According to a report from Mother Jones, the White House is denying Trump advisor Stephen Miller’s grandmother died from complications due to coronavirus, but her death certificate says otherwise.
On July 4, Miller’s uncle David Glosser, a vocal Trump critic who has also slammed Miller for his anti-immigrant policies, announced on Facebook the death of his mother, Ruth Glosser, who was Miller’s maternal grandmother.
“This morning my mother, Ruth Glosser, died of the late effects of COVID-19 like so many thousands of other people; both young and old,” he wrote. “She survived the acute infection but was left with lung and neurological damage that destroyed her will to eat and her ability to breathe well enough to sustain arousal and consciousness. Over an 8-week period she gradually slipped away and died peacefully this morning.”
But the White House is denying his account, calling it “categorically false” in a response to an inquiry from Mother Jones.
“[Miller’s] grandmother did not pass away from COVID,” the White House stated. “She was diagnosed with COVID in March and passed away in July so that timeline does not add up at all. His grandmother died peacefully in her sleep from old age. I would hope that you would choose not to go down this road.”
Speaking to Mother Jones in an email, Glosser said that the White House’s denials are just another example of the Trump administration keeping “the tragic facts about COVID deaths of our countrymen and women, young and old, from the American public” which serves no purpose other than to “obscure the need for a coherent national, scientifically based, public health response to save others from this disease.”
“My mother led a long, satisfying, productive life of family and community service,” Glosser continued. “She had nothing to be ashamed of, and concealing her cause of death to offer ‘privacy’ to me, our family, her hundreds of relatives and friends, does nothing to assuage our regret at her loss.”
He also shared a copy of what he says is his mother’s death certificate with Mother Jones, which clearly states that she died from “respiratory arrest” resulting from “COVID-19.”
When confronted with the death certificate, the White House denied Glosser’s account once again, saying she had a “[mild] case of COVID-19 in March. She was never hospitalized and made a full and quick recovery.”
Read the full report over at Mother Jones.