Sen. Marshall Leads Effort Demanding USAID Ceases EcoHealth Alliance Funding

Records Show EcoHealth Alliance Materially Violated Grant Requirements, Failed to Disclose COVID-19 Research at Wuhan Institute of Virology

(Washington, D.C., September 14, 2022) – Today U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. led a group of Senators on a letter to Samantha Power, Administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), demanding that her agency suspend its taxpayer-funded financial awards to EcoHealth Alliance (EcoHealth), a U.S. nonprofit organization led by Peter Daszak. USAID’s unwillingness to cooperate with congressional requests for information regarding its funding of organizations like EcoHealth has previously led Senator Marshall to delay Senate consideration of USAID nominees from confirmation, to which USAID responded by providing some records. The effort is ongoing.

The Senators’ letter outlines EcoHealth’s history of noncompliance with federal grant requirements, as well as the organization’s dishonesty about its use of federal grants to fund research at foreign labs like the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China. The Senators wrote in part,

“Today we write with deep concern about the millions of dollars USAID is actively paying EcoHealth… .  Peter Daszak through EcoHealth has provided an offshore vehicle to channel USAID and other federal grants to foreign researchers for decades… In November 2021, NIH requested WIV research records from EcoHealth, including lab records, data and field notes. EcoHealth responded to NIH that despite federal requirements to maintain those records, EcoHealth did not have them…”

The Senators also warned about the dangerous lack of U.S. government oversight over foreign gain-of-function research, which EcoHealth funded with federal grants. They wrote in part,

“In an August 3, 2022 hearing… expert witnesses testified that the type of viral collection gain-of-function research EcoHealth Alliance conducts with pandemic-capable pathogens ‘can emerge from such studies as potential weapons of mass destruction, inexpensive and easily distributed.’   The research is more likely to cause a pandemic then prevent one and has no civilian practical applications from a research perspective.”

The Senators concluded that, given EcoHealth’s material violation of grant requirements and its involvement in virus research that poses a risk to public health, USAID must protect the public interest by immediately suspending all financial awards to EcoHealth. They wrote in part,

“USAID is empowered through federal laws and policies to immediately suspend its awards to EcoHealth… It is therefore incumbent upon USAID to be responsible stewards of U.S. taxpayer funds, help protect foreign researchers from risk, and immediately suspend all awards to EcoHealth. The suspension will allow time for USAID to investigate EcoHealth’s oversight of foreign research programs, to include taking inventory of laboratory accidents and adverse events resulting in researcher illness, records-keeping audits, and assurance that EcoHealth is compliant with federal award requirements…”

Senators Tom Cotton (AR), Joni Ernst (IA), Rick Scott (FL), Rand Paul (KY), Josh Hawley (MO), Marsha Blackburn (TN), Chuck Grassley (IA), and Marco Rubio (FL) cosigned Senator Marshall’s letter.

The Daily Caller wrote an exclusive story about the Senators’ letter. You may click HERE to read the Senators’ full letter to USAID Administrator Power.

Background:

In August, Senator Marshall asked questions during a U.S. Senate hearing on the federal government’s involvement with GoF research projects in China. At the same hearing, Senator Marshall connected Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to efforts to push GoF research out of the United States and into China through EcoHealth Alliance. You may click HERE or on the image below to watch Senator Marshall’s full line of questioning during the hearing.

Recently, video was released of Hudson Institute Senior Fellow David Asher, who led the State Department’s COVID-19 origins investigation for the Trump Administration, interviewing Senator Marshall about his leadership in the investigation into the COVID-19 pandemic’s origins and the implications of future gain-of-function research to avoid these types of leaks from reoccurring. Nearly three years after COVID-19’s emergence the world still lacks basic answers on the pandemic’s origins; the Chinese cover up of its rapidly emerging spread; how the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sought to change key scientists’ opinions about a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology; and why there is a lack accountability, transparency, and responsibility among scientists and public health officials in the United States and around the world. You may click HERE or on the image below to watch the interview.

