The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is investigating Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a company that worked with Dr. Anthony Fauci’s aides to receive funding for gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, according to documents. His qualifications have been officially revoked. The House Oversight Committee made the announcement Friday.

HHS has suspended and reduced funding to both Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based nonprofit that studies the pandemic. EcoHealth also terminated Mr. Daszak’s employment. According to In response to a series of letters released by the House Oversight Committee.

The agency’s actions are the culmination of an eight-month investigation that began in May 2024, when HHS suspended Daszak and recommended his disbarment, HHS wrote in the article. letter To EcoHealth’s attorney.

“The suspension and proposed ban are based on information that Dr. Daszak lacks current responsibility to participate in U.S. federal procurement and non-procurement programs,” HHS wrote.

This suspension is retroactive to the May 2024 suspension of both Daszak and EcoHealth and will continue for five years. (Related: Exclusive: House committee demands cough information from Fauci’s personal device after adviser admits to FOIA avoidance)

Republican Representative James Comer of Kentucky, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, praised the decision regarding X.

“The villainous EcoHealth Alliance and its corrupt former president, Dr. Peter Daszak, have been formally disbarred from HHS for using taxpayer funds to promote dangerous gain-of-function research in China.” Comer wrote Saturday.

🚨 Tonight, justice was served for the American people. The villainous EcoHealth Alliance and its corrupt former president, Dr. Peter Daszak, have been formally disbarred by HHS for using taxpayer funds to promote dangerous gain-of-function research in China. This decision is simply… https://t.co/TAZd0DPn4a

— Congressman James Comer (@RepJamesComer) January 18, 2025

The U.S. government awarded the 2014 award to EcoHealth Alliance. Grant This is to study viruses. The grant was also awarded to a sub-recipient, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The grant was conditional on both EcoHealth and WIV’s “compliance with certain biocontainment safety (biosafety) requirements.” According to In documents released by the House watchdog.

Months before the government awarded the grants, President Obama’s White House issued a moratorium on funding for gain-of-function research. The government defines the nature of gain-of-function research as “imparting attributes on influenza, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) viruses that would reasonably enhance their infectivity.” “This is a highly anticipated project.” Pathogenic and/or transmissible via the respiratory route in mammals. ”

During this hiatus, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NAIAD), which Dr. Anthony Fauci served as director from November 2, 1984 to December 31, 2022, wrote to EcoHealth in 2016: He warned that gain-of-function research would have the following effects: Not be funded. It also asked EcoHealth to submit documentation proving that the research does not constitute acquisition of function.

In response, EcoHealth characterized the study as “Construction of MERS and MERS-like chimeric CoVs to understand the potential origin of MERSCoV in bats by studying bat MERS-like CoVs in detail.” The possibility is extremely low.” It has some pathogenic potential. The nonprofit vowed to halt all research and immediately notify NAIAD if experiments show “evidence of enhanced viral growth beyond certain specified benchmarks with increased logarithmic growth.” .

The suspension of funding was subsequently lifted under new White House guidance issued in 2017, subject to compliance with certain provisions. One such provision was to immediately notify NAIAD if the viral potency of the virus under study increased by “1 log compared to the wild-type strain.”

Documents released by the House watchdog show that EcoHealth Alliance was two years late in submitting required documentation for the fifth year of the original grant. When it finally submitted its report in August 2021, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that the fifth year of the experiment “may have resulted in more than a one-log increase in vial activity.” did. The documents say EcoHealth made no effort to notify the NIH or NAIAD of the development.

EcoHealth disputed this assessment, arguing that the evidence from the year 5 experiment was taken from the same samples as the year 4 experiment, which did not result in a 1 log increase in viral activity. But the NIH found that the basis for their challenge was that it “describes a different experiment.” Daszak and EcoHealth argued that the experiments were different.

The NIH asked EcoHealth and WIV to provide lab notes to prove Daszak’s claims, but they were unable to provide them.

A key rationale for HHS’s recommendation to disqualify Daszak appears to be that the fifth year of the experiment showed “a significant increase in mortality and more than a one-log increase in viral activity.” Mr. Daszak claimed that it was taken from the same sample. The same level of virus increase was not seen in the fourth year of the experiment. “It is extremely important that we recognize these facts,” Daszak wrote to the NIH.

Daszak also blamed a “system lockout” for EcoHealth’s two-year delay in reporting. However, NIH “conducted a detailed forensic investigation and determined that Dr. Daszak and EHA were never locked out of NIH’s eRA grant system after June 19, 2021.”

Mr. Daszak was in consistent contact with Mr. Fauci’s aide, David Morens, through what Mr. Morens described as a “secret back channel.” Mr. Morens testified to the Oversight Committee that his use of the term “secret back channel” was a joke, but the two communicated and conducted business through personal accounts rather than Mr. Morens’ official NAIAD email. It seemed like he was gone.

“Peter, I heard that FOIA picked up the email I sent you in which I commented that Tony was brain dead. I deleted that email, but since 1998 I have I now know that all emails received have been captured and will be turned over, whether or not they are immediately deleted,” Morens wrote in an email to Daszak in 2021.

“I learned from the FOIA lady here how to delete emails after receiving a FOIA and before a search begins, so I think we’re all safe. Plus, most of the previous emails are I sent it to GMail and then deleted it,” Morens wrote in another email.

Separately, Morens wrote: “We’re all smart enough to know never to possess smoke bombs, so we won’t put them in our emails and if we find them we’ll delete them.” .