Federal agencies appear to be obstructing the release of documents that could provide vital insights into the Biden administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and its broader global health agenda.
The <a href="https://gateway.zscalertwo.net/_sm_ctn?_sm_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.phralliance.org%2F&amp;_sm_rid=0kNJfQq1Jt3Vss1PNfNQFtvvn7McsctQP4Jq0TN&amp;_sm_cat=Miscellaneous%2Bor%2BUnknown">Public Health Reform Alliance</a>, an organization that advocates for increased transparency in the public health bureaucracy, submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in October 2024, asking for the communications of Biden’s United States Global Health Security Coordinator, Stephanie Psaki. Psaki is the sister of Jen Psaki, who was Biden&#8217;s White House press secretary.
The government has thus far prevented the release of information, with the OSTP and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) each denying that they have the documents, and redirecting the requester to the other agency.
There has been a massive political and social backlash to the secrecy, and apparent lies, regarding the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. Americans&#8217; lives were upended in the wake of the virus and the ensuing response from the government. Years after businesses were shuttered, vaccines were mandated, and students were held out of schools, Americans are still largely in the dark about what science it was all grounded in and how we&#8217;re working to make sure it never happens again.
The Public Health Reform Alliance has run into a series of roadblocks as its attempted to obtain documents that it says would shed light on the prior administration&#8217;s approach to an issue that intimately impacted the lives of everyday Americans. Its director, Martin Hoyt, told The Daily Wire that Psaki’s communications could be vital for understanding the government’s approach to global health issues, and for forecasting how the government might respond to future crises.
“After enduring the most serious public health emergency in a century, these communications may be an integral part of the U.S. government&#8217;s next response to a pandemic or health security threat. This is an issue of transparency,” Hoyt explained. “We need to understand the extent to which our public health establishment was aligned with, followed or bucked the guidance of unaccountable, politicized and possibly compromised bodies like the WHO.”
The younger Psaki served as a Senior Advisor on Human Rights and Gender Equity at the Department of Health and Human Services&#8217; Office of Global Affairs before taking her post at OSTP.
The Biden administration explained the <a href="https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Global-Health-Security-Strategy-2024-1.pdf">role</a> of the OSTP, writing in one report that it is tasked with leading “interagency science and technology policy coordination efforts” while also serving “as a source of scientific and technological analysis and judgment for the President with respect to major policies, plans, and programs of the Federal Government.”
OSTP rerouted the request from the Public Health Reform Alliance, informing the organization that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) would handle the request for the documents.
“OSTP was unable to locate any responsive records because they have been transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration,” the office said in a February 19 email viewed by The Daily Wire.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class=" wp-image-906571 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/OSTP-FOIA-300x300.png" alt="" width="625" height="625" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/OSTP-FOIA-300x300.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/OSTP-FOIA-150x150.png 150w" sizes="(max-width: 625px) 100vw, 625px" /></div>
NARA then told the Public Health Reform Alliance on March 3 that it had received the request, before going on to inform the organization that it did not have custody of the documents in a follow up email on March 19. NARA then directed the Public Health Reform Alliance back to the OSTP, despite the White House office previously stating that the documents had already been transferred.
“I have confirmed this morning that the National Archives does not yet have legal custody of the records from the Office of Science and Technology Policy from the Biden administration,” the March 19 email read. “I apologize for routing you back to them, as I know they sent you to us, but until such time as legal custody is transferred, the Office of Science and Technology Policy must be the agency to respond to you.”
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class=" wp-image-906581 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NARA-FOIA-300x148.png" alt="" width="857" height="423" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NARA-FOIA-300x148.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NARA-FOIA-1024x505.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NARA-FOIA-768x379.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NARA-FOIA.png 1278w" sizes="(max-width: 857px) 100vw, 857px" /></div>
Then, after being directed to NARA by OSTP and back to OSTP by NARA, OSTP told the Public Health Reform Alliance again that it would have to receive the documents from NARA in a March 20 email.
“We submitted a search to the e-discovery component prior to the final letter. That search returned zero hits because the files have been transferred to NARA as indicated in our final correspondence,” that email from OSTP to the Public Health Reform Alliance read.
“The American public lived and, tragically, died by the government&#8217;s edicts and recommendations,” Hoyt told The Daily Wire. “The American public deserves to know how they were formulated as well as the true intent and direction that this government planned to lead the nation for the next five years.”
Neither the OSTP nor NARA responded to a request for comment.

Biden getting vaccine

They Went Looking For Biden’s Global Health Strategy Plan. It’s Nowhere To Be Found.

Biden Administration

Coronavirus

COVID

COVID-19

Health

The Department of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/health-and-human-services" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Health and Human Services</a> (HHS) has blocked EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak from being eligible for taxpayer-funded research projects. 
In a <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/HHS-SUSP4D-Notice-of-Dr.-Peter-Daszak_05.21.2024_Redacted.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">letter</a> made public on Wednesday by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, the HHS informed Daszak that the agency has suspended him from being eligible for government grant money and is moving to make the suspension permanent. The letter comes after Daszak’s organization has come under fire for its ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, from which COVID is suspected by multiple federal agencies to have leaked. 
A separate <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/HHS-SUSP4D-ARM-of-Dr.-Peter-Daszak_05.21.2024_Redacted.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">document</a> from the HHS says that Daszak was not forthcoming with federal investigators in providing information on its work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and in demonstrating that the EcoHealth Alliance had not violated the terms of its federal grant. 
Specifically, HHS said that neither the EcoHealth Alliance nor the Wuhan lab disproved allegations that an experiment at the lab yielded an unapproved increase in viral activity. 
“I also find that the information in the record constitutes adequate evidence to demonstrate that the suspension and proposed debarment of Dr. Peter Daszak is necessary due to a cause of so serious or compelling a nature that it affects his present responsibility,” the document, written by an unidentified, HHS official said. 
The suspension of Daszak began on Tuesday and will continue as the NIH moves to formally debar the scientist. 
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“EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak’s personal debarment will ensure he never again receives a single cent from U.S. taxpayers nor has the opportunity to start a new, untrustworthy organization,” <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/release/breaking-hhs-to-debar-dr-peter-daszak-president-of-ecohealth-alliance/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup. This step comes just two weeks after the Select Subcommittee released substantial evidence of Dr. Daszak’s contempt for the American people, his flagrant disregard for the risks associated with gain-of-function research, and his willful violation of the terms of his NIH grant.”
The proposed block on Daszak comes after <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hhs-moves-to-defund-ecohealth-alliance-says-action-needed-to-protect-the-public-interest" target="_blank" rel="noopener">news broke</a> that the HHS would be suspending funding to the EcoHealth Alliance and moving to permanently bar the organization from receiving federal funds. 
“Dr. Daszak’s impending debarment does not shield him from accountability to the American people. It appears that Dr. Daszak may have lied under oath about his relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and his compliance with NIH grant procedures,” Wenstrup added.

