Lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee have introduced legislation that would bar EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology from receiving funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development as well as from other financial streams leading back to the Department of State.
This move, preceded by similar efforts in recent months to block funding to EHA and labs run by America's foes, comes just days after the White Coat Waste Project provided receipts — obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit — that indicated EHA and the Wuhan Institute of Virology had their fingerprints on research that may have ultimately resulted in the deaths of over 1.1 million Americans and well over 6.9 million people worldwide.
Federal documents revealed that EHA, run by British zoologist Peter Daszak, administered at least $38 million in USAID funds to a project on which one of the Wuhan Institute of Virology's "patients zero" was listed as "investigator."
TheBlaze previously detailed the WCW's findings, which showed that this EHA subcontractor, Ben Hu, was not only among the first infected with COVID-19 at the Chinese military-co-opted Wuhan lab, but also happened to be the lab's lead gain-of-function researcher who routinely conducted deadly experiments on coronaviruses.
Extra to the funds doled out to EHA prior to the pandemic, the WCW indicated that since March 2020, USAID has handed over $11 million to the outfit. The Department of Defense reportedly provided Daszak's organization with another $26 million in that time, and the National Science Foundation gave it another $263,801. The National Institutes of Health also renewed a grant to EHA in May.
According to USA Spending, the NIH and other government agencies have been funneling taxpayer money into EcoHealth Alliance since 2008.
The 2024 State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Bill, reported by Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R), will put EHA in the same limitations camp as countries deemed foreign adversaries by the secretary of state.
The bill states that none of the funds made available by this act "may be made available to support, directly or indirectly":
Chairman Diaz-Balart will speak generally to the bill's contents outside the Capitol Friday morning.
WCW reportedly worked with Appropriations Committee members Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.), Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), and Rep. Dave Joyce (R-Ohio) on these measures in recent months.
Justin Goodman, senior vice president at WCW, told TheBlaze in a statement, “Our blockbuster investigations prove that the disgraced EcoHealth Alliance secretively shipped US taxpayer dollars from USAID to COVID’s likely Patient Zero Ben Hu at the CCP-run Wuhan lab for dangerous gain-of-function experiments on humanized mice that violated federal policy and that the FBI and other experts believe caused COVID. But, despite EHA’s calamitous collaboration with the Wuhan animal lab and its well-documented waste, fraud, and abuse, EHA has raked in over $11 million in new taxpayer funds from USAID just since the pandemic began. Enough is enough."
"Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to fund the reckless white coats who caused COVID or other dangerous virus experiments on animals at home and abroad," said Goodman. "We’re proud to work with Congress to curtail wasteful government spending on animal experiments that can prompt pandemics. The solution is simple: Stop the money. Stop the madness.”
Goodman, who suggested the White Coat Waste Project's recent revelations have helped bolster the rationale behind these spending prohibitions, is "cautiously optimistic" that the limitations will survive in the legislation that ultimately passes, in part since there is precendent: "Congress blocked 2023 State Department and Pentagon funding for the Wuhan lab, and the facility was recently disqualified from NIH funding, too. Lawmakers also enacted a WCW-backed measure last year to defund EcoHealth projects in China."
The White Coat Waste Project will endeavor to continue its work getting gain-of-function experiments defunded and "permanently cutting off the grifters at EcoHealth, the Wuhan lab, and all other animal labs run by China, Russia and adversarial nations," said Goodman.
Extra to this latest effort to preclude EHA from taking more taxpayer money, Iowa Senator Joni Ernst (R) stated Wednesday that she will offer amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act to:
TheBlaze reached out to EcoHealth Alliance and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart for comment, but neither had responded by the time of publication.
Markup of Fiscal Year 2024 State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Billyoutu.be
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