The emails indicate that the administration’s top health officials were closely involved in a frenzied effort to make unproven chloroquine treatments widely available, even though the FDA’s new emergency rule limited distribution of the drug as a COVID-19 treatment to hospitalized patients. One hour after the first email, Gaynor replied to Kadlec, Giroir, and Polowczyk, seeming to suggest that FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn was on board with expanding COVID-19 patients’ access to the drug: “Hahn asked to distribute to hospitals and the drug stores.”

In a second email that appears to have been sent the same night, Gaynor indicated that he was working closely with Rear Admiral Polowczyk: “Me and Adm P are on it. More to follow in the am.”

A FEMA spokesperson did not answer questions about the involvement of Pete Gaynor or other officials in the chloroquine plan but said, “FEMA does not maintain stocks of medicine.” In response to a request for comment, an FDA spokesman responded: “Given increased demand, Dr. Hahn considered whether the donated drugs could be distributed in the commercial market to ensure a stable supply for malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis patients.”

An HHS spokesperson said that, while clinical trials of the drugs proceed, some of the government’s hydroxychloroquine “was provided to wholesale distributors to further supply hospitals as well as retail pharmacies that were experiencing product shortages for people who use the drug for the maintenance of chronic conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.” The spokesperson added that the hospitals and pharmacies that receive donated medications are not permitted to “charge for the drug itself.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The intra–White House battle over the use of chloroquine drugs for treating COVID-19 broke into the open in dramatic fashion on April 21, when the administration’s top coronavirus vaccine developer, Rick Bright, was pushed out of his position as the head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a small agency within HHS that partners with private scientific ventures to create vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics. The next day Bright issued a statement, first reported by the New York Times, stating that he was fired for resisting efforts “to fund potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections.”

“Specifically, and contrary to misguided directives,” he said, “I limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit.” On April 23, attorneys for Bright said they would file a formal whistleblower complaint on his behalf.

Even before Trump began making public statements from the podium, his political appointees had begun rallying around the idea of amassing chloroquine drugs to treat COVID-19, despite the paucity of evidence for their benefits. On March 18, according to records obtained by Vanity Fair, the German drug manufacturer Bayer first petitioned the FDA to let it donate millions of doses of a chloroquine drug called Resochin. Normally such a move would be prohibited since the FDA had never inspected the plant in Karachi, Pakistan, where Resochin is made. But the FDA set aside its usual safeguards and approved the donation, after sampling and testing the drugs to make sure they met U.S. standards. On March 19, Bayer issued a press release to announce that it was “working with appropriate agencies on an Emergency Use Authorization for the drug’s use in the U.S.”

The next day Trump first spoke of hydroxychloroquine from the White House podium, citing its “very, very encouraging early results. And we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately.” Because the drug had “been around for a long time,” he added, “if things don’t go as planned, it’s not going to kill anybody.” Trump said he had spoken the night before with New York governor Andrew Cuomo about the drug’s promise, and “he wants to be first on line.”