Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, will finally appear before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Wednesday in a hearing that will look at his group’s use of taxpayer money to fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Lawmakers will also question him about discrepancies between the statements he made in his closed-door interview and available evidence.
But just days ahead of the scheduled hearing, the White Coat Waste Project, a public-health watchdog group, unearthed a troubling finding: the U.S. Agency for International Development reportedly sent $4.1 million in taxpayer money to EcoHealth Alliance last month.
All in all, EHA is doing its dirty work in at least 20 countries around the world, playing around with deadly pathogens like Nipah, coronaviruses, and Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever.
EHA’s waste and abuse is so egregious that Congress has introduced legislation to completely defund the shady organization and passed (but not yet enacted) spending bills cutting EHA’s taxpayer funding.
As the group that first exposed and ended EHA’s calamitous collaboration with the Wuhan animal lab, we’re working with Congress to defund this rogue organization once and for all. Taxpayers should not be forced to bankroll reckless white coats who waste money, break the law, and place public health in peril. (WCWP)
Our new investigation👇https://t.co/8K29VtPQnL
— White Coat Waste Project 🥼🗑️ (@WhiteCoatWaste) April 30, 2024
“Doling out more taxpayer money to EcoHealth after the global disaster it likely started at the Wuhan animal lab is a slap in the face of all Americans and people everywhere, especially days before Peter Daszak is finally hauled before Congress,” WCWP president Anthony Bellotti said in a statement.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) wondered what taxpayers are getting out of the funding.
“The dangerous experiments on bat coronaviruses that may have caused the COVID-19 pandemic were paid for with tax dollars from USAID and funneled into China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology by EcoHealth Alliance," she said in a statement. "Even though the shady group refuses to come clean about what really happened in Wuhan, USAID keeps writing the checks to continue their risky research. What are taxpayers getting in return for the millions being paid to EcoHealth, other than the possibility of another pandemic? Americans deserve answers.”
EcoHealth Alliance defended the grant, however.
“This grant supports the Liberia Conservation Works (CW) project, a five year program funded by the United States Agency for International Development designed to protect threatened and endangered species by strengthening protected and conserved areas while promoting economic growth in Liberia," the group told National Review in a statement. "CW supports communities in becoming less reliant on forest resources by providing livelihood alternatives, including sustainable agriculture and ecotourism. CW works closely with the Government of Liberia, private sector partners, and local conservation stakeholders and communities."