CHINA-HEALTH-VIRUS

HHS Blocks Prez Of Group Tied To Wuhan Lab From Receiving Federal Funds

China

Department of Health and Human Services

Wuhan Institute of Virology

The head of human resources for the District of Columbia&#8217;s library system, whose six-figure job entails ensuring that fellow government employees followed employment rules, was herself in massive violation of those rules — holding a second full-time job with a private company, which she did while supposedly working for taxpayers.
Lauren Graves lied to government investigators to cover up the fact that she had one full-time job and one part-time job, both of which she focused on while neglecting her government duties, according to the D.C. Board of Ethics and Government Accountability (BEGA). She was forced to pay a fine of $17,500, a small fraction of the money she earned while neglecting her taxpayer-funded job, and has resigned from her government post, according to the Washington Post.
Graves has worked as the DCPL&#8217;s Human Resources Director since November 2021, being paid $148,000 a year. Apparently the fact that she continued to work full-time for Blackstone Consulting as Senior Human Resources Manager — where she was paid an additional $144,000 a year — went unnoticed. She also worked part-time delivering babies as a doula, with a website where people could make appointments with her during the workday.
&#8220;Witness testimony revealed that the Respondent frequently could not be reached throughout the workday regardless of whether she worked in the office or virtually,&#8221; a <a href="https://bega.dc.gov/sites/bega/files/publication/attachments/23-0100p%20L.%20Graves.NEGOTIATED%20DISPOSITION.executed%204.4.24_Redacted.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">BEGA document</a> from this month stated. &#8220;Our investigation revealed that Respondent misused her District government email by communicating with her outside employers from her District government email address. Respondent also forwarded various internal District government documents to her outside job at Blackstone such as technology agreements.&#8221;
Graves told investigators she worked the other jobs outside of her work hours, but this was false, they said. Their evidence included emails, contracts, and presentation schedules.
&#8220;Respondent acknowledges that her conduct was an egregious violation of the Code of Conduct. Respondent agrees to pay a fine in the amount of $17,500.00 to resolve this violation&#8230; Respondent agrees to payments in the amount of $383 bi-weekly, via automatic deduction from Respondent&#8217;s paycheck,&#8221; said the agreement, signed by Graves and Director of Government Ethics Ashley D. Cooks.
It would not have been hard to find out about Graves&#8217; other work. The Blackstone job is on her LinkedIn, which says she stopped the job in February 2024. It says she still works as CEO of &#8220;Cass &amp; Tree, LLC,&#8221; an HR firm, and as a doula.
The $17,000 penalty may amount to only a fraction of the taxpayer money that she squandered. Two-and-a-half years of a $148,000 salary is $370,000.
Her LinkedIn says her speciality is &#8220;DIVERSITY, EQUITY &amp; INCLUSION &#8211; Training, facilitation, climate assessments, project and change management; employee engagement. Anti-racism, Anti-bullying, sexual harassment training compliance; Allyship. Gender pay equity. LGBTQ ally training facilitation. Workplace gossip and victim shaming, Retaliation, Labor Relations and Union mediation.&#8221;
The case raises questions about how many other government employees are simply AWOL while &#8220;working remotely,&#8221; and how any of them could reasonably face consequences given the fact that the HR director who was supposed to be enforcing such rules was doing the same thing.
At the federal level, federal agencies have dragged their feet at returning to the office, despite repeated admonishments from President Joe Biden and his chief of staff that they must do so. Last month, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) wrote to the Acting Secretary of the Department of Labor to note that members of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) had finally &#8220;<a href="https://www.ernst.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/telework_protest_letter.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">showed up</a> to the office&#8230; to protest for more telework.&#8221;

DC Public Library Director of Human Resources Lauren Graves / LinkedIn

High-Paid Government Official Had Second Job While ‘Remote Working’

Fraud

Washington D.C.

House Republicans announced an investigation on Friday into gain-of-function research at the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/university-of-wisconsin" target="_blank" rel="noopener">University of Wisconsin-Madison</a> that they said could be “dangerous.”
The <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/2023.09.01-BRW-Letter-to-UW.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">letter</a> was sent by Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) to UW Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin requesting information on the university’s gain-of-function research and any information on if the university had worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology or on any coronavirus projects. 
The letter pointed to previous problems identified with gain-of-function research at the university, but the university has said that the controversial research is “needed and highly regulated.” 
Wenstrup said that he disagreed with the university’s assertion that there was enough regulation on gain-of-function research, saying that previous use of gain-of-function research at the university proved otherwise. 
“UW has already shown it has the capabilities to modify pathogens and make them more dangerous. In 2011, Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka revealed to the world that he had modified the deadly avian H5N1 influenza virus so it could spread between ferrets. This experiment enabled the bird virus to spread more easily among mammals, particularly ferrets which most closely mimic human response to the flu. The H5N1 virus is considered a ‘potential pandemic pathogen,’ which through modification or handling could cause another global pandemic,” Wenstrup wrote. 
The letter also referenced several instances where gain-of-function research was being conducted at the university and scientists working on the projects ended up in quarantine. In one instance, a researcher pricked their finger with a needle that had engineered high pathogenic avian influenza on it and had to have their family stay at a hotel while quarantining at home. 
In response to these reports, some Republican lawmakers in the state have moved to ban gain-of-function research. Rep. Elijah Behnke, Rep. Ty Bodden, and Sen. André Jacque are working on a <a href="https://wisconsinhealthnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/23-2947_1.pdf">bill</a> that would ban “institutions of higher education from conducting gain of function research on potentially pandemic pathogens, requiring reporting of the intention to conduct research on potentially pandemic pathogens, and providing a penalty.”
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The university has pushed back on the notion that the research is problematic, saying that it instead important for the public&#8217;s safety.
“The ability to safely study harmful viruses, bacteria and other pathogens is critically important for protecting public health and the food supply,” UW spokeswoman Kelly Tyrrell <a href="https://wisconsinhealthnews.com/2023/08/08/gop-lawmakers-seek-to-ban-gain-of-function-research-in-wisconsin/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> Wisconsin Health News. “UW-Madison is committed to ensuring that its researchers who work with high-risk pathogens have safe and secure laboratories and receive training and certification to ensure their investigations are conducted safely.”
Several federal government agencies believe that COVID likely escaped from a lab in China, potentially as they were conducting gain-of-function research on the coronavirus.

Northwestern Wildcats v Wisconsin Badgers

University Of Wisconsin Investigated By House Republicans Over ‘Dangerous Gain-Of-Function’ Research

