientists who work for this government who do not want America to get well, not until after Joe Biden is president.”

A longtime Trump loyalist with no background in health care, Caputo, 58, was appointed by the White House to his post in April, at a time when the president’s aides suspected the health secretary, Alex Azar, of protecting his public image instead of Trump’s. Caputo coordinates the messaging of an 80,000-employee department that is at the center of the pandemic response, overseeing the Food and Drug Administration, the CDC and the National Institutes of Health.

“Mr. Caputo is a critical, integral part of the president’s coronavirus response, leading on public messaging as Americans need public health information to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic,” the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement.

Caputo’s Facebook comments were another sign of the administration’s deep antipathy and suspicion for its own scientific experts across the bureaucracy and the growing political pressure on those experts to toe a political line favorable to Trump.

Last weekend, first Politico, then The New York Times and other news media organizations published accounts of how Caputo and a top aide had routinely worked to revise, delay or even scuttle the core health bulletins of the CDC to paint the administration’s pandemic response in a more positive light. The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports had previously been so thoroughly shielded from political interference that political appointees only saw them just before they were published.

Caputo’s 26-minute broadside on Facebook against scientists, the news media and Democrats was also another example of a senior administration official stoking public anxiety about the election and conspiracy theories about the “deep state” — the label Trump often attaches to the federal civil service bureaucracy.

Caputo predicted that the president would win reelection in November, but that his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, would refuse to concede, leading to violence.

“And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin,” he said. “The drills that you’ve seen are nothing.”

There were no obvious signs from administration officials Monday that Caputo’s job was in danger. On the contrary, Trump again added his voice to the administration’s science denialism. As the president visited California to show solidarity with the fire-ravaged West, he challenged the established science of climate change, declaring, “It will start getting cooler.” He added: “Just watch. I don’t think science knows, actually.”

Caputo has 5,000 Facebook friends, and his video was viewed more than 850 times. He has now shut down his account.

Overall, his tone was deeply ominous: He warned, again without evidence, that “there are hit squads being trained all over this country” to mount armed opposition to a second term for Trump. “You understand that they’re going to have to kill me, and unfortunately, I think that’s where this is going,” Caputo added.

In a statement Monday, Caputo told The Times: “Since joining the administration, my family and I have been continually threatened” and harassed by people who have later been prosecuted. “This weighs heavily on us, and we deeply appreciate the friendship and support of President Trump as we address these matters and keep our children safe.”

He insisted on Facebook that he would weather the controversies, saying, “I’m not going anywhere.” And he boasted of the importance of his role, stating that the president had personally put him in charge of a $250 million public service advertising campaign intended to help the United States return to normal.

The Department of Health and Human Services is trying to use that campaign to attract more minority volunteers for clinical trials of potential COVID-19 vaccines and to ask people who have recovered to donate their blood plasma to help other infected patients. Department officials have complained that congressional Democrats are obstructing the effort.

-New York Times