Once Praised by Nobel Laureates, EcoHealth Alliance Is Now Broke and Run by Wealthy Real-Estate Investor Stephen Shapiro, a Senior Advisor to the Atlantic Council

The science nonprofit’s former leader, Peter Daszak, says he is unemployed and poor, and is suing EcoHealth Alliance’s board. But who is his new anonymous donor?

6 minute read

Once protected and praised by Biden officials, friendly media and powerful scientists, Peter Daszak now seems bereft and friendless. Days before Biden exited the White House, his administration formally debarred both Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance, the Fauci-funded nonprofit that subcontracted research to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Last week, Daszak filed a lawsuit seeking millions of dollars from EcoHealth Alliance, asserting that he “remains unemployed and is now poor.”

However, I have learned that Daszak is now being financed through an anonymous donor using a Schwab Charitable fund account.

Daszak served the lawsuit at 145 East 76th Street in New York City, the luxury Upper East Side residence of EcoHealth Alliance’s current board chair, Stephen Shapiro, a wealthy real-estate investor and senior advisor to the Atlantic Council, a think tank with extensive ties to the CIA.

On his LinkedIn account, Shapiro states that he made his money as a private investor and real estate entrepreneur with “ownership and operation of hospitality, commercial and multi-family projects.” Shapiro joined EcoHealth Alliance in 2023, a time when the nonprofit faced multiple investigations.

“His areas of interest include the proper organization of USG structures and processes to most effectively assert US power and influence abroad and to ensure domestic security at home,” Shapiro writes on his LinkedIn biography. “Classic geopolitical strategic relationships, particularly when filtered through the lens of modern economic and technological developments; NATO and hybrid conflict.”

Daszak states in court filings that Shapiro instructed him to fire dozens of EcoHealth Alliance employees and pay them at least two weeks’ severance for each year they had been employed. A spreadsheet of those employees and their severance payout is attached to the lawsuit. After forcing him to rid the nonprofit of most employees, Shapiro then ambushed Daszak on a Zoom call and fired him.

“On January 6, 2025,” Daszak claims, “the defendant EHA and the Board Defendants, under the leadership and special instance of the Defendant Shapiro, ambushed Dr. Daszak and terminated his employment allegedly for cause during a hastily convened Zoom conference.” Daszak added that Shapiro never stated the cause for firing him and EcoHealth Alliance failed to pay him severance for 24 years of employment, despite Daszak having raised over $150 million from major donors, corporations, foundations, and federal agencies.

Not explained in the lawsuit is how real estate investor Stephen Shapiro came to run a celebrated biomedical research organization that received millions of dollars in NIH grants while Tony Fauci led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the NIH. Shapiro has no training in science or medicine and his background in real estate seems an odd fit to lead a science nonprofit that once garnered the support of dozens of Nobel Laureates.

When the NIH cancelled an EcoHealth Alliance grant in early 2020, former NIH Director Harold Varmus called the act “an outrageous abuse of political power to control the way science works.”

Nor does anything in Shapiro’s biography at The Atlantic Council point to a scintilla of expertise in science or medicine. “Stephen Shapiro is a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a New York-area private investor,” reads Shapiro’s bio at the Atlantic Council. “He devotes much of his time to national and international security through the Atlantic Council and Business Executives for National Security (BENS), amongst other organizations, where he served both organizations as a Board Director.”

Once feted by Science Magazine’s Jon Cohen in a flattering, soft focus profile that was then promoted by Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp, Daszak appears to have fallen on hard times, claiming that he is “unemployed and is now poor,” assertions that he might find hard to back up in court. Earlier this month, Daszak flew to Washington DC to participate in a march on the National Mall and posted pictures on Bluesky that show him holding a sign demanding HHS Secretary Kennedy be fired.

Days later, Daszak flew to Toronto for the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene which charges $770 for members to attend. Seated at a Toronto restaurant, Daszak posted photos of himself having drinks with virologist Angela Rasmussen and David Morens, a former NIH official who worked for Fauci.

During a congressional hearing last year, a leading Democrat called Morens a “stain on the legacy” of the NIH , after House investigators released documents showing Morens deleted government emails to hide official records, implied that Fauci did the same, and emailed sexist comments about women to NIH grantees.

According to a review of EcoHealth Alliance’s nonprofit tax filings, Daszak’s annual compensation hovered just under $500,000. In the last decade, the nonprofit has paid him over $4.2 million.

On his CV that Daszak attached to the lawsuit, he listed the address for his home in a New York village about an hour outside Manhattan. Daszak’s original “Cobblestone Farm” house was designed by leading architectural firm, McKim, Mead & White in 1908, according to RedFin, and is situated on almost 2 acres of bucolic property with stone walls, patios, and a sunken English garden.

With five bedrooms and five baths, Daszak’s house features three fireplaces, built-in china cupboards and bookshelves, cherry wood floors, coffered ceilings, a large library, and a huge pine paneled family room. The gated driveway leads to a 4-car garage, next to a potting shed, and the property overlooks the Ramapo Mountains and Harriman State Park.

Now off the market, Daszak’s prized farmhouse is estimated at $1.58 million. Daszak did not return repeated request to explain how he remains unemployed and poor, while still affording his mortgage, as well as travel to a DC protest march and a Toronto science conference in the last couple weeks.

“Why does a guy who comes into the virology field as an outsider and a huckster, lied about Wuhan, misled NIH …. how does he make so much money?” said an NIH official, who works on infectious diseases but is not authorized to speak to the media. “How was he able to afford that off a salary paid with government grants?”

Answers to Daszak’s funding can be found at the website of the new group he founded called Nature Health Global. Employees of Nature Health Global published a paper this August that disclosed their funding. Despite being debarred by the United States federal government, Daszak is still highlighting his prior NIH funding. He also notes payments from the Chinese government, which has long supported