University of Wisconsin

Wisconsin

A Republican senator says that federal employees are still working from home as if the coronavirus pandemic was in full swing, and is demanding an investigation into how the widespread failure to get workers back into the office is impacting taxpayers.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) calls into question government claims that remote workers can be just as productive as coming into the office, and points to various inspector general reports to prove her point. One investigation into a Department of Commerce employee found that a government worker was paid for 730 hours of work that was instead spent &#8220;playing golf, shooting pool, and going to happy hour.&#8221;
&#8220;I know what working from home actually means,” Ernst said. “It’s not fair to let the responsibilities of running an agency—and the country—fall on the shoulders of the hardworking public servants who are showing up while others are out golfing on the taxpayer’s dime.&#8221;
Ernst&#8217;s call comes more than a year after President Joe Biden pledged in his 2022 State of the Union address that &#8220;the vast majority of federal workers will once again work in person.&#8221; But by that fall, only 5% of government employees swiped into the office on a typical day. This month, White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/08/04/biden-end-remote-work-federal-employees#" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reiterated</a> the call, telling Cabinet members that it&#8217;s a &#8220;priority&#8221; that Biden expects them &#8220;aggressively execute&#8221; on in order to get &#8220;better results for the American people.&#8221;
There are some indications that federal employees who are working remotely might not be working at all.
A review of Department of Health and Human Services remote employees found that as many as <a href="https://functionalgovernment.org/internal-hhs-report-shows-20-30-of-workforce-may-not-have-been-working/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">30% did not even log in</a> to the agency&#8217;s email or computer systems on days they were &#8220;working&#8221; from home. Those findings were from 2020, the height of the coronavirus pandemic — when Americans presumably might have needed assistance from an agency with &#8220;Health&#8221; in its name.
In the private sector, companies have made the best of remote work by saving money on office costs. But federal agencies spend $5 billion a year to lease office buildings and $2 billion on upkeep, and the Government Accountability Office found that 75% or more of office space at the headquarters of 17 agencies is not being used.
The government also pays people different rates depending on whether their office is in a high-cost-of-living area or a low one — and has failed to update that pay structure to account for remote work. The government is still paying workers based on where their office is, even if that&#8217;s not where they live. That means bureaucrats could be drawing D.C. wages and living like kings in low cost of living areas, Ernst believes.
&#8220;These pay determinations should be re-evaluated, and possibly redefined, to save taxpayers money,&#8221; Ernst wrote.
Ernst <a href="https://www.ernst.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/department_of_state_letter.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sent a letter</a> to every agency&#8217;s Inspector General asking them to use internet IP addresses and physical badge swipe-ins to determine what regions employees actually spend most of their time in, as well as how much additional pay they receive by being paid for the cost-of-living area of the headquarters building rather than where they live. She also asked how agencies&#8217; various metrics, such as delivery of service and wait times, have corresponded to the increase in remote work.
She suggests that since employees are already moving to lower-cost-of-living places, federal agency headquarters could be there, too. Ernst introduced a bill called Strategic Withdrawal of Agencies for Meaningful Placement, or the <a href="https://www.ernst.senate.gov/news/press-releases/ernst-introduces-swamp-act-push-for-relocation-of-agency-headquarters-throughout-us" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SWAMP Act</a>, that would locate agencies in parts of the country with expertise in their topics — for example, the Department of Agriculture would be located in a farming state like Iowa.
She also asked the agencies to determine whether various metrics, such as delivery of service and wait times, have corresponded to the increase in remote work.
In some instances, people are already pointing the finger at absent employees for government failures. At the Atlanta Department of Veterans Affairs hospital, which has one of the longest wait times for medical care in the nation, one manager responsible for scheduling posted a picture of himself &#8220;working&#8221; in a bubble bath. The post led to criticism from another employee, who said, &#8220;It’s almost as if this employee is making a mockery of all the veterans. I can sit here in my tub and relax, and you just have to wait.”
Ernst says one of the veterans served by the hospital felt the consequences.
&#8220;One such veteran temporarily lost his eyesight while waiting six months for an appointment with an eye doctor at the Atlanta VA,&#8221; Ernst wrote.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/thousands-of-pandemic-unemployment-claims-listed-the-names-of-still-employed-government-workers-senator-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Thousands Of Pandemic Unemployment Claims Listed The Names Of Still-Employed Government Workers, Senator Says</a>

Fudge Rounds

Federal Workers Ignore Biden’s Call To Stop Working From Home — And Some Might Not Be Working At All

Joni Ernst

Office of Personnel Management

Washington

The federal government will not even attempt to recover some coronavirus-related loans that did not meet the conditions for forgiveness, in what could amount to the greenlighting of theft from an $800 billion program.
The Small Business Administration (SBA), which administered the pandemic aid <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hunter-bidens-laptop-lady-got-20k-federal-stimulus-for-female-owned-sole-proprietorship" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Paycheck Protection Program</a> (PPP), said it will not seek to collect on loans that should have been paid back, but were not, as long as the amount is $100,000 or less. The vast majority of the 12 million loans given out in 2020 and 2021 were under $100,000.
The agency&#8217;s inspector general, which is tasked with policing waste, fraud, and abuse, sounded the alarm at SBA&#8217;s decision, saying its logic does not add up and it should suspend the decision.
&#8220;SBA ending collections on PPP loans valued at $100,000 or less is not in compliance with applicable criteria,&#8221; the IG wrote. &#8220;SBA is potentially increasing the taxpayer burden by missing the opportunity to collect on these delinquent PPP loans,&#8221; it <a href="https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/2022-09/SBA%20OIG%20Report%2022-25.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>.
It said that by openly allowing Americans to keep huge sums of money they are not entitled to, the federal government is encouraging future fraud against the government.
&#8220;Ending collections could set a precedence for future stimulus programs and incentivize ineligible borrowers to obtain loans valued at $100,000 or less. However, continuing to pursue collections will help ensure accountability from delinquent borrowers and promote program integrity,&#8221; it said.
Most of the loans were &#8220;forgivable,&#8221; meaning they essentially converted into a grant. But if recipients did not meet certain conditions, the money was due back. However, the agency is essentially just letting them keep it. One million borrowers with loans totaling $17 billion have not sought forgiveness for loans under $100,000.
&#8220;SBA made a decision to formally end collections on purchased PPP loans with an outstanding balance of $100,000 or less. SBA’s rationale for the decision was to provide equitable treatment between smaller sole proprietor borrowers not protected by an incorporation shield and larger incorporated borrowers,&#8221; the IG wrote in an &#8220;alert&#8221; questioning the decision. &#8220;Therefore, borrowers that have a purchased PPP loan with an outstanding balance of $100,000 or less would not be referred to the U.S. Department of the Treasury for collections or other collection measures.&#8221;
The law allows agencies to not try to collect money that is owed to them only if the cost of recovering the money would exceed the money itself. SBA claimed that was the case, but the IG said that was doubtful, and that the SBA didn&#8217;t even run the numbers.
&#8220;SBA purchased these PPP loans because the lender identified that the borrowers were 60 days or more past due on scheduled loan payments. However, SBA did not pursue collections on these loans. Instead, SBA charged off these loans and made no referral to Treasury, without conducting a sufficient cost benefit analysis to support ending collections,&#8221; it said.
Moreover, by referring the loans to the Treasury in accordance with normal procedures, the government has ways of easily recovering money at little cost, including withholding it from future tax refunds, it said. It also puts their name on a list to prevent them from taking advantage of other government programs.
And SBA did not give up on trying to claw back money that Americans weren&#8217;t entitled to because it proved fruitless. Rather, it never even tried. &#8220;We also did not find any evidence that SBA made any attempts to collect on the purchased PPP loans. At the onset of SBA purchasing the PPP loans in July 2021, it decided not to pursue debt collection for the purchased PPP loans,&#8221; the IG wrote.
PPP loans were doled out by banks, but the government was required to purchase the loans if there were any problems. Government investigations found that many financial institutions had a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/coronavirus-loan-fraud-prevention-fell-to-unvetted-firms-that-profited-hugely-while-ignoring-fraud-congress-finds" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cavalier attitude</a> as a result, taking a hands-off approach to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/thousands-of-pandemic-unemployment-claims-listed-the-names-of-still-employed-government-workers-senator-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fraud</a> because the more loans they processed, the more money they made&#8211;and when loans were approved despite being ineligible, it was taxpayers, and not the bank, who would eat the cost.
Banks are supposed to make an initial effort at collecting money before selling the loan to the government, but SBA did not even require banks to show evidence that they made an attempt, the IG said.
The Debt Collection Improvement Act also allows agencies to suspend collections if the person has no ability to pay. However, SBA never investigated this, and some of the money may have gone to significantly well-off people.
SBA &#8220;stated in its analysis that the decision to end collections was to ensure equitable treatment between smaller sole proprietor borrowers and larger incorporated borrowers. SBA stated that if they pursued collections, the individuals associated with the generally larger incorporated borrowers would suffer nothing, whereas the individual sole proprietors, not protected by the incorporation shield, would incur collection efforts that the larger, incorporated borrowers would avoid. However, SBA’s analysis did not support equitable treatment as it did not provide any specific data on the breakdown of individual and corporate borrowers nor any quantitative assessment of effect to each type of borrower,&#8221; the IG wrote.
In a response to the IG, the SBA said it did not intend to reverse its decision, and defended itself by saying that it wasn&#8217;t worth recovering money because it has a very poor record of doing so&#8211;in one similar program, recording only 0.28% of the amount it was owed. And it asserted that Office of Management and Budget recommendations did not legally apply to it.
Earlier this month, the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/agencies-congress-didnt-even-try-to-stop-fraud-in-4t-coronavirus-bailout-audit-finds" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Government Accountability Office</a> said in a searing, comprehensive report that large portions of the $4 trillion coronavirus stimulus program were marred by federal agencies&#8217; seeming indifference to fraud, including a minimum of $60 billion in fraudulent unemployment insurance claims.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nigerian-prince-alert-feds-coronavirus-loan-program-paid-1-billion-to-people-who-applied-from-other-countries" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nigerian Prince Alert: Feds’ Coronavirus Loan Program Paid $1 Billion To People Who Applied From Other Countries</a>

