Vice President Mike Pence's office threatened to ban a reporter for exposing that it knew that Pence was supposed to wear a face mask for his visit to the Mayo Clinic on Tuesday.
Pence, who leads the White House's coronavirus task force, has been widely criticised for flouting official guidance and not wearing a mask on the visit to the renowned clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Karen Pence, the vice president's wife, on Thursday defended her husband, claiming in a Fox News interview that he was not aware of the clinic's rules requiring visitors to wear a protective mask.
But in a tweet Voice of America reporter Steve Herman said that Pence's office knew all along about the face mask rule.
"All of us who traveled with him were notified by the office of @VP the day before the trip that wearing of masks was required by the @MayoClinic and to prepare accordingly," he wrote.
—Steve Herman (@W7VOA) April 30, 2020
Herman later told The Washington Post that, because of the tweet, the White House Correspondents' Association told him that he had been banned from Air Force Two, the vice president's official plane.
According to Herman, Pence's office alleged that he had violated an off-the-record agreement by publicizing the rules for the visit, which it claimed are not made public for security purposes.
—Brett Bruen (@BrettBruen) May 1, 2020
In a statement to VOA later, Pence's office said that it had not finalized the ban, but was considering imposing it if Herman refused to apologise for sharing the information.
Brett Bruen, Global Engagement Director for the White House in the Obama administration, tweeted that the rules for the hospital visit were in the public domain, so were not covered by off-the-record agreements.
As the fallout from his Mayo Clinic visit continued, in a visit to a hospital in Indiana on Thursday, Pence was pictured wearing a mask.
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