President Joe Biden’s reported pick to be ambassador to China repeatedly called for Bill Gates to be put in charge of the United States’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic last year, even after the philanthropist said China should not be held accountable for its role in covering up the deadly crisis.

Nicholas Burns, an ambassador during the Clinton administration and George W. Bush’s presidency, tweeted multiple times in the early months of the pandemic that former President Donald Trump should make Gates the “Coronavirus Czar.” The Harvard University professor and presidential campaign adviser for Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continued to make such a recommendation after Gates argued against holding China accountable for the pandemic, defended some of their response to the coronavirus, and disputed the idea that the World Health Organization had been improperly influenced by China.