Dr. Rick Bright has filed a bombshell 89-page whistleblower complaint alleging he was ordered to award lucrative government contracts to friends of Trump administration officials, including to a Big Pharma executive close to Jared Kushner, and says top Trump administration officials ignored his warnings, going back as far as January, on the novel coronavirus that has now killed over 71,000 people in the U.S.
The New York Times reports Dr. Bright, who was the nation’s vaccine chief, alleges that “a top official at the Department of Health and Human Services repeatedly pressured him to steer millions of dollars in contracts to the clients of a well-connected lobbyist.”
Bright’s complaint also alleges, the Times says, that he “has been protesting ‘cronyism and award of contracts to companies with political connections to the administration,’ including a drug company executive who is close to Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser.”
The whistle blower complaint “also said Dr. Bright ‘encountered opposition’ from his Health and Human Services superiors — including Health Secretary Alex M. Azar II — while pushing as early as January for the necessary resources to develop drugs and vaccines to counter the emerging pandemic.”
Dr. Bright was fired from his job last month as the head of a little-known government agency that does tremendously important work. He was the Director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), and essentially was the nation’s top vaccine chief. It’s hard to name a more important general in the war on the coronavirus, and yet Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar removed him from that role and placed him in a different HHS agency.
Why?
Bright alleges he refused allow President Donald Trump’s gut – with zero scientific evidence to back it up – to dictate that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquin were the cure-all for coronavirus.