WASHINGTON -- The author of a federal report that found U.S. hospitals faced severe shortages of coronavirus test supplies said she is not intimidated by criticism from President Donald Trump, even after he moved to replace her as chief watchdog of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Christi Grimm, who has served as acting inspector general since January, told a House panel that there was no "chilling effect" from Trump's criticism of her last month and his subsequent move to replace her.
"We are plowing ahead" with 14 new reports and audits on the health department's response to the virus, Grimm said during a videoconference briefing Tuesday with the House Oversight Committee.
Congress can be assured that the reports and audits of health spending related to the virus outbreak will continue unfettered "to protect people, to protect funds, to protect infrastructure and to ensure effectiveness," Grimm said. "We are operating as we did on May 1," when Trump nominated a new inspector general to replace Grimm.
Jason Weida, an assistant U.S. attorney in Boston, must be confirmed by the Senate before assuming the position. Grimm remains in charge of the office as principal deputy inspector general while Weida's nomination is pending.
As coronavirus cases were increasing, the inspector general's office reported April 6 that a shortage of tests and long waits for results were at the root of mounting problems faced by hospitals.
Trump called the report, based on a late March survey of 323 hospitals nationwide, "just wrong" and suggested that its conclusions were skewed by politics.
"Give me the name of the inspector general," Trump told reporters. "Could politics be entered into that?"
Trump later dismissed the report on Twitter as "Another Fake Dossier!"
Grimm called the report "a snapshot in time," but she said it offered "quick and reliable data from the ground" to document the nation's response to the coronavirus, which has killed nearly 100,000 Americans.
Grimm also pushed back on a theory advanced by some critics that hospitals may have intentionally reported inaccurate covid-19 data in an effort to win more federal money or equipment.
"I do not believe hospitals were being misleading in providing us with this information," Grimm said. Investigators did not "independently go behind and verify" the hospitals' claims, she added.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the panel's top Republican, lamented what he said was the report's "flawed methodology" and noted that investigators did not ask hospitals to specify actions the Trump administration had taken to help them respond to the crisis.
Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., asked Grimm to investigate the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, saying the agency failed to develop coronavirus tests in a timely fashion, then saw its early tests plagued by a series of problems and false results.
Grimm said the office is reviewing the CDC's role in approving, producing and distributing test kits. Her office also is looking at the Food and Drug Administration's role in approving the test, Grimm said.
Elsewhere, Glenn Fine, ousted by Trump last month as head of a watchdog panel assigned to oversee how his administration spends trillions of taxpayer dollars in coronavirus pandemic relief, announced Monday that he was resigning from his Pentagon job.
On April 7, Trump demoted Fine from his role as the acting inspector general for the Defense Department.
"It has been a privilege and an honor to serve with you for the past five years," Fine said in an email to his staff Monday morning. "What you do every day is critical to our system of government."
Fine made no mention of Trump in his email to the staff or in his public statement.
Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Daly of The Associated Press and by Eric Schmitt and Charlie Savage of The New York Times.
A Section on 05/27/2020