Confirmation Hearing Held For SBA Administrator Nominee Isabella Casillas Guzman

SBA Won’t Even Try To Collect On PPP Loans That Are Supposed To Be Paid Back, Citing ‘Equity’

SBA Won't Even Try To Collect On PPP Loans That Are Supposed To Be Paid Back, Citing 'Equity'

Coronavirus Relief

Economy

Politics

Small Business Administration

The federal government still hasn&#8217;t put the Wuhan lab where COVID may have originated on its contracting blacklist, meaning taxpayer research dollars could continue to make their way there, a senator said Tuesday.
That&#8217;s despite a Senate assessment that COVID most likely <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/senate-investigation-concludes-covid-likely-originated-from-a-chinese-lab" target="_blank" rel="noopener">leaked</a> from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the Chinese lab&#8217;s refusal to cooperate with an NIH probe into whether a previous U.S. grant that was subcontracted to Wuhan was used for prohibited gain-of-function research.
The Department of Health and Human Services inspector general recommended that the agency look into putting WIV on its &#8220;debarment&#8221; list of prohibited contractors, and even NIH — the subsidiary agency of HHS — concurred with that recommendation.
&#8220;I also concur and urge the department to immediately and permanently debar WIV from receiving U.S. funding to ensure that not another penny from taxpayers is ever sent to China’s state-run Wuhan Institute of Virology by NIH or any other component or grantee of HHS,&#8221; Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) wrote in a letter sent to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra this week.
It would not be outside the realm of possibility for the government to steer money to Wuhan again. The previous money to Wuhan came as a subgrant of an NIH award to a group called EcoHealth Alliance.
&#8220;The NIH-sponsored collaboration with EcoHealth and WIV, &#8216;Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,&#8217; drew understandable scrutiny following the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China, within the vicinity of the lab where the experiments enhancing coronaviruses was occurring,&#8221; Ernst wrote.
Yet even after the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/agencies-congress-didnt-even-try-to-stop-fraud-in-4t-coronavirus-bailout-audit-finds">COVID</a> outbreak, and despite EcoHealth <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-watchdog-slams-faucis-agency-and-ecohealth-over-deal-with-wuhan-lab" target="_blank" rel="noopener">breaking rules</a> including failing to properly report its subcontracts and allegedly not notifying NIH of troubling test results, NIH has given EcoHealth more awards.
On Tuesday, Ernst called the situation &#8220;totally batty.&#8221;
&#8220;The total amount of American money that made its way into China’s Wuhan lab remains murky. But what we do know is that at least two U.S. agencies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), gave a total of $1.7 million,&#8221; she said in a statement.
&#8220;China’s Wuhan Institute refuses to turn over lab notes and other files related to the experiments&#8221; funded by U.S. taxpayers, she said.
&#8220;NIH continues to deny that there is any connection between the coronaviruses that were being experimented with at WIV and the virus that caused the pandemic. But if NIH does not even have this key information, how can the agency even say with any certainty what was really going on in the lab? Short answer: It can’t. Only WIV and maybe EcoHealth can and they aren’t cooperating,&#8221; she continued.
A majority of senators voted to approve an amendment offered by Ernst in May 2021 that would use the law to do what HHS has not, and block taxpayer money from going to Wuhan. But the bill that the amendment was attached to never became law. On Tuesday, Ernst introduced a standalone bill to prevent any federal agency from sending money to the Wuhan lab.
&#8220;These mad scientists should never be permitted to get their hands on bats or U.S. taxpayer dollars ever again,&#8221; she said.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hunter-biden-sought-job-for-wuhan-lab-linked-scientist-studying-herpes" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hunter Biden Sought Job For Wuhan Lab-Linked Scientist Studying Herpes</a>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/100b-bonanza-pfizer-reports-record-sales-profits-behind-covid-vaccine-oral-treatment" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$100B Bonanza: Pfizer Reports Record Sales, Profits Behind COVID Vaccine, Oral Treatment</a>

The U.S. Still Hasn’t Banned Contracting With Wuhan. Senator Says That’s ‘Batty.’

HHS Still Hasn't Banned Contracting With Wuhan. Senator Says That's 'Batty.'

