Major Producer of Hydroxychloroquine Once Paid Michael Cohen Hefty Sum for Access to Trump
President Donald Trump on Sunday once again touted the potential life-saving benefits of treating coronavirus patients with hydroxychloroquine, a powerful anti-malaria drug, despite a dearth of medical professionals or clinical evidence supporting his claims. It just so happens that one of the largest manufacturers of the drug, Novartis, previously paid Trump’s now-incarcerated former personal attorney Michael Cohen more than $1 million for healthcare policy insight following Trump’s election in 2016.
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The president and his acolytes have continued to push the drug, contradicting the vast majority of medical professionals and, at times, making outright false statements about the drug being approved for coronavirus patients. After erroneously claiming last month that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had green-lit hydroxychloroquine treatment, the president doubled-down on that claim Sunday.
“As you know, they’ve approved it, they gave it a rapid approval,” Trump said.
In fact, the FDA merely issued a limited Emergency Use Authorization to distribute the drug from the national stockpile and explicitly stated that “Chloroquine phosphate and hydroxychloroquine sulfate are not FDA-approved for treatment of COVID-19.”
https://lawandcrime.com/covid-19-pandemic/major-producer-of-hydroxychloroquine-once-paid-michael-cohen-hefty-sum-for-access-to-trump/amp/?
Newsweek too:
Social media users have been reacting to President Donald Trump's championing of the use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, with some referring to a deal struck in 2017 between the pharmaceutical company Novartis, which makes the drug, and the president's former lawyer Michael Cohen.
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Eugene Gu, who is founder and CEO of CoolQuit, which offers free coronavirus screening and testing for Medicare patients in California, Florida and Texas tweeted to his 422,000 followers: "So Novartis and all these pharmaceutical companies are pushing hydroxychloroquine to make tons of money during a pandemic, exploiting people's desperation for any possible cure.
"Trump is their salesman, doctors are their drug dealers, and the American people are the guinea pigs."
Randi Mayem Singer tweeted to her 94,000 followers: "Novartis makes hydroxychloroquine, the potentially deadly untested drug Donald Trump 'has a feeling' about, the one he keeps pushing at his WH infomercials.
"Novartis is the company that paid Michael Cohen $1.2m for access to Trump."
https://www.newsweek.com/michael-cohen-donald-trump-novartis-twitter-covid-19-1496291
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