Files released Monday by Sen. Rand Paul show the FBI’s New York field office asked CBP to cancel a planned Feb. 5, 2021 inspection of Peter Daszak at JFK Airport.
CBP’s National Targeting Center had flagged Daszak as a “high person of interest” because of more than 15 years of work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and his NIH-backed bat coronavirus research in China.
Draft plans show agents intended to question him about contacts at WIV, possible biological samples, phone data and a type-specimen NIH wanted returned to the United States, but the stop never occurred.
Paul said the records, posted through his new “Reading Room,” support his broader claim that officials downplayed or obscured evidence tied to a possible COVID-19 lab leak.
Daszak, then head of EcoHealth Alliance and a member of the 10-person WHO origins team, had already faced conflict-of-interest criticism over his financial and professional ties to WIV.