Government personnel were preparing to interview the head of an organization that funneled money from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to a high-level laboratory in Wuhan, China, when the FBI intervened, according to newly released documents.
They prepared to ask Daszak why he was chosen to be part of the World Health Organization team that investigated the origins; whether he visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab that was experimenting with bat coronaviruses and was located near the first COVID-19 cases; which Chinese government officials the team met with; and whether he collected any biological samples during the trip, according to a Feb. 2, 2021, email.
“Daszack is an extremely high person of interest and should have a thorough inspection either outbound/inbound,” one official said as Daszak prepared to fly from a New York airport to China.
The emails noted Daszak’s prior research, including experiments with a Wuhan scientist that created a bat coronavirus that could directly infect humans. Daszak’s organization also funneled millions of dollars from the NIH to the Wuhan lab, and he was a friend of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the time.
Ahead of Daszak’s Feb. 5, 2021, return, the request for an interview was rescinded.
“Please disregard,” a CBP official, whose identity was redacted, wrote in one email.
“Please be advised FBI New York requested we do not stop the subject,” another email from a CBP official said.
The FBI and CBP did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.
EcoHealth has said that the allegations against it were not accurate.
The new release came as Paul, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, prepares to question Fauci under oath about the origins of COVID-19 and Fauci’s past testimony that the agency he headed for decades never funded risky gain-of-function research.
