<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1655406187202,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"0000017d-bf0e-d1c5-a37d-bf5fe4a70000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1655406187202,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"0000017d-bf0e-d1c5-a37d-bf5fe4a70000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_55400009", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1034158"} }); rn","_id":"00000181-6de5-d082-a1ad-7ffdcea30000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video Embed
EXCLUSIVE — The ranking Republican members of four House committees are asking the Biden administration to justify its request to dole out $500 million to a foreign nonprofit group with close ties to a high-ranking administration official.
A key Health and Human Services official in charge of coordinating the agency’s COVID-19 response, Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Dawn O’Connell, was the U.S. director of the Norway-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations before she joined the Biden administration in January 2021. CEPI is now slated to receive $500 million from President Joe Biden’s proposed fiscal year 2023 budget, through no apparent bidding process, to support affordable COVID-19 vaccine development.
If approved, the funding request would dwarf the federal government’s previous $20 million distribution to CEPI and would make the United States the largest contributor to the foreign nonprofit group.
WHITE HOUSE EARMARKS $790 MILLION TO GROUPS WITH TIES TO SENIOR BIDEN OFFICIALS
“The lack of transparency and justification for this funding increase raises concerns,” the GOP lawmakers wrote in a letter to the Biden administration on Thursday. “Furthermore, CEPI’s close ties to the Obama-Biden and Biden-Harris Administrations, suggest a revolving door of politically-connected personnel where Administration friends are awarded with federal dollars.”
The lawmakers noted in their letter that O’Connell, as CEPI’s U.S. director from 2017 through early 2021, lobbied the U.S. Agency for International Development in “support of appropriations from USAID to CEPI.”
The letter was signed by House Administration Committee ranking member Rodney Davis (R-IL), House Budget Committee ranking member Jason Smith (R-MO), House Agriculture Committee ranking member Glenn Thompson (R-PA), and House Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA).
Smith said the Biden administration’s CEPI funding request “screams conflict of interest.”
“The Biden White House has a 16-month proven track record of making decisions to better their political friends and allies, not the American people,” Smith told the Washington Examiner. “The $500 million earmark for CEPI, a nongovernmental organization, in the president’s FY 2023 budget submission is just the latest example. The former director of CEPI is now employed within the very government agency charged with dispensing funds to CEPI as outlined in the budget submission.”
“President Biden has included a specific carve-out in his budget for a single organization whose revolving door to government power spans both the Obama and Biden administrations,” Smith added. “The American people deserve answers.”
A White House spokesman previously told the Washington Examiner that O’Connell did not have any involvement in the CEPI deal, saying, “Budget decisions undergo a robust, monthslong, interagency review process and are not made by any one individual.”
An HHS spokesperson previously said that O’Connell recused from matters involving CEPI through Jan. 20, 2023.
“The American People deserve to know why a foreign nonprofit with deep ties to the Obama-Biden administration is set to get a $500 million earmark under the guise of pandemic preparedness,” Davis, the House Budget Committee ranking member, told the Washington Examiner. “The best disinfectant is sunlight, which is why we are demanding transparency and answers in what appears to be the Biden administration dolling out cash rewards to its political allies on the backs of taxpayers.”
Protect the Public’s Trust, the federal watchdog group that first flagged Biden’s CEPI funding request, hailed the lawmakers for pressing the administration for more information about the contract.
“The American public is naturally skeptical of the revolving door between federal service and powerful special interests,” PPT Director Michael Chamberlain, a former Trump administration official, told the Washington Examiner. “The circumstances around the planned infusion of a half-billion in taxpayer funds to an organization with ties to high-ranking political appointees, apparently without a competitive bidding process, represents the poster child for what they are skeptical of.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
USAID, HHS, and the White House did not return requests for comment.
<mediadc-iframe data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1655405998702,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"0000017d-bf0e-d1c5-a37d-bf5fe4a70000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1655405998702,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"0000017d-bf0e-d1c5-a37d-bf5fe4a70000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"iFrameEmbedCode":"rn","_id":"00000181-6de2-ddb6-a5eb-6df3eb3d0000","_type":"00000161-b425-d761-a563-f7e77e270000"}”>iFrame Object
