Peter Daszak

Wednesday

The Spectator

Donald Trump: no more Mr. Nice Guy

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump gave a wide-ranging interview to TIME magazine. The article finally dropped on Tuesday and contains lots of interesting little nuggets about what Trump’s plans are for a second term, were he to defeat President Joe Biden this fall, and how his mindset has changed from his first go as president. Reporter Eric Cortellessa notes the Mar-a-Lago chief’s attitude shift in his opener: “Donald Trump thinks he’s identified a crucial mistake of his first term: he was too nice.”This sentiment will be music to the ears of populist hardliners who felt the former president conceded too much, too often in his first term.

donald trump

Wednesday

Matthew Foldi

Inside EcoHealth Alliance’s closed-door congressional testimony

As Joe Biden met with Xi Jinping on the West Coast, one of China’s favorite scientists had a rough day on the East Coast — where he revealed to Congress that his ties to controversial coronavirus research were deeper than suspected.  Peter Daszak, head of the controversial EcoHealth Alliance, was summoned to a closed-door, transcribed interview by the House of Representatives Select Subcommittee of the Coronavirus Pandemic, where he was pressed solely by Republican lawmakers and the committee’s bipartisan staff on everything from gain-of-function research to his 2021 trip to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

ecohealth

Monday

Matthew Foldi

US government had EcoHealth researching whether humans could give bats Covid

During the height of the coronavirus, the Department of the Interior teamed up with a scandal-plagued nonprofit organization to investigate whether humans can infect bats with Covid-19. According to hundreds of pages of internal documents obtained by the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust, or PPT, the Department of the Interior worked hand in glove with EcoHealth Alliance through subsidiary agencies.

ecohealth alliance us department interior geological survey fish and wildlife service

Saturday

Matthew Foldi

Why would our government keep awarding contracts to EcoHealth Alliance?

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic that killed millions of people across the world, taxpayers may still fund one of the ethically plagued American organizations that worked closely with the Chinese lab where the pandemic is believed to have originated. The inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services testified to Congress this week that she did not recommend that EcoHealth Alliance, the NGO accused of gross conflicts of interest and mismanagement of its relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology be suspended or debarred — the process by which the federal government bans any funding to an NGO.

ecohealth alliance

Thursday

Ashley Rindsberg

The Harvard connection

On the morning of Sunday February 2, 2020, Anthony Fauci, then in the middle of putting together America’s pandemic response, received an unusual email with a highly unusual request. The email, revealed as part of a tranche of FOIA documents requested by the Intercept, was from George Daley, the dean of Harvard Medical School. “Alan Garber, Harvard’s provost, and I met yesterday with a team led by Jack Xia, the CEO of China’s Evergrande Company, and Dr. Jack Liu, Evergrande’s chief health officer,” Daley wrote. Addressing the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases as “Tony,” he asked for “whatever information you are willing to share on your current efforts to coordinate a response.

fauci

Tuesday

Stephen L. Miller

The slippery semantics of Anthony Fauci

“I do not have any accounting of what the Chinese may have done, and I’m fully in favor of any further investigation of what went on in China. However, I will repeat again: the NIH and NIAID categorically has not funded ‘gain-of-function’ research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”  That was Dr Anthony Fauci during a May 2021 congressional hearing. It kicked off a months-long national media effort to frame questions around gain-of-function research and US-taxpayer-funded virus manipulation as a Royal Rumble between Fauci and Senator Rand Paul. When he testifies or sits for friendly network interviews, Fauci depends on semantics.

fauci

Wednesday

Stephen L. Miller

The smoking gun on Anthony Fauci?

I want to prepare you for something right off the bat — nothing is going to happen to Anthony Fauci. He’s not going to prison. He’s not going to be brought up on perjury charges. He’s going to be allowed to retire quietly from his post, with presidential honors, and slip into a cast member role on Dancing with the Stars, although The Masked Singer seems more appropriate. Now that we’ve settled this and tempered any expectations a pitchforked mob might have, let's examine the latest bombshell reporting from the Intercept.