Bought Shares in Tobacco Companies
President Donald Trump’s Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has just resigned. Brenda Fitzgerald took the helm of the CDC in July of 2017, but tendered her resignation Wednesday after a Politico article revealed she had “bought shares in a tobacco company one month into her leadership of the agency charged with reducing tobacco use.”
Politico had also noted that tobacco is “the leading cause of preventable disease and death and an issue she had long championed.”
Fitzgerald also had other stock holdings and had “come under congressional scrutiny for slow walking divestment” from them, which “government officials said posed potential conflicts of interest.”
Politico noted that critics said “her trading behavior broke with ethical norms for public health officials and was, at best, sloppy. At worst, they say, it was legally problematic if she didn’t recuse herself from government activities that could have affected her investments.”
The Secretary of Health and Human Services released this statement, tweeted by The Hill’s Peter Sullivan:
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