Tim Murtaugh, director of communications for the Trump campaign, joins Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier on 'Special Report.'.

Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official who became spokesperson at the Department of Health and Human Services this spring, and his team have led the effort to review the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, the news outlet reported, citing three sources familiar with the situation and email exchanges. The reports are written by scientists to update the public health community on the coronavirus' spread.

Former Trump campaign official Michael Caputo arrives at the Hart Senate Office building to be interviewed by Senate Intelligence Committee staffers, on May 1, 2018 in Washington.

They tried to halt the release of some CDC reports altogether and successfully delayed a report on hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug touted by Trump to treat COVID-19 despite questionable evidence.

In a statement to Politico, Caputo touted Alexander's qualifications as "an Oxford-educated epidemiologist." The HHS team was appropriately reviewing the CDC's reports and fighting the "deep state," he said.

Like all scientists, his advice is heard and taken or rejected by his peers," Caputo said in a statement.

President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the press briefing room at the White House, Feb.

HHS released a new statement Saturday that didn't address the reporting on interfering with CDC reports, but praised Trump's openmindedness to science.

"As the Secretary of Health and Human Services, I have briefed President Trump alongside the nation's top doctors and I have insisted that he have direct access to these doctors throughout the COVID-19 pandemic," HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in the statement to Fox News.

Meanwhile, former vice president Joe Biden's campaign pounced on the new report as further evidence the Trump administration will try to downplay the pandemic for political reasons.

“When Donald Trump told Bob Woodward that he wanted to downplay the virus, this is the exact kind of repugnant betrayal that he meant," Biden's Deputy Campaign Manager and Communications Director Kate Bedingfield said in a statement

"Instead of telling us the truth about the deadly seriousness of COVID-19, this report is further proof that the Trump Administration has been systematically putting political optics ahead of the safety of the American people."

But the Trump campaign said the country would have been worse off if Biden were president at the outset of the pandemic and touted Trump's decision to announce travel restrictions from China as early as Jan

Redfield, in crafting his unprecedented response to the coronavirus," Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh told Fox News