The brother of Joe Biden’s White House Counselor was paid handsomely to lobby on behalf of a San Francisco-based biotechnology company that was awarded $453 million by the administration to develop an oral COVID vaccine, raising questions about the substantial government contract. Fortunately for American taxpayers, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has temporarily halted the deal, issuing a 90-day stop-work order a few days ago so his agency can review agreements for vaccine production, a national news outlet reported. “While it is crucial that the Department [of] Health and Human Services (HHS) support pandemic preparedness, four years of the Biden administration’s failed oversight have made it necessary to review agreements for vaccine production,” Kennedy says in the story, specifically naming the company in question, Vaxart.
Last summer Vaxart received the award under a $5 billion initiative, known as Project NextGen, launched in 2023 by the Biden administration to expedite the development of new vaccines. The money flows through the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), which operates under HHS’s Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response. “The funds will be used to conduct a Phase 2b comparative study evaluating Vaxart’s oral pill COVID-19 vaccine candidate against a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved mRNA vaccine comparator,” according to a Vaxart press release that explains the money will be provided by the government in two parts with approximately $65.7 million available immediately to continue study start-up activities, and the remainder of approximately $387.2 million provided when Vaxart and BARDA have determined that the study may further proceed and paid over the course of the study.
BARDA has already authorized $240 million for Vaxart’s “preliminary study,” according to the news report, and the biotech company was scheduled under the original deal to bill the government for the remaining $230 million for clinical trials. Kennedy’s stop-work order prevents Vaxart from billing Uncle Sam until further notice, though the firm is still allowed to send HHS an invoice for medical monitoring of subjects who took part in the preliminary trials. “I look forward to working with Vaxart and medical experts to ensure this work produces safe, effective, and fiscal-minded vaccine technology,” Kennedy said. The HHS secretary will also head President Donald Trump’s new Make America Healthy Again Commission to combat health challenges, including chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes and mental health disorders with a focus on environmental factors, lifestyle choices and medications, especially for kids.
Kennedy’s temporary pause of the Vaxart funding was a good move considering the controversy surrounding the California biotechnology firm and its relationship with the Biden White House. Judicial Watch exposed the questionable connection back in the summer of 2022 as part of an investigation into Biden’s laughable order to “restore ethics in government” by banning members of his administration from using public service for private gain. We obtained records showing that the small lobbying firm owned by the brother (Jeff Ricchetti) of Biden’s top advisor, White House Counselor Steve Ricchetti, profited immensely from ties to the administration after struggling for years. Records obtained by Judicial Watch show Jeff Ricchetti’s little firm had just one client in the years leading up to Biden’s election but made an unbelievable turnaround after his brother, Steve, became White House Counselor.
In fact, Ricchetti Inc.’s profits skyrocketed after Steve, a longtime Biden confidant and one of the former president’s most trusted aides, became the then commander-in-chief’s top consultant. A slew of lobbying disclosures obtained by Judicial Watch show that Ricchetti Inc. raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue in just one quarter. In the first half of 2021, the firm made $1.7 million, more than quadruple the $370,000 it earned during the same period the previous year. Most of Jeff’s new clients were in the vaccine or pharmaceutical industry. Among them was Vaxart, which paid Ricchetti Inc. a total of $690,000 for lobbying with the last $80,000 allocation reported in January 2023. The most recent disclosure lists the specific lobbying issue as “Legislative and regulatory policies regarding oral vaccine development and funding.” Though BARDA funding did not come through until later, it is safe to say that $690,000 bought the biotech firm a lot of access to the administration officials that determined who got a piece of the pie.
