Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Monday released internal federal documents showing that the FBI intervened to stop U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from questioning and searching Peter Daszak upon his return to the U.S. from China in February 2021.
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Daszak was a member of a team of more than a dozen researchers “investigating” the origins of COVID-19 in Wuhan for the World Health Organization. The team had just concluded that it was “highly unlikely the virus leaked from a lab” but more research was necessary.
CBP had flagged Daszak, then president of EcoHealth Alliance, as an “extremely high person of interest” due to his 15-year collaboration with the the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and its National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded gain-of-function research.
The documents show that the NIH had asked Daszak to retrieve the original type-specimen used by WIV for genetic analysis and return it to the United States and to explain his collaboration with the lab, providing related cell phone data.
A formal Tactical Terrorism Response Team exam was scheduled for his February 5, 2021, arrival at JFK.
The planned inspection included questions about Daszak’s activities in China, contacts at the Wuhan lab, and whether he illegally transported biological samples, but the FBI’s New York Field Office requested agents “do not stop the subject” three days before his arrival at JFK Airport.
In an email dated 2/4/2021, however, a CBP official notified others within CBP: “Please be advised that FBI New York has requested we do not stop the subject below.”
The documents reveal an interagency disagreement and do not explain the FBI’s motive for halting the inspection.
The stop, search, and questioning of Daszak never occurred and the Biden administration went on to award the the scandal-plagued researcher a new grant to study bat coronaviruses a year later.
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Biden’s NIH gave EcoHealth $653,392 for a project, titled: “Analyzing the potential for future bat coronavirus emergence in Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam.” The research started on September 21, 2022, and was projected to end on August 31, 2027.
Up until then, EcoHealth Alliance had reportedly received $60 million in federal dollars, with much of the funding making its way to the infamous Wuhan Lab.
Dr. Andrew Huff, a scientist who had worked with Daszak at Eco Health, has claimed in interviews that he believed that EcoHealth is basically “a CIA front organization,” and “the United States of America is primarily responsible for COVID.”
In February of 2022, Huff sent a whistleblower complaint to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, then chaired by Senator Gary Peters (D-Mich.), stating that he suspected Daszak was “a double agent working on behalf of the Chinese government.”
In May of 2024, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finally initiated formal debarment proceedings against Daszak to prevent him receiving any more federal dollars.
The federal government’s main website on COVID-19 information was taken down in April 2025 and replaced with a new version discarding the natural-origin theory of the coronavirus and providing scientific proof that the virus was man-made and leaked from the Wuhan Lab.
Paul announced on X that he would make the records available in “The Reading Room” as part of his ongoing investigation into COVID-19 origins.
“They told the public a COVID lab leak ‘wasn’t plausible,’” Rand wrote on X. “Their own private messages say otherwise. Today I’m launching The Reading Room where the public can review records related to my ongoing investigation – not just conclusions but the actual documents.”
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