Xavier Becerra

One of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/james-comer-says-hunter-biden-probe-critical-for-legislative-fix/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hunter Biden</a>’s primary liaisons to China is married to a Wuhan lab-linked scientist who Biden’s business partner thought could help their firm peddle influence, “considering how connected he is working for the Chinese CDC,” emails show.
The virologist specializes in research on sexually transmitted diseases.
Hunter Biden and his business partner Eric Schwerin made huge sums brokering international business deals, even though they often had little in the way of domain expertise. Businessmen approached the well-connected pair assuming they had deep international ties, and they would charge them for making introductions.
But when it came to China, a secret was that Schwerin often simply asked a Chinese woman he knew who had lived in Pennsylvania named Xiaoying G. Zeng, according to emails on the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. Zeng sometimes was paid a cut of the money from business deals with which the firm was involved.
Zeng is married to Hongtu Liu, a scientist for China’s Center for Disease Control, according to records reviewed by The Daily Wire.
A January 2022 study on a possible way to fight the <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35101046/">herpes</a> simplex virus, co-authored by Liu, listed his affiliations as including the &#8220;Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention-Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Joint Research Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases and Biosafety, Wuhan&#8221; as well as the “Center for Biosafety Mega-Science, Chinese Academy of Science, Wuhan.”
A May 2022 study on the human <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35655951/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">papillomavirus</a> (HPV) was also co-authored by Liu, with the same affiliations listed.
In 2006, the couple bought a home in Pennsylvania, according to public records. Liu did research at the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania. A <a href="https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S1097-2765%2810%2900074-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2010 study</a> involving RNA co-authored by Liu lists his affiliation as being with the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute, but notes that his &#8220;present address&#8221; is with China&#8217;s CDC.
The University of Pennsylvania funds the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/penn-biden-center-held-event-encouraging-closer-u-s-china-ties" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Penn Biden Center</a>, a Joe Biden-connected office and think tank, which it established in 2018. The Center has encouraged closer U.S.-China ties, and the university received tens of millions of dollars in Chinese donations shortly after the project was announced in 2017. Classified documents were found at the Penn Biden Center in D.C. just before the 2022 elections.
A Senate committee concluded that the COVID virus <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/senate-investigation-concludes-covid-likely-originated-from-a-chinese-lab" target="_blank" rel="noopener">likely leaked</a> from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But Liu’s research on sexually transmitted diseases may have been of more interest to Hunter Biden, whose laptop revealed numerous trysts with prostitutes. In one text message on the laptop, Biden’s sister-in-law-turned-girlfriend Hallie Biden and her sister discuss sharing a prescription for Valtrex, a herpes medication.
For years, Zeng served as one of Hunter Biden&#8217;s international deal-brokering business&#8217;s major entrees to China, particularly when it came to biotech, and dined with Biden at places like Bourbon Steak.
In March 2010, Zeng set up a meeting between Schwerin and Dr. Tianyi Wang, the founder of China&#8217;s State Guest Entrepreneurs Club, which &#8220;serves as the conduit for the formation of a domestic asset fund management investment and advisory service.&#8221; Wang is also president of the China International Industry and Commerce Co.
&#8220;One thing you both have to do when you are in China is see Xiaoying,&#8221; Schwerin wrote that year to Hunter Biden and Devon Archer, another business partner who last year was sentenced to prison for fraud.
In one 2014 email, a U.S. biotech exec writes to an associate, &#8220;See if Hunter’s group can get me a meeting with the CHINESE CEO at MICROPORT during the upcoming NASS meeting in San Francisco Nov12th-14th. It has to be with the top dog.&#8221; Schwerin wrote to Hunter: &#8220;I may be able to see if Xiaoying can get to them and arrange but this is something we should charge for wouldn’t you think?&#8221;
In May 2014, Hunter and Schwerin&#8217;s firm, Rosemont Seneca, helped raise <a href="https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medical-devices/counsyl-armed-28m-begins-big-rollout-brca-and-other-predictive-genetic-tests" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$28 million</a> for medical testing startup Counsyl. A month prior, as Counsyl was seeking Chinese investors without success, Schwerin floated Liu for a job at the firm.
&#8220;If Counsyl is looking for someone there they may also want to consider Xiaoying&#8217;s husband. According to Xiaoying he is starting a business that does online testing for HPV. Could be a great entree for Counsyl in China considering how connected he is working for the Chinese CDC.&#8221;
The next month, John DeLoche, another Rosemont business partner, wrote to Counsyl about their &#8220;China strategy.&#8221;
&#8220;We have deep relationships in China and could introduce you to a number of potential partners including China Investment Corporation (CIC), a $400bn sovereign wealth fund as well as several other potential investors/partners. Hunter and Devon spend a lot of time in the region and will come back to us with a full list of potential intros for your thoughts next week,&#8221; he wrote.
Schwerin forwarded the email to Hunter Biden, again pushing Liu: &#8220;Xiaoying&#8217;s husband is starting his own company with a couple of other friends from China&#8217;s CDC which would be the first company to do online disease testing in China &#8211; their initial focus would be HPV which is his area of expertise. Got to be a way to put all three parts of this together. They said this woman Shirley was heading up their China strategy but if she is coming up empty then maybe this is the perfect way to go. Should I get on the phone with Xiaoying and feel her out on the idea re CITIC?&#8221; he said, referring to a Chinese medical and investment company.
In January 2015, Schwerin sent Hunter Biden an &#8220;update&#8221; on Abbott Labs: &#8220;Supposed to get confirmation that our contract is being renewed sometime this week. Majority of it goes to Xiaoying but still would be good to have it renewed,&#8221; he said.
In June 2016, Hunter Biden wrote to one “Mr. Huang”: “It was great to meet you last week in Washington, DC. Thank you so much for the lovely gifts and please relay my thanks to your Chairman as well. I am sorry we didn&#8217;t get to spend more time together, but Eric and Xiaoying have filled me in on your plans in the U.S. and China and I look forward to being as helpful as possible.”
Zeng did not return a request for comment from The Daily Wire.

