“Ninety percent of the [White House] complex most certainly learned about it in the news, as has been the case ever since,” the senior official said. “There are reports that COVID is spreading like wildfire through the White House. There are hundreds and hundreds of people who work on-complex, some who have families with high-risk family members. Since this whole thing started, not one email has gone out to tell employees what to do or what’s going on.”

The senior official told Intelligencer that not only is there no reliable information flow internally regarding the president’s condition, but there’s also no reliable information about anything else. Even his most senior staffers find themselves in the same predicament as those on the outside looking in. An opaque system designed to protect the White House from negative press is backfiring. “I think most of it is paranoia about leaks,” the official said, “Yet … the leaks continue.”…

One month before Election Day, the country struggles to find reliable information about whether the president is even healthy enough to be reelected or fully capable of running the government. Intelligencer asked the senior White House official how the country could trust others serving in the White House to be truthful about the status of their own health when carelessness and secrecy have so far been the COVID status quo.

The senior White House official said, “I can’t.”