NIH Scientists Tried to Conceal $710 Million Pandemic Royalty Payout

Data from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) revealed that the nation’s medical research agency and its scientists collected hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties for COVID-19 pandemic-related drugs and vaccines between 2021 and 2023. This information was initially kept secret by the NIH. It was made public by OpenTheBooks.com, an organization that aims to post all disclosed U.S. government spending at every level after the organization sued the NIH in federal court with the assistance of Judicial Watch.¹

After a two-year legal battle, it was discovered that $690 million in royalty payments made by pharmaceutical companies for licensing medical innovations went to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), led by Anthony Fauci, MD, the government’s highest-paid employee, and 260 of his fellow scientists employed at NIAID.²

The findings come after Dr. Fauci mocked questions about potential conflicts of interest between COVID pandemic policymakers and the recipients of personal  royalties in multiple testimonies to the House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. It is unclear if COVID vaccine-generated royalties are from Pfizer or Moderna, or whether the $400 million settlement between NIH and Moderna, a company that partnered with NIAID to develop and produce the Spikevax mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) COVID shot and generated $6.7 billion in sales, is even included in the settlement payout.^{3 4}

COVID Origin Team Got Money for Suppressing “Lab-Leak Theory”

The COVID pandemic is alleged to have claimed at least three million lives globally, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). While the SARS-CoV-2 virus’s origins remain officially unconfirmed, it is widely believed that ground zero was a high level biohazard lab in Wuhan, China.

In 2023, a high-ranking Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) whistleblower revealed that six of the seven analysts on the CIA’s COVID-19 Origin team were allegedly offered “hush money” to conceal their findings that a mutated SARS-CoV-2 virus had leaked from a biohazard lab in Wuhan. The unnamed whistleblower, reportedly a current senior intelligence agency employee, claimed that significant monetary incentives were offered to those investigating the virus’s origin to alter their conclusions on COVID’s origins.⁵

Fauci Denies Participating in Cover-Up of Mutated Coronavirus Lab Leak

Congressional representatives interrogated Fauci about the government’s early response to the pandemic, alleging that his agency funded research that caused the pandemic and coordinated a cover-up. “It is inconceivable that anyone who reads this e-mail could conclude that I was trying to cover up the possibility of a laboratory leak,” he testified before the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Washington, DC, June 3, 2024. Still, it is alleged that Fauci, along with former NIH Director Francis Collins, MD encouraged a group of virologists to publish an article in Nature Medicine concluding that a lab-leak scenario was not plausible.⁶

Fauci is no stranger to public scrutiny. Just before Memorial Day, a report implicated one of his senior advisors at NIAID, David Morens, MD for using private e-mails and phones to evade public oversight and scrutiny of their communications and official activities. Dr. Morens made reference to the practice of deleting messages, misspelling words, and using couriers to physically deliver communication to evade discovery via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).⁷

According to the U.S. Supreme Court, the FOIA was established with a straightforward purpose: “to ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society, needed to check against corruption and to hold the governors accountable to the governed.” It serves as “a means for citizens to know what their government is up to.”

Despite working together for over two decades, Fauci, in his first public testimony on Capitol Hill since leaving NIAID, said that he and Morens did not work in the same building and that Morens was not part of his inner circle. “You know, I hesitate to speculate about what someone else should do. The only people that I am involved with is my own staff, who we’ve mentioned many times in this discussion, who don’t have a conflict of interest,” Fauci said in a May 3 hearing.⁷

Fauci Says “I Do Not Recall” Over 100 Times at May 3 Hearing

During the same hearing, according to a transcript published by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Fauci claimed he “did not recall” many issues and events surrounding the pandemic more than 100 times.⁷

As for exactly which scientists received which portions of the $710 million payout during the pandemic, the NIH has not disclosed that list of names according to the New York Post.⁸

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