Hunter Biden Sought Job For Wuhan Lab-Linked Scientist Studying Herpes

Hunter Biden

Not only did the glut of coronavirus-tied bailouts likely result in billions of dollars of fraud, but it happened because government agencies in many cases did not take even basic steps to prevent it, and in other cases have declined to try to claw back improper payments, the Government Accountability Office said Wednesday.
In a searing, comprehensive <a href="https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-106556" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a>, the nonpartisan auditing arm of Congress excoriated the administration of almost every pandemic-era spending program—and Congress itself—for doling out $4.6 trillion with the prospect of fraud seemingly an afterthought.
Three years after the pandemic began, rampant fraud turned out to be very much a reality.
Unemployment fraud. Coronavirus-era programs flooded cash into a program that already has one of the government&#8217;s highest rates of improper payments: unemployment checks. Non-coronavirus <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/thousands-of-pandemic-unemployment-claims-listed-the-names-of-still-employed-government-workers-senator-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">unemployment checks</a> already had an improper payment rate of nearly 19% in fiscal year 2021 and more than 22% in 2022. Coronavirus programs flooded this with even easier access to even more cash, with $873 billion in checks to people who said they were laid off or had hours reduced because of coronavirus. In the best-case scenario&#8211;that coronavirus unemployment checks were no more fraudulent than the lower 2021 non-coronavirus value&#8211;&#8220;at least $163 billion in pandemic UI benefits could have been paid improperly,&#8221; the GAO said.
And that’s likely a vastly optimistic scenario, because the coronavirus unemployment program “allowed applicants to self-certify their eligibility and did not require them to provide any documentation of self-employment or prior income.” The Department of Labor, which administers the program, also encouraged states to waive a standard 21-day waiting period—the period in which anti-fraud scrutiny often occurs.
Even as it dramatically loosened controls on a program that already had an atrocious rate of improper payments, the Department of Labor did not have a dedicated fraud unit in place, and more than two years after the GAO first warned of the problem in October 2021, DOL said it was merely “in the process” of “proceeding with implementing” the recommendations—long after the pandemic has ended, according to the GAO.
PPP loans. The most prominent coronavirus bailouts—forgivable PPP and EIDL loans for businesses—were administered by the Small Business Administration, which did not even set up an anti-fraud entity until after the program was done giving out money, GAO said.
“SBA did not designate a dedicated antifraud entity until February 2022. This new entity—the Fraud Risk Management Board—is to oversee and coordinate SBA’s fraud risk prevention, detection, and response activities. Further, in March 2021, we found that SBA had not conducted fraud risk assessments for PPP and the COVID-19 EIDL program and recommended that it do so. When SBA developed its fraud risk assessments for the programs in October 2021, PPP had already stopped accepting new applications and the COVID-19 EIDL program would stop at the end of that year,” it wrote.
EIDL. PPP and EIDL together paid out nearly $1 trillion. Yet Congress explicitly blocked SBA from using tax returns to verify a business’s eligibility for EIDL loans, even though it is a highly relevant piece of information. “As a result, SBA relied on self-certification,” GAO said.
GAO reviewed a sample of loans processed without consulting tax returns and found that “about half of them” should not have been approved.
Congress removed the restriction nine months later, but SBA still didn’t bother verifying applications using tax returns in a timely manner. “Specifically, the SBA OIG found that for about 4 months after Congress removed the tax return prohibition, SBA made 133,832 COVID19 EIDL disbursements, totaling about $8.5 billion without proving applicant eligibility using official tax information,” it said.
Congress. While one might assume that agencies should not have to be told to try to mitigate fraud, Congress explicitly removed legal requirements relating to policing fraud from massive <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/100b-bonanza-pfizer-reports-record-sales-profits-behind-covid-vaccine-oral-treatment">coronavirus</a> appropriations bills. “Although federal laws have required agencies to submit specific internal control plans for relief funds in previous emergencies, there was no such requirement for the COVID-19 pandemic,” GAO wrote.
The Fraud Reduction and Data Analytics Act of 2015 and the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 “required agencies to report on their antifraud controls and fraud risk management efforts in their annual financial reports,” but that requirement ended in 2020 and has not been renewed by Congress.
Nearly half of states didn’t even try to get wrongly-paid benefits back. In May 2021, the Department of Labor’s inspector general found that when 19 states overpaid someone’s unemployment benefits, they did not even attempt to get the money back. “From April 2020 through September 2022, states and territories reported about $48.6 billion in overpayments across the UI programs,” GAO said.
No attempt to screen fraud in program that prioritized minority restaurant owners. The Restaurant Revitalization Fund attracted scrutiny for <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bidens-restaurant-relief-program-excludes-white-male-owners" target="_blank" rel="noopener">excluding white males</a>, a provision that a judge ruled was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/court-strikes-down-racial-gender-preferences-in-bidens-1-9-trillion-covid-relief-bill-that-discriminated-against-restaurant-owners" target="_blank" rel="noopener">unconstitutional</a>. The program also seemed to go out of its way to cater to minority fraudsters. While SBA, which ran the program, collected data that could be used to screen for fraud, the agency told GAO flatly that “they were not analyzing these data to detect potentially fraudulent recipients.”
Provider Relief Fund. This program, oddly enough, paid doctors and nurses who said they had lost business because of the nationwide medical emergency. In October 2021, GAO found that the Department of Health and Human Services did not even have procedures in place to recover overpayments. “While it took initial actions to address this recommendation, [HHS] suspended its post-payment recovery efforts in March 2022” to explore whether it even had the authority to claw back wrongfully-paid money. “According to HRSA, the agency is still in the process of determining its authority to recover overpayments” in some scenarios.
Emergency Rental Assistance. Another wildly controversial program involved rent payments. The program was administered by the U.S. Treasury. GAO “identified potentially duplicative emergency rental assistance payments but found that Treasury had not conducted a detailed risk assessment of the program’s susceptibility to improper payment, for example, by reviewing grantee payment data.” Treasury seemed uninterested: “Officials did not commit to additional steps to assess or address improper payment risks because of resource limitations.”
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-496616" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/gao-improper-payments.png" alt="" width="940" height="485" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/02/gao-improper-payments.png 940w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/02/gao-improper-payments-300x155.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/02/gao-improper-payments-768x396.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 940px) 100vw, 940px" /></div>
Coronavirus Food Assistance Program. The US Department of Agriculture paid $31 billion to farmers “to offset losses associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. GAO “reviewed claims of 90 producers with risk factors for improper payments and found that over half of these producers did not provide full support for their payments, potentially making it harder to identify payment errors and fraud.” It provided recommendations to USDA, but “the agency has not yet taken action to implement these recommendations.”
Affordable Connectivity Program. “In January 2023, we found that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had not developed an antifraud strategy to address identified fraud risks associated with the Affordable Connectivity Program,” GAO wrote.
The Office of Management and Budget said that federal agencies wrongfully paid out some quarter-trillion dollars in fiscal 2022. But GAO said even that shocking sum significantly understates it: OMB&#8217;s figure doesn&#8217;t include some of the most integrity-challenged programs, including pandemic uninsurance, food stamps, and welfare.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/thousands-of-pandemic-unemployment-claims-listed-the-names-of-still-employed-government-workers-senator-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Thousands Of Pandemic Unemployment Claims Listed The Names Of Still-Employed Government Workers, Senator Says</a>

Money

Agencies, Congress Didn’t Even Try To Stop Fraud In $4T Coronavirus Bailout, Audit Finds

Federal Agencies Didn’t Even Try To Stop Coronavirus Fraud, Blistering GAO Audit Says

Congress

Inspector general

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/scandalous-pfizer-exec-tells-eu-lawmaker-covid-jab-was-never-tested-to-show-it-blocked-transmission" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pfizer</a> reaped record sales and profits in 2022, as the pharmaceutical giant&#8217;s COVID vaccine and oral treatment helped bring in revenues that topped $100 billion.
In a filing Tuesday with the <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/78003/000007800323000004/pfe-12312022xex99.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Securities and Exchange Commission</a>, the Manhattan-based company reported a profit of $31 billion, up 43% over 2021. It said it paid out $9 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends, and spent $2 billion buying back its own stock.
“2022 was a record-breaking year for Pfizer, not only in terms of revenue and earnings per share, which were the highest in our long history,&#8221; Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Albert Bourla said in the report.
The $100 billion in sales was up $19 billion over 2021, and Pfizer&#8217;s operational growth was &#8220;driven primarily&#8221; by its COVID vaccine called Comirnaty and its oral COVID treatment called Paxlovid, the filing said.
Even as COVID boosters have had mixed results in stopping the contraction and spread of COVID&#8211;and have been linked to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pfizers-updated-covid-booster-linked-to-potential-stroke-risk-cdc-launches-additional-investigation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8220;adverse reactions&#8221;</a> which can be more serious than the risk of COVID itself&#8211;Pfizer expects to make billions on COVID products in the upcoming year.
For Comirnaty, Pfizer expects that 24% of the U.S. population will &#8220;receive a vaccine&#8221; in 2023, and that each of those people will receive an average of 1.3 doses on average. It believes that Pfizer will dominate 64% of that market, resulting in revenues of $13.5 billion. That&#8217;s down 64% compared to 2022, due to expected &#8220;lower compliance.&#8221;
However, Pfizer&#8217;s own calculations seem to suggest little confidence in the vaccine&#8217;s ability to prevent infection. It says more people will contract COVID in 2023 because of &#8220;waning of population immune protection due to reduced vaccination rates&#8221;&#8211;but the increase in expected symptomatic COVID cases is negligible, from 110 million to 112 million worldwide (excluding China). The company claims its vaccine lessens the severity of infections, reducing the likelihood of hospitalization.
The company estimates that 17% of those cases will take an oral antiviral treatment, and Pfizer has 90% of that market cornered through Paxlovid. That is expected to bring Pfizer $8 billion in revenue in 2023. It said that the U.S. Government has agreed to purchase about 24 million doses of Paxlovid, with part of that deal being inked in December even though the same month, the Food and Drug Administration &#8220;extended the review period&#8221; for its New Drug Application. Pfizer is currently limited in its ability to advertise Paxlovid, but a government decision is soon expected that could give it permission for full marketing, it said.
Worldwide, revenues from COVID vaccines and treatments dwarfed those of Pfizer&#8217;s other biopharmaceutical products, totaling $57 billion, with all of its cancer treatments combined bringing in only $12 billion.
In 2022, sales of the vaccine in &#8220;emerging markets&#8221; like Africa declined from $11.4 billion in 2021 to $9.9 billion, while rising in &#8220;developed Europe&#8221; from $9.3 billion to $10.8 billion and in the &#8220;developed rest of the world&#8221; from $8.1 billion to $8.3 bilion. Sales in the U.S. rose from $7.8 billion to $8.7 billion.
In &#8220;Risks Related to Our Business, Industry and Operations, and Business Development,&#8221; Pfizer noted &#8220;the possibility of unfavorable new pre-clinical, clinical or safety data and further analyses of existing pre-clinical, clinical or safety data or further information regarding the quality of pre-clinical, clinical or safety data&#8221; and &#8220;the risk that more widespread use of Comirnaty, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 bivalent vaccine or Paxlovid will lead to new information about efficacy, safety or other developments, including the risk of additional adverse reactions, some of which may be serious.&#8221;
This month, Project Veritas released video in which a man it identified as Jordon Trishton Walker, Pfizer’s director of research and development, strategic operations – mRNA scientific planner, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-pfizer-official-physically-assaults-james-okeefe-destroys-ipad-showing-undercover-recordings" target="_blank" rel="noopener">physically skirmished</a> with the undercover journalism group&#8217;s founder in order to take in iPad which contained video of Walker saying that the company was considering &#8220;directed evolution&#8221; of the virus.
“One of the things we’re exploring is like, why don’t we just mutate it [COVID] ourselves so we could create — preemptively develop new vaccines, right?” he said.
“Don’t tell anyone. Promise you won’t tell anyone,” he added. “The way it [the experiment] would work is that we put the virus in monkeys, and we successively cause them to keep infecting each other, and we collect serial samples from them.”
The company did not specifically address the video, but <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pfizer-denies-conducting-covid-gain-of-function-research-in-delayed-response-to-veritas-video" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a statement that “In the ongoing development of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer has not conducted gain of function or directed evolution research.”

