Do they actually believe their own BS?
I’ll be you a dollar to a donut they didn’t even put together the study themselves. They probably paid a contractor to do it at very high cost - with the predirection that the outcome be this.
I worked for a boss once who, finding the results his analysts provided him not to his liking, would give them the answers he wanted and direct them to re-do their analysis. Sounds like he went to work for HHS.