This New York Times report about the whistleblower complaint by vaccine expert Dr. Bright is just … unbelievable:
The call in early February from the White House Situation Room came as a surprise to Rick Bright: Peter Navarro, President Trump’s trade adviser, wanted him to come present his ideas for fighting the coronavirus, alone.
Dr. Bright, whose tiny federal research agency was pursuing a coronavirus vaccine, had long been at odds with his boss at the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert Kadlec. His White House visits, twice in a single weekend, only exacerbated those tensions. “Weekend at Peter’s,” Dr. Kadlec quipped in the subject line of an email that expressed his displeasure.
The hostility between these two key officials in the government’s response to a pandemic that has claimed more than 75,000 American lives burst into public view Tuesday when Dr. Bright — who was abruptly dismissed last month as head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority — filed a formal whistle-blower complaint. The document accuses Dr. Kadlec and other top administration officials of “cronyism” and putting politics ahead of science.
Whether or not the charges are ultimately proven, the 89-page complaint along with other documents and interviews expose troubling infighting at the Health and Human Services Department, the sprawling agency that includes BARDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and other arms of government, as officials there struggled to combat the worst public health crisis in a century.
“BARDA is the front edge of the global response, in terms of organizing the financing, laying down the bets on what’s coming forward as the options on vaccines and therapies,” said J. Stephen Morrison, a global health expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, adding that the infighting had consequences. “They need to move with incredible skill and judgment and speed.”
The internal clashes extend beyond Drs. Bright and Kadlec. Fierce battles have erupted between Alex M. Azar II, the health and human services secretary, and Seema Verma, the Medicare and Medicaid administrator. Mr. Azar has also clashed with a senior White House policymaker, Joe Grogan.
But the consequences of such clashes were vividly brought to life by Dr. Bright’s complaint. Email messages show that, as early as January, when President Trump was saying the outbreak was “totally under control,” Dr. Bright was pressing for the government to stock up on masks and drugs and to commence a “Manhattan Project” effort to develop a vaccine.
But Dr. Bright was largely sidelined by personal disputes with Mr. Kadlec and his aides, some of which long predated the coronavirus, the documents suggest. By the time the pandemic arrived in force, the relationship between them had become toxic, with Dr. Bright increasingly left out of key decisions. His ideas about battling the threat “were met with skepticism,” the complaint says, “and were clearly not welcome.”
[…]
Dr. Bright’s allies say he was viewed with suspicion in the Trump administration as an “Obama holdover.” One of his earliest clashes with Dr. Kadlec centered on a long-running contract BARDA had with a small biotechnology company and a consultant who, Dr. Bright said, invoked Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, in an apparent effort to salvage that contract.
The company, Aeolus Pharmaceuticals, was developing a drug to treat the effects of radiation from a potential nuclear attack when BARDA employees decided not to extend the contract in early 2017.
John L. McManus, the company’s chief executive, said in an interview that the decision was based on a flawed process, and appealed it directly to Dr. Bright. In August 2017, Dr. Bright’s complaint says, John M. Clerici, a consultant and Aeolus board member who is close to Dr. Kadlec, pleaded the company’s case to Dr. Bright over coffee and emphasized that Mr. McManus was “friends with Jared” and “has Hollywood connections.”
The article goes on to report several instances, going back before COVID, of corrupt practices, specifically trying to promote Jared’s buddies. Currying favor with the Prince is obviously one of the paths to promotion in the Trump White House.
Let’s just say that science and public health and even fiscal responsibility weren’t criteria that the brown-nosing Trump sycophants took into consideration before awarding massive sums to friends of Jared.
The relationship between Dr. Bright and Dr. Kadlec broke last month when Dr. Bright objected to the widespread use of a malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, that Mr. Trump had promoted as a treatment for Covid-19, and then leaked emails on the subject to a Reuters journalist.
Dr. Bright began sounding alarms on coronavirus within weeks of its emergence in January, expressing a sense of urgency that he felt his superiors and the president did not share. On Jan. 18, the complaint said, he pushed Dr. Kadlec to convene high-level meetings about the virus, but Dr. Kadlec “initially rejected” the request.
Dr. Bright had been in contact with Mike Bowen, an executive at Prestige Ameritech, a mask manufacturer, who had been warning for years that the United States was too dependent on China for its mask supply.
Mr. Bowen, who in an interview called Dr. Bright a “great public servant who didn’t have the authority to do anything,” told Dr. Bright on Feb. 5 that a “Trump insider” had heard his pleas.
“Please ask your associates to convey the gravity of this national security issue to the White House,” Mr. Bowen wrote, two days before Mr. Navarro invited Dr. Bright to meet with him at the White House. “I’m pretty sure you’ll get the chance.”
It’s the combination of ineptitude and corruption that’s killing us.