Lawyers: Investigators say whistleblower should be reinstated
Infectious diseases expert spoke out about use on virus of unproven drug
WASHINGTON — Federal investigators have found “reasonable grounds” that a government whistleblower was punished for speaking out against widespread use of an unproven drug that President Donald Trump touted as a remedy for COVID-19, his lawyers said Friday.
Dr. Rick Bright headed the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services that focuses on countermeasures to infectious diseases and bioterrorism. He had received a job performance review of outstanding before he was summarily transferred last month, with his agency email cut off without warning.
Investigators with the Office of Special Counsel “made a threshold determination that HHS violated the Whistleblower Protection Act by removing Dr. Bright from his position because he made protected disclosures in the best interests of the American public,” his lawyers Debra Katz and Lisa Banks said in a statement. The OSC is an agency that investigates allegations of egregious personnel practices in government.
The lawyers said investigators are requesting that HHS temporarily reinstate Bright for 45 days until they can complete their probe. There was no immediate comment Friday from HHS. OSC spokesman Zachary Kurz said his agency “cannot comment on or confirm the status of open investigations.”
Trump shrugged off the preliminary ruling about Bright’s complaint.
“I don’t know who he is, but, to me, he’s a disgruntled employee,” Trump told reporters. “… And I hadn’t heard great things about him, either.”
The public will soon get a chance to size up Bright. He’s been invited to testify before a House committee next week.
Bright is a flu and infectious disease expert with 10 years at the agency, known as BARDA. His particular focus was on vaccine development. He was reassigned to the National Institutes of Health to work on developing coronavirus testing.
In a formal complaint that his lawyers released this week, Bright described how tension built up within HHS as the coronavirus arrived in the U.S. and quickly defied Trump’s assurances that it would be contained.
Bright said his efforts to escalate preparedness “encountered resistance from HHS leadership, including Secretary (Alex) Azar, who appeared intent on downplaying this catastrophic event.”
Bright described a situation in which the Trump administration failed to prepare for the pandemic, then sought a quick fix by trying to rush a malaria drug to patients, though its effectiveness for COVID-19 was unproved.
His complaint detailed a frustrating attempt to jump-start U.S. production of masks and a successful effort to secure importation of testing swabs from Italy.
But his most high-profile allegations involved hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug Trump had promoted as a “game changer” with little evidence.
He said the Trump administration wanted to “flood” hot spots in New York and New Jersey with the drug.
“I witnessed government leadership rushing blindly into a potentially dangerous situation by bringing in non-FDAapproved chloroquine from Pakistan and India, from facilities that had never been approved by the FDA,” Bright said on a call with reporters earlier this week. “Their eagerness to push blindly forward without sufficient data to put this drug into the hands of Americans was alarming to me and my fellow scientists.”
He said he succeeded in limiting the use of the malaria drug to hospitalized patients.