For­mer BAR­DA di­rec­tor set­tles whistle­blow­er case on Trump's mis­man­age­ment of the pan­dem­ic

Rick Bright, the na­tion’s for­mer top vac­cine ex­pert, has reached a set­tle­ment with the HHS re­gard­ing his al­le­ga­tions that the de­part­ment re­tal­i­at­ed against him for blow­ing the whis­tle about the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s in­ad­e­quate and ir­re­spon­si­ble re­sponse to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from Bright’s at­tor­ney De­bra Katz.

Back in May 2020, Bright of­fi­cial­ly blew the whis­tle over con­cerns that he was in­vol­un­tar­i­ly re­moved from his po­si­tion as di­rec­tor of BAR­DA and trans­ferred to the NIH with­out any ad­vance warn­ing. Ac­cord­ing to his whistle­blow­er com­plaint, Bright said he was pushed out be­cause of his ef­forts “to pri­or­i­tize sci­ence and safe­ty over po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy and to ex­pose prac­tices that posed a sub­stan­tial risk to pub­lic health and safe­ty, es­pe­cial­ly as it ap­plied to chloro­quine and hy­drox­y­chloro­quine, ran­kled those in the Ad­min­is­tra­tion who wished to con­tin­ue to push this false nar­ra­tive.”

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