Mike Pence's former homeland security advisor and lead staffer on White House COVID task force reveals she was asked to 'spy' on Dr. Birx because she was 'not to be trusted'
A former aide for Mike Pence has claimed she was asked to spy on ex-coronavirus task force coordinator Dr Deborah Birx as the medical expert was thought 'not to be trusted'.
Olivia Troye, who served as Pence's homeland security advisor and lead staffer on the White House coronavirus task force, revealed in an interview with All In With Chris Hayes on Monday that Dr Birx was in a 'no-win situation' on the task force.
Troye claimed that she was called on to keep on eye on Birx as she had been brought in by Matt Pottinger, Trump's deputy national security adviser who resigned following the Capitol riot.
It is not known who asked her to monitor Birx.
'I'm the person that was brought into a room at some point when she first started,' said Troye.
'She was coming into a no-win situation and even more so than I think she even realized. And I was told that I was to watch her. That she was not to be trusted because she was a Matt Pottinger hire.'
Olivia Troye, who served as Pence's homeland security advisor and lead staffer on the White House coronavirus task force, revealed in an interview with All In With Chris Hayes on Monday that she had been asked to spy on ex-coronavirus task force coordinator Dr Deborah Birx
Dr. Deborha Birx had revealed in a Face the Nation interview on Sunday that President Trump was given fake graphs and charts by an unknown person. Troye backed up these claims
Troye, 44, has been critical of the Trump White House since leaving in August, when she announced that she would be voting for Joe Biden despite being a lifelong Republican voter.
She has previously said that Trump showed a 'flat-out disregard for human life' in his response to the coronavirus pandemic.
On Monday, she also criticized the administration for asking her to spy on Birx and said she was happy the medical expert is now 'speaking candidly' about her experience.
'So here I am as a homeland adviser,' recalled Troye. 'And [the White House] is asking me to spy on this woman that I'm sharing an office with when the pandemic is about to be out of control.
'I'm glad to see her finally be somewhat free in coming forward and speaking candidly,' she added.
'Do I wish she was honest? I would have hoped she would have been more blunt that the interview and not really her style. She doesn't talk to the media. That's just not who she is.'
Dr. Birx had appeared on CBS' Face the Nation on Sunday where she claimed that an unidentified person inside the White House was showing charts and graph to the president that she and her team did not create.
Troye backed up her claims, telling MSNBC that she remembered Dr. Birx's anger when it was discovered.
'I remember that day because Dr. Birx was really angry and she actually confronted me and said, "Do you know who created those graphs? Did you work on that?" I said, "Well, you know that there has been an effort to manipulate the data, to downplay this virus".'
Troye was the first Trump administration official who worked extensively on the coronavirus response to speak out about his handling of the pandemic.
She told the Washington Post that his 'main concern was the economy and his reelection' and that his response to the outbreak cost lives.
'The president's rhetoric and his own attacks against people in his administration trying to do the work, as well as the promulgation of false narratives and incorrect information of the virus have made this ongoing response a failure,' she said.
Before joining Trump's White House, Troye worked at the Pentagon as a political appointee during the George W. Bush administration and then as a career official at the Homeland Security and Energy departments under Obama.
She joined Pence's office in 2018 as an employee detailed from DHS.
Troye did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 as she said she disliked his rhetoric, but went on to play a large behind-the-scenes role in the pandemic response.
She attended and helped to organize 'every single meeting' the White House Task Force held between February and July and worked closely with Pence on the response.
She was often pictured sitting near Pence in photos from the White House Situation Room.
'I still have a lot of respect for the vice president,' she said.
'I worked very loyally for him to do everything I could for him. I don't want this to become a speaking-out-against-him thing.'
Yet she claimed Trump's own agenda left those involved in the task force constantly wondering what he was going to say next and fearful of speaking out.
'At some point, every single person on the task force has been thrown under the bus in one way or another,' Troye said.
'Instead of being focused on the task at hand, people were constantly wondering what was going to drop next or when you're going to get reprimanded or cut out of a process for speaking out.
'I wished I had been more aggressive in fighting internal forces that were working against the CDC and other policies for the president's personal agenda,' she admitted in September.
'I wish I would have been more aggressive with the staff on the vice president's team and some of the president's staff.'
Former Covid Task Force advisor Olivia Troye told MSNBC's Chris Hayes on Monday about her experience working inside the Trump administration on the pandemic response
Troye is pictured above to the right of the table in the White House Situation Room during a meeting of the White House Coronavirus Task Force Principals in March
Yet, Troye's comments were dismissed by the White House as those of a disgruntled employee and claimed that she was let go in August because 'she was no longer capable of keeping up with her day-to-day duties'.
'Ms. Troye directly reported to me, and never once during her detail did she ever express any concern regarding the Administration's response to the Coronavirus to anyone in her chain of command,' retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Pence's national security adviser, said in a statement.
'By not expressing her concerns, she demonstrated an incredible lack of moral courage.'
However, Troye's experience lines up with that of Dr. Birx who spoke publicly about the fake graphs and charts that were being shown to Trump in a Face the Nation interview on Sunday.
'I saw the president presenting graphs that I never made,' Birx said in the interview. 'So, I know that someone — or someone out there or someone inside was creating a parallel set of data and graphics that were shown to the president.'
'I know what I sent up and I know that what was in his hands was different from that,' the doctor continued.
Birx said that she didn't know at the time who exactly was bringing the parallel data to the president, but on reflection, says she believed Scott Atlas may have played a role.
Atlas, a physician with no previous infectious disease experience who became Trump's coronavirus adviser, often contradicted scientists on spread mitigation efforts – including mask wearing and social distancing advisories.
Birx said she regularly considered resigning from the White House coronavirus task force and was censored by the Trump administration, but denied ever withholding information about the virus. She is pictured above left with Dr. Anthony Fauci and Trump in March
'I don't know who else was part of it, but I think when the record goes back and people see what I was writing on a daily basis that was sent up to White House leadership, that they will see that — that I was highly specific on what I was seeing and what needed to be done,' she said.
Dr. Birx said she took 'extensive notes' from each White House meeting and wrote more than 310 daily reports that she sent to senior leaders.
When questioned by CBS as to whether Trump read her reports, she said she wasn't sure, because 'I had very little exposure to President Trump.'
Birx added that there were people inside the Trump administration who 'definitely believed' the virus was a hoax.
'I think the information was confusing at the beginning. I think because we didn't talk about the spectrum of the disease, everyone interpreted what they knew.'
Birx has also said that she considered leaving the role and was censored but that she never withheld information on the pandemic.
More than 25 million Americans have been infected by the coronavirus and at least 420,000 have died since March 2020, when the pandemic began.
