White House coronavirus task force adviser Dr. Scott Atlas expressed regret for doing an interview with the RT network, an international television network backed by the Russian federal tax budget. The top health care policy advisor said he wasn't aware that they are a registered foreign agent.

Atlas' appearance in the interview came just a day ahead of Election Day. He took to his Twitter account to say that he did not know RT was a registered foreign agent. In his tweet, Atlas admitted that he did an interview with RT but regrets doing the interview and apologized for allowing himself to be taken advantage of.

Especially, he apologized for the national security community that is working hard to keep them safe. RT is owned by Russia's news agency RIA Novosti, and its subsidiary RT America has been registered with the United States Justice Department as the Russian government agent. The Kremlin spreads English-language propaganda to American viewers through RT, and a report from the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence.shows that it was involved in Russia's election interference in 2016,

A video from RT was labelled by Twitter as election misinformation last week. It is also worth noting that RT posts videos on YouTube with a disclaimer that says the Russian government wholly or partly funds the broadcaster.

The Department of Homeland Security issued an internal intelligence bulletin earlier this year, claiming Russia was spreading disinformation about mail-in voting as part of the country's broader effort to minimize American's trust in the electoral process. RT's production company's filing in the U.S. suggests it intended to inform, not influence, and isn’t trying to benefit any foreign political party or government.

In an interview with CNN Sunday, a senior White House official said the Trump administration did not give Atlas a clearance for his interview with RT. According to the official, Atlas did the interview on his own, with getting approval from the White House. The source revealed that senior aides were concerned after Atlas did an interview for RT, which said the interview was done from a property in the White House.

In his 27-minute long interview over the weekend, Atlas made a slew of baseless claims, including lockdowns killed people, suggesting that wearing masks isn't an effective way of restricting the spread of coronavirus, and even criticized testing of asymptomatic people. On top of that, he dismissed a prediction from the IHME (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University Of Washington School Of Medicine) that suggests the virus will claim 399,000 lives in the U.S. by Feb. 1 under current conditions.