Illustration: Pfizer Inc

$100B Bonanza: Pfizer Reports Record Sales, Profits Behind COVID Vaccine, Oral Treatment

Pfizer Had Highest Revenue And Profit In History Last Year, Primarily Thanks To COVID

Big Pharma

Pfizer

Securities and Exchange Commission

Thousands of federal employees may have wrongfully obtained coronavirus bailouts by claiming to be unemployed, with some even doing so from their desks at government offices, federal investigators found.
Sen. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/senator-blasts-biden-for-compiling-naughty-list-of-peddlers-of-misinformation-like-the-lab-leak-theory" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Joni Ernst</a> (R-IA) is demanding answers, saying that the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PARC) should &#8220;recover the money that was ripped off, and grant each of those who took advantage of taxpayers by collecting jobless benefits their wish to be unemployed.&#8221;
&#8220;It is appalling for anyone fortunate enough to have the reliability of a government paycheck to take advantage of financial assistance intended to provide a lifeline to Americans who lost their jobs or were unable to work as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,&#8221; Ernst added.
A variety of government programs paid significant sums to people who said their jobs had been impacted by coronavirus in 2020. The Department of Homeland Security&#8217;s Inspector General <a href="https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2022-09/OIG-22-73-Sep22.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">found</a> that nearly 2,000 applications for &#8220;Lost Wages Assistance&#8221; and unemployment insurance payouts had the names of DHS employees who were ineligible since they were, of course, employed by the government agency.
In fact, of 2,393 applications filed with DHS employees&#8217; names, only 584 could be confirmed as actually eligible for the program — and even some of those bore signs of fraud, such as incorrect amounts.
Benefits could also be paid to people whose hours were cut back because of the pandemic, but in 366 cases, the name associated with the unemployment claim actually worked overtime during the relevant period, the audit found.
In some cases, the fraud may have been the result of criminals stealing the employees’ identities and successfully filing unemployment claims with them. In others, there were indications that the employees were to blame, including that some government assistance forms were actually filled out from computers registering to the DHS computer network.
Either way, fraud was able to occur because DHS had few security measures in place for verifying assistance claims despite being tasked with keeping the nation safe.
&#8220;This occurred because FEMA hastily implemented the LWA program in 11 days, during an unprecedented pandemic, without developing program controls to prevent fraud,&#8221; auditors wrote.
Ernst wrote Friday to Michael Horowitz, chair of the PARC, that &#8220;Employees of other federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, Amtrak, and the U.S. Postal Service have also been caught fraudulently collecting unemployment payments, despite being on the federal payroll.”
On January 4, the state of <a href="https://oig.georgia.gov/press-releases/2023-01-04/oig-publishes-open-letter-regarding-ui-fraud-state-government" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Georgia&#8217;s inspector general</a> said that &#8220;we have tentatively identified over 280 full-time state employees who erroneously received unemployment insurance (UI) payments in 2020 or 2021. These payments averaged $23,700 per employee and totaled over $6.7 million. And this is a conservative estimate.&#8221;
Those included &#8220;Two Department of Human Services DCSS/DFCS supervisors who received approximately $49,730 and $36,575&#8221; and a state employee whose job was to evaluate unemployment claims, but who himself &#8220;received approximately $31,220 and who continued to update a fraudulent UI account while employed with&#8221; the Georgia Department of Labor.
In October, the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/five-current-or-former-irs-employees-charged-defrauding-federal-covid-19-relief-programs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Department of Justice</a> said it had charged five former or current IRS employees with pandemic fraud seeking more than $1 million, which they allegedly used on &#8220;cars, luxury goods, and personal travel, including trips to Las Vegas.&#8221; But the inspector general for the Small Business Administration (SBA), which administered the largest coronavirus programs, has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hunter-bidens-laptop-lady-got-20k-federal-stimulus-for-female-owned-sole-proprietorship" target="_blank" rel="noopener">acknowledged</a> that so much money was paid out in such a short amount of time, and with <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/coronavirus-loan-fraud-prevention-fell-to-unvetted-firms-that-profited-hugely-while-ignoring-fraud-congress-finds" target="_blank" rel="noopener">so few safeguards</a>, that only a tiny fraction of suspicious cases have even been investigated.
SBA doled out forgivable &#8220;loans&#8221; to business owners whose livelihood was ostensibly interrupted by COVID, known as PPP or EIDL payments. In its most recent <a href="https://www.pandemicoversight.gov/sites/default/files/2022-12/PRAC_Semiannual_Report_Sept_2022_0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">semiannual report</a> to Congress, PARC said that by matching the information of federal employees with these payments, six federal agencies found &#8220;tens of thousands of employees with SBA loans for which they were not eligible.&#8221;
Cross-referencing that list of names — people with stable jobs whose identities are readily known to the government because they work for it — could yield many more problematic unemployment claims at other agencies, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-watchdog-slams-faucis-agency-and-ecohealth-over-deal-with-wuhan-lab" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ernst</a> said. &#8220;I would encourage you to conduct a similar review to determine how many unscrupulous bureaucrats wrongfully took advantage of the federal pandemic unemployment and lost wages assistance programs,&#8221; she wrote.

