Trump’s personal advisor on the coronavirus epidemic, neuroradiologist Scott Atlas, has hired a law firm to threaten to sue the signatories of a letter from Stanford University medical staff in which those medical professionals disavow Atlas’s affiliation with the medical school, Politico reports.
Atlas, who is a fellow at the Hoover Institution that’s part of Stanford and hasn’t had a position at the medical school or medical center since 2012, has promoted many dubious and debunked treatments and theories concerning the coronavirus. The letter was signed by more than 80 doctors and professors who say they had “both a moral and an ethical responsibility” to correct the misleading and wrong statements made by Atlas.
“Many of his opinions and statements run counter to established science and, by doing so, undermine public-health authorities and the credible science that guides effective public health policy,” the letter states.
The letter sent to the Stanford staffers, signed by Marc Kasowitz, one of President Trump’s lawyers during the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in US elections, was posted on Twitter by Dr. Michael Fischbach, an Associate Professor of Bioengineering and of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford.
Quick recap: We posted a public letter saying, basically: "Scott Atlas is giving the president bad advice. It will hurt people."
Today, we got this love note from @SWAtlasHoover.
I stand by everything we said.
More facts, more science. Less Kasowitz. pic.twitter.com/h7aY9yvp5b
— Michael Fischbach (@mfgrp) September 17, 2020
The letter demanded that the letter must be retracted by Friday or the signatories would face legal consequences. Kasowitz demanded that the signatories “contact every media outlet worldwide that has reported on it to request an immediate correction of the record.”
NationalZero will post if we should hear about any such retraction or correction, but don’t hold your breath.