June Squeal Award: To find the truth about COVID-19, we need to follow the science and the money. 

How did COVID begin? Solving that mystery is critical to preventing a future pandemic, yet those who hold the clues are refusing to cooperate with scientific investigations.

It’s no surprise that Communist China is interfering with international fact finding efforts by destroying evidence and blocking access to key locations, like the lab from which it may have escaped.

But what’s shocking is that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was paying for research on deadly coronaviruses conducted with China’s state-run Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) using your hard-earned tax dollars.

NIH gave the money to a New York nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance, which then funneled the U.S. taxpayer dollars into the state-run lab in China. 

How much? NIH claims it was $600,000, but internal emails reveal the amount may have been much more.

And what was this money used for? The collection and analysis of coronavirus samples.  

That means EcoHealth Alliance may have in its possession some of the coronaviruses from the Wuhan Institute…the same ones researchers previously reported were potentially infectious to humans. 

When NIH requested information about a virus sample and the U.S. tax dollars diverted to the Wuhan lab, EcoHealth called the questioning “inappropriate” and “heinous.” They even orchestrated an effort to taint the scientific investigation, calling the idea of a lab leak a “conspiracy theory.” 

In July 2020, when EcoHealth refused to answer these basic questions, NIH suspended its grant to EcoHealth until the information requested was provided. 

Smart move, right? 

Well, not so fast...the next month NIH awarded the same group a $7.5 million grant.

EcoHealth Alliance is violating multiple federal laws that require the group to report the amount of taxpayer money provided to the Wuhan lab and disclose how that money was spent, and instead of facing reprisals for withholding what could be key scientific evidence into the beginnings of the pandemic, NIH is rewarding the group.  

And get this, NIH isn’t the only federal agency subsidizing EcoHealth!

The group has collected more than $60 million in taxpayer dollars from other government agencies, including more than $5 million from the Department of Defense since July 2020.

To find the truth about COVID-19, we need to follow the science—and the money.

Folks, the information this group possesses—which was paid for with your tax dollars—could strengthen the case for or against the lab leak theory.

June Squeal Award: National Institutes of Health

For failing to take EcoHealth’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation into the origins of COVID-19 seriously, I am awarding my June 2021 Squeal Award to the National Institutes of Health.
 

And to hold federal grant recipients, like EcoHealth Alliance, accountable for how they spend our tax dollars, I am introducing the Stop the Outlay of Payments Act, or STOP, Act to cut off all funding to any organization that refuses to provide information about a project or fails to obey federal laws. 

Do you have an example of government waste or inefficiencies that I should take a look at? Send me an email by clicking here.

Thank you!