Earlier this year, Senator Marshall and U.S. Representative Jim Jordan (OH) released a video detailing Dr. Tony Fauci’s involvement with the COVID-19 China cover up. The video comes on the heels of Dr. Fauci refusing to stop using U.S. taxpayer dollars to award China grants following a question by Senator Marshall at a committee hearing. Senator Marshall and Representative Jordan have been leading the fight to uncover the origins of COVID-19. You may click HERE or on the image below to watch Senator Marshall and Representative Jordan’s video.

Recently, at a hearing when Senator Marshall asked Dr. Fauci if he would stop using U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund Chinese Communist Party research projects – such as EcoHealth Alliance’s activities at the Wuhan Institute of Virology – Dr. Fauci admitted his agency does not have any plans to do so. You may click HERE or on the image below to watch Senator Marshall’s full exchange with Dr. Fauci.

Having been the first member of Congress to sound the alarm on the House floor about the spread of COVID-19 and later serving on the frontlines as a volunteer treating patients in Wyandotte County and Seward County, Senator Marshall has been leading the effort in the U.S. Senate to get to the bottom of the origins of COVID-19.

In February 2022, Senator Marshall penned an op-ed for the Washington Examiner about the nearly ten billion dollars in funding controlled by Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins and how those dollars appear to have influenced scientists worldwide on their opinion of COVID origins.

Upon joining the U.S. Senate in 2021, Senator Marshall released a multi-step path forward on getting to the bottom of the origins of COVID-19 and holding China accountable for its actions surrounding the earliest days of the outbreak. Since then, he has introduced the Chinese Communist Party Accountability Act to place sanctions on the top two Chinese health officials with early ties to the COVID-19 outbreak who obfuscated actionable information; the Viral Gain of Function Research Moratorium Act to place a moratorium on all federal research grants to universities and other organizations conducting gain-of-function research and risky research on potential pandemic pathogens; and the National BioSecurity Improvement Act to ensure federally-funded research involving potentially dangerous pathogens does not compromise national security. You may click HERE or on the image below to read the Senator’s multi-step path forward.

The Senator introduced a resolution calling for a bipartisan Select Committee to investigate the origins of COVID-19. The Senate passed a bipartisan amendment offered by Senator Marshall and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) calling for a transparent investigation into the COVID-19 outbreak mandated by the World Health Assembly during its current session, which ends on Monday. Additionally, if China continues on its path of cover-up and obfuscation, the Marshall-Gillibrand Amendment demands a full, transparent investigation to include the U.S. and our allies and partners around the world. In fact, Senators Marshall and Gillibrand held the first joint bipartisan Senate briefing on the origins of COVID-19 bringing together healthcare, national security, medical, and academic experts.

In November 2021, Senators Marshall and Gillibrand joined forces with Senators Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to introduce bipartisan legislation to create a 9/11-style commission to investigate COVID-19 origins and identify lessons learned regarding U.S. preparedness, response, and recovery to improve our ability to respond to future outbreaks. Senators Marshall and Gillibrand were on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to discuss the legislation, which you may watch by clicking HERE or on the image below. In the following months, he secured this 9/11 Style COVID task force in the Senate HELP Committee’s bipartisan PREVENT Pandemics Act.

Senator Marshall was the first U.S. Senator to demand answers from the DOD and HHS on possible COVID-19 infections of U.S. Army troops who participated in the 2019 World Military Games that took place in Wuhan, China from October 18-28, 2019.

In September 2021, Senator Marshall released a video walkthrough of a 3D timeline of the origins of COVID-19. You may click HERE or on the image below to watch the video.

In March 2022, the U.S. Senate passed Senator Marshall’s legislation to end the COVID-19 national state of emergency that is currently in effect under the National Emergencies Act (NEA). President Donald Trump invoked the NEA in March 2020 in regard to COVID-19. In February 2021 and then again in February 2022, President Joe Biden extended it. Under the NEA, Congress is mandated to determine whether the emergency should continue, a process Congress has not fully enforced, ceding power to the executive. The U.S. House of Representatives has not voted on Senator Marshall’s legislation.

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