Source: Children’s Health Defense

Peter Daszak, Ph.D., former head of EcoHealth Alliance, the research nonprofit that funneled federal money into gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is suing the organization and its board for millions of dollars, alleging the nonprofit terminated him without cause, the New York Post reported.

“Dr. Daszak remains unemployed and is now poor,” according to the lawsuit.

Just days before the Biden administration left the White House, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cut off all existing funding and barred EcoHealth and Daszak from receiving federal funding for five years.

The administration alleged that under Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance facilitated the research in Wuhan “without proper oversight” and violated the terms of its approximately $4 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant, which funded the research.

The NIH had provisionally suspended Daszak and barred him and EcoHealth Alliance from receiving funding in May 2024, pending an investigation. EcoHealth Alliance terminated Daszak in January, a few weeks before HHS made its final decision.

According to the court filings, Daszak headed up EcoHealth’s defense against government charges. But when the organization’s board realized the defense strategy was likely to fail, the board instructed Daszak to terminate most of the staff — 68 people. Each person received a severance of two weeks’ pay for each year of service, in accordance with the organization’s policy.

EcoHealth allegedly then “threw Dr. Daszak to the curb,” terminating his employment and board membership for cause, which meant he could be fired without severance pay, even though he had worked for the organization for 24 years and had raised over $150 million in research funding during that time.

By 2024, Daszak made an annual salary of $443,590, according to the organization’s tax filings. He now alleges he cannot find employment since his termination and has become “poor.”

Investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker wrote that Daszak might find his allegations of poverty “hard to back up in court,” noting that he owns a $1.58 million five-bedroom, five-bath house with a four-car garage.

In just the last month, Daszak flew to Washington, D.C., to join a protest on the National Mall, where he carried a sign demanding that the administration “Fire RFK Jr. now!” Then he flew to Toronto for the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene, which has a $770 attendance fee for members, Thacker reported.

Thacker posted pictures from Daszak’s social media of him drinking martinis in Toronto with virologist Angela Rasmussen, Ph.D., and Dr. David Morens, a former NIH official who worked for Dr. Anthony Fauci, and who is also on staff at Daszak’s new organization, Nature Health Global.

A congressional investigation last year uncovered documents showing that Morens used his private email for government business to hide official records, among other offenses.

Thacker wrote that in the last decade, EcoHealth paid Daszak over $4.2 million.

“Why does a guy who comes into the virology field as an outsider and a huckster, lied about Wuhan, misled NIH …. how does he make so much money?” an unnamed NIH official asked Thacker. “How was he able to afford that off a salary paid with government grants?”

From EcoHealth Alliance to Nature Global Health

The court filings offer a summary of Daszak’s over 25 years of work in infectious disease research in more than 45 countries. In addition to EcoHealth, he was part of the leadership team for the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) PREDICT, a pandemic preparedness program that “identified high risk of SARS-CoVs in specific caves in Asia,” and chief-of-party for USAID’s IDEAL project.

The lawsuit also notes that Daszak’s “research successes include discovering the bat origin of SARS-CoV, MERS-CoVs, SADS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2.”

The lawsuit didn’t mention that many critics now believe it is likely that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was the result of a lab leak rather than a genetic spillover event from a bat.

It also doesn’t state that those “research successes” related to coronaviruses in bats had been under scrutiny for years by NIH due to safety concerns — long before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Daszak is currently president of the nonprofit Nature Health Global, which he launched in April with former staffers, after EcoHealth Alliance closed its doors. Thacker reported that a paper published by the group in August disclosed partial funding by Schwab Charitable, “a donor assisted charity, which allows wealthy donors to hide their names.”

Thacker noted that Schwab Charitable also funds the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the influential nonprofit anti-disinformation organization that authored “The Disinformation Dozen” list. The group allegedly collaborated with U.S. and foreign governments and Big Tech to censor Children’s Health Defense (CHD), U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others for spreading “disinformation.”

Real estate investor with ties to defense industry led EcoHealth since 2023

EcoHealth reportedly shut down in April, but the lawsuit was served against the board, headed up by real estate investor Stephen Shapiro, and its individual members.

Shapiro is adviser to, and former board director of, the Atlantic Council, a think tank with a long history of ties to the defense industry. His LinkedIn page says his work focuses not on science or health issues, but on the proper organization of government structures and processes “to most effectively assert US power and influence abroad and to ensure domestic security at home.”

Shapiro joined the board in 2023, when EcoHealth was under scrutiny for its actions related to the Wuhan lab, according to Thacker.

The lawsuit alleges that Shapiro fired Daszak without explanation. Daszak also alleges age discrimination.

Thacker wrote:

“Not explained in the lawsuit is how real estate investor Stephen Shapiro came to run a celebrated biomedical research organization that received millions of dollars in NIH grants while Tony Fauci led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the NIH.

“Shapiro has no training in science or medicine and his background in real estate seems an odd fit to lead a science nonprofit that once garnered the support of dozens of Nobel Laureates.”

Related articles in The Defender

• A Look at Who’s Behind the Escalating Fake ‘Grassroots’ Campaign to Take Down RFK Jr.
• ‘For Safety of Citizens Worldwide’: HHS Suspends Government Funding for EcoHealth Alliance
• NIH Panel Quietly Approved Risky Coronavirus Experiments at Wuhan Lab
• ‘1 in a Billion’ Chance COVID Emerged From Nature, Scientist Tells Lawmakers