Senators Meet For Their Weekly Policy Luncheons

Thousands Of Pandemic Unemployment Claims Listed The Names Of Still-Employed Government Workers, Senator Says

Department of Homeland Security

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fauci-has-a-gigantic-wall-filled-with-portraits-of-himself-in-his-home-office/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. Anthony Fauci</a>’s federal science agency and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/new-nih-letter-about-ecohealth-reporting-failure-raises-new-questions-about-gain-of-function-funding/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">EcoHealth Alliance</a>, which took a U.S. grant for bat virus research and paid part of it to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, made serious missteps, government investigators said Tuesday.
EcoHealth Alliance did not properly disclose its subgrant recipients—which included the Chinese lab which may have been the origin of COVID—and was two years late in filing a report that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) concluded may have revealed “gain of function,” or experiments which make a virus more dangerous to humans, the Department of Health and Human Services&#8217; Inspector General said in a <a href="https://oig.hhs.gov/oas/reports/region5/52100025.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">72-page report</a>. Fauci headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which oversaw the grant and is part of NIH.
&#8220;Our audit found that NIH’s own evaluation of the Year 5 progress report concluded that the research was of a type that should have been reported immediately to NIH,&#8221; it said.  The Year 5 report was filed two years late, but the IG said NIH &#8220;did not effectively monitor or take timely action&#8221; despite knowing about potential risks.
“This oversight failure is particularly concerning because NIH had previously raised concerns with EcoHealth about the nature of the research being performed. Once NIH received and reviewed the late progress report, NIH concluded the research resulted in a virus with enhanced growth,” it said.
EcoHealth Alliance, for its part, said that NIH had never followed up to ask for the late report or information about its subgrantees, and that it seemed to be on good terms with the agency given that it continued to give it funding. After the coronavirus pandemic, NIH terminated EcoHealth’s grant, and EcoHealth successfully appealed the termination—though NIH nonetheless “suspended” it.
Following the coronavirus pandemic, NIH asked EcoHealth for additional information out of Wuhan, but the lab refused to give it to EcoHealth.
EcoHealth’s president, Peter Daszak, was part of the World Health Organization-China team that dismissed the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/senate-investigation-concludes-covid-likely-originated-from-a-chinese-lab" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lab leak</a> hypothesis as “extremely unlikely”—despite having been involved in bat coronavirus projects at Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
A former vice president of EcoHealth Alliance, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/whistleblower-says-covid-leaked-from-wuhan-lab" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. Andrew Huff</a>, wrote a book titled &#8220;The Truth About Wuhan&#8221; that claimed “EcoHealth Alliance and foreign laboratories did not have the adequate control measures in place for ensuring proper biosafety, biosecurity, and risk management, ultimately resulting in the lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
In 2014, NIAID awarded a $3.7 million grant to EcoHealth for &#8220;Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.&#8221; The government banned gain-of-function research later that year.
EcoHealth paid $600,000 to WIV and $200,000 to the Wuhan University School of Public Health. Grantees are responsible for their subgrantees under federal regulations, the report said.
&#8220;EcoHealth officials met with WIV staff in person on at least 20 occasions between June 2014 and December 2019 and traveled to Wuhan, China, to meet with individuals from WIV at least annually during that time to discuss the research conducted under its subaward. EcoHealth staff told OIG that they engaged in frequent phone calls and email exchanges with WIV staff throughout,&#8221; auditors said.
In 2016, NIAID told EcoHealth that it &#8220;had determined that the research could be gain-of-function and subject to the funding pause on certain gain-of-function research,&#8221; and asked for information from EcoHealth. The group replied that &#8220;it was highly unlikely that this work would have any pathogenic potential,&#8221; but that &#8220;should any of these recombinants show evidence of enhanced virus growth greater than certain specified benchmarks involving log growth increases, or grow more efficiently in human airway epithelial cells, EcoHealth would immediately: (1) stop all experiments with the mutant [and] (2) inform the NIAID.&#8221;
The inspector general did not weigh in on whether NIAID’s determination that EcoHealth’s work did not constitute gain-of-function was accurate, saying it did not have the scientific expertise, but noted that staff should “err on the side of inclusion when determining whether to refer research that may involve [gain-of-function] for further review.”
In 2017, the ban was partially lifted to allow gain-of-function research in limited circumstances approved by a special HHS committee. In 2018, NIH determined that that approval was not necessary for EcoHealth’s work, but it appeared a close enough call that it inserted a special provision for its five-year report that “should experiments proposed in this award result in a virus with enhanced growth by more than certain specified benchmarks involving log growth increases, EcoHealth must notify NIAID immediately.”
That five-year report was due September 2019, a few months before the global pandemic began. “However, not until after NIH requested the progress report in July 2021 did EcoHealth submit it on August 3, 2021, nearly 2 years late,” auditors said.
When NIH finally saw the report, it “believed there was evidence that the research conducted by EcoHealth’s subrecipient WIV during Year 5 resulted in enhanced growth by more than one log, thus triggering the special term and condition to immediately notify NIAID and potentially requiring the research to undergo review under the HHS P3CO Framework.”
In a response to the IG, EcoHealth quibbled about what metric should be used, and also said that similar findings were in its Year 4 report, so the agency should have known. NIH said describing the results of experiments in scheduled reports is not the same as “immediately notifying” it.
Auditors found that EcoHealth did not properly report information about its subgrantees.
&#8220;Until NIH informed EcoHealth in July 2020 that it was not in compliance with these reporting requirements for its subawards, EcoHealth did not report any of its subawards on the FSRS website according to Federal requirements,&#8221; they wrote. &#8220;EcoHealth had not complied with the subaward reporting 
requirement for at least 5 years. Not reporting required subaward information limits NIH and the general public’s visibility into, and transparency of, how these grant funds were used.&#8221;
That&#8217;s something NIH should have detected, auditors wrote: &#8220;we believe NIH’s monitoring of EcoHealth’s grants should have revealed EcoHealth’s failure to comply with the subaward disclosure requirement as early as 2016.&#8221;
Ironically, EcoHealth said it has been unable to travel to supervise its subrecipients recently because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The report also said that EcoHealth should &#8220;refund to the Federal Government $89,171 in unallowable costs&#8221; including for paying bonuses and salaries in excess of a $180,000 cap. EcoHealth said it has repaid that money, but contended that NIH still owes it a larger amount in other unreimbursed spending.
Even after the pandemic, and while its five-year report remained unfiled, NIH gave more grants to EcoHealth—including special conditions that were the result of NIH’s awareness of EcoHealth’s lack of disclosure about WIV. In June 2020, it awarded EcoHealth another $3 million for viruses in Asia, and in September 2020, $1.1 million for human outbreaks of bat viruses.
After the five-year report that NIH believed may have shown gain-of-function, it yet again gave the group another award. Shortly before Fauci stepped down from four decades leading NIAID, EcoHealth received another <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fauci-pal-at-center-of-covid-lab-leak-suspicions-gets-new-bat-virus-grant" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$3.3 million</a> for a grant running through 2027.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) <a href="https://www.ernst.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2021-03-12%20Letter%20to%20HHS%20OIG%20Stevens%20Amendment%20Request.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">asked</a> the IG to examine the funding in March 2021. On Tuesday after the release of the IG report, she introduced a bill to prohibit government funding to EcoHealth. Ernst&#8217;s office said that since 2008, EcoHealth has collected nearly $80 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars, including $46 million from the Department of Health, $16.5 million from HHS, and $11.2 from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
“The Biden administration is funding EcoHealth to search for risky viruses in places all across the globe, except where they might actually find them: in their own lab experiments,&#8221; Ernst said in a statement Tuesday. “While NIH certainly shares in the blame, EcoHealth Alliance is ultimately at fault for failing to tell the world what was really going on at China’s Wuhan Institute. They are guilty of either complacency or a cover-up&#8230; We can’t afford any more of EcoHealth’s ‘prevention’ efforts. That’s why we must permanently ban them from receiving taxpayer dollars ever again.”
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/atomic-bomb-lab-studying-ways-to-combat-misinformation-including-covid-lab-leak-theory">Atomic Bomb Lab Studying Ways To ‘Combat’ ‘Misinformation’ Including COVID Lab-Leak Theory</a>

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Federal Watchdog Slams Fauci’s Agency And EcoHealth Over Deal With Wuhan Lab

Anthony Fauci

Science

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