(Ken Silva, Headline USA) EcoHealth Alliance founder Peter Daszak and recently retired university professor Ralph Baric were both collaborators with the Wuhan Virology Institute in China—where COVID-19 is suspected by some researchers to have originated.
Daszak and Baric may also have been FBI informants, according to an April 2025 letter from Sen. Rand Paul, which his office released Tuesday.
In the letter, Paul asks then-DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz about Daszak and Baric’s relationship to the FBI.
“I request that your office determine whether Dr. Daszak or Dr. Baric have ever been designated, utilized, or compensated as a [confidential human source] or [confidential informant] for the FBI or any other DOJ component,” Paul asked in his letter.
@SenRandPaul asked the DOJ Inspector General last year whether Wuhan Institute of Virology collaborators Peter Daszak and Ralph Baric were ever FBI informants.
Paul's letter was just released today. pic.twitter.com/xzCMfj7zyh— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) July 21, 2026
“If so, please assess the circumstances of that designation, including the nature of their role, the timeframe of any such relationship, and any intersection with federally funded research or programs implicating national security or public health.”
Sen. Paul sought a response from the DOJ-OIG by July 14, 2025. It’s unclear he ever received one. Neither his office nor the DOJ-OIG immediately responded to a Headline USA inquiry about the matter. The FBI declined to comment.
Sen. Paul released his letter a day after publishing other records, which show that the FBI protected Daszak from being interviewed by the Customs and Border Protection’s “tactical terrorism response team” in February 2021, when he was returning from China after participating in the WHO origins-of-COVID investigation.
Customs officials were apparently curious as to why Daszak was investigating the origins of COVID given his conflicts of interest. In 2014, Daszak and his firm were the recipients of the infamous $3.7 million National Institutes of Health grant for “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” That grant allegedly funded risky gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which some, including White House officials, think led to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Baric, who retired from his job as an epidemiology professor at the University of North Carolina last month, has also been described in legal disputes as a “close collaborator with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” In a 2021 press release, Paul’s office specifically cited Baric’s collaboration with Wuhan-based virologist Shi Zhengli, alleging the two worked to create “super viruses.”
The FBI and some other intelligence officials had surmised since early 2020 that COVID-19 likely came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It’s unclear whether Daszak and Baric—who both publicly argued that COVID was a natural disease—were part of the FBI’s assessment. However, Congress revealed in early 2024 that Baric was still communicating with an FBI agent at the time.
According to a January 2024 report from journalists Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag, an FBI informant in China also told their handler at the bureau’s Chinese Intelligence Squad that COVID came from the Wuhan lab.
“The [informant] was from Wuhan, had been vetted, and the person had provided information on three prior occasions that they were able to corroborate as true and reliable,” an unnamed person told Shellenberger and Gutentag.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
