The Health and Human Services official who has been pressuring the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change COVID-19 reports to reflect well on President Donald Trump has troubling Kremlin ties stretching for years.

Politico was the first to report last week that HHS Assistant Secretary Michael Caputo has been orchestrating a pressure campaign on the CDC to alter agency reports — and even stop them — to fit Trump’s far more optimistic view of COVID-19. The president himself admitted that he lied when he presented a sunnier view of the pandemic.

Read the rest of the story at HuffPost