Government Debars Notorious Fauci Crony, Gain-Of-Function Mastermind Peter Daszak

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) formally debarred Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a company which coordinated with Dr. Anthony Fauci’s aides to receive funding for gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, according to documents the House Oversight Committee released Friday.

HHS debarred and cut funding to both Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based nonprofit which researches pandemics. EcoHealth also terminated Daszak’s employment, according to a series of letters the House Oversight Committee made public.

The action taken by the agency is the culmination of an eight-month investigation which started in May 2024 when HHS suspended Daszak and proposed his debarment, HHS wrote in a letter to EcoHealth’s lawyer.

“The suspension and proposed debarment actions were based on information that Dr. Daszak lacks the present responsibility to participate in United States Federal Government procurement and nonprocurement programs,” HHS wrote.

The debarment, which is retroactive to a May 2024 suspension for both Daszak and EcoHealth, will last for a period of five years. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: House Committee Demands Fauci Cough Up Info From Personal Devices After Adviser Admitted To Dodging FOIAs)

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Republican Kentucky Rep. James Comer, praised the decision on X.

“Bad actor EcoHealth Alliance & its corrupt former President, Dr. Peter Daszak, were formally debarred by HHS for using taxpayer funds to facilitate dangerous gain-of-function research in China,” Comer wrote Saturday.

🚨 Justice for the American people was served tonight. Bad actor EcoHealth Alliance & its corrupt former President, Dr. Peter Daszak, were formally debarred by HHS for using taxpayer funds to facilitate dangerous gain-of-function research in China. This decision is not only a… https://t.co/TAZd0DPn4a

— Rep. James Comer (@RepJamesComer) January 18, 2025

The U.S. government had awarded EcoHealth Alliance a 2014 grant to study viruses. The grant was also awarded to a subrecipient, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The grant was contingent on both EcoHealth and the WIV’s “adherence to specific biocontainment safety (biosafety) requirements,” according to documents published by House Oversight.

Months before the government awarded the grant, President Obama’s White House issued a funding pause on gain-of-function research. The government described the nature of gain-of-function research as projects “that may be reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to influenza, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) viruses such that the virus would have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory rout.”

Under that pause, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NAIAD), which Dr. Anthony Fauci headed between Nov. 2, 1984 and Dec. 31, 2022, issued a 2016 letter to EcoHealth warning that gain-of-function research would not be funded. It also requested EcoHealth submit documentation proving their research did not fall under gain-of-function.

EcoHealth responded, claiming their work, which they characterized as the construction of “MERS and MERS-like chimeric CoVs in order to understand the potential origins of MERSCoV in bats by studying bat MERS-like CoVs in detail,” was “highly unlikely” to have any pathogenic potential. The nonprofit vowed to cease all research and immediately notify NAIAD if their experiments showed “evidence of enhanced virus growth greater than certain specified benchmarks involving log growth increases.”

Then, under new White House guidance issued in 2017, the funding pause was lifted provided adherence to certain stipulations. One such stipulation was immediately notifying the NAIAD if a virus being studied grew greater viral capacity by “1 log compared to wild type strains.”

EcoHealth alliance had been two years late on submitting necessary documentation for year five of their original grant, documents released by House Oversight show. When they finally submitted it in August 2021, the National Institute of Health (NIH) found that a year five experiment “had possibly yielded a greater than 1 log increase in vial activity.” EcoHealth made no effort to notify NIH or NAIAD of that development, according to the documents.

EcoHealth challenged that assessment, insisting the evidence from the year five experiment was taken from the same sample as a year four experiment which did not produce a one log increase in viral activity. The NIH, however, found the basis of their challenge “was describing a different experiment.” Daszak and EcoHealth insisted the experiments were different.

When the NIH requested experiment notebooks from EcoHealth and WIV to prove Daszak’s claims, they were unable to provide them.

A key basis of the HHS reccomendation to debar Daszak was his insistence that the year five experiment, which appeared to show “substantially greater mortality rates and to more than a 1-log increase in viral activity,” was taken from the same sample as a year four experiment which did not have the same level of viral increase. “It is very important that these facts be acknowledged,” Daszak wrote to the NIH.

Daszak also blamed EcoHealth’s two-years tardy report on a “systems lockout.” The NIH, however, “conducted a detailed forensic investigation indicating that Dr. Daszak and EHA were never locked out of the NIH eRA grants system after June 19, 2021.”

Daszak had consistently communicated with top Fauci aide David Morens through what Morens described as “a secret backchannel.” While Morens testified to the Oversight Committee that his use of the term “secret backchannel” was a joke, the pair communicated and appeared to conduct business over personal accounts and not through Morens’s official NAIAD email.

“Peter I just got news that a FOIA picked up an e-mail I sent you saying Tony commented that he was braindead. I deleted that e-mail, but I now learned that every e-mail I ever got since 1998 is captured and will be turned over whether or not instantly deleted,” Morens emailed Daszak in 2021.

“I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make e-mails disappear after I’m FOIA’d but before the search starts so I think we’re all safe. Plus I deleted most of those earlier e-mails after sending them to GMail,” Morens wrote in another email.

Morens separately wrote, “We’re all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns and we wouldn’t put them in e-mails and if we found them we would delete them.”