Tobacco claimed another victim Wednesday — President Donald Trump’s pick to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald tendered her resignation following a Politico report that she “bought shares in a tobacco company one month into the leadership of the agency.”
“Dr. Fitzgerald owns certain complex financial interests that have imposed a broad recusal limiting her ability to complete all of her duties as the CDC Director,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement. “Due to the nature of these financial interests, Dr. Fitzgerald could not divest from them in a definitive time period.”
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So Fitzgerald tendered her resignation, the HHS statement read.
There was no additional comment from Fitzgerald, who is a doctor and the former Georgia Department of Public Health commissioner.
Fitzgerald also declined to explain to Politico why she purchased thousands of dollars of Big Tobacco stocks after assuming leadership of the CDC on July 7.
An HHS spokesman confirmed “the potentially conflicting” stock purchases to Politico but said they were handled by her financial manager and that she subsequently sold them.
Critics like Richard Painter, who was President George W. Bush’s ethics lawyers from 2005 to 2007, told Politico that Fitzgerald’s purchases were “tone deaf” and “ridiculous.”
Neither the White House nor Trump, who is not a smoker, weighed-in immediately on Fitzgerald’s resignation.
But the CDC has, for years, made fighting smoking a priority and calls it “the leading cause of preventable death” on its web site.
“The tobacco industry spends billions of dollars each year on cigarette advertising and promotions,” said CDC says. “Smoking costs the United States billions of dollars each year.”
As of 2015, some 36.5 million Americans still smoked, despite repeated warnings that it causes cancer, the CDC reported.
This is a developing story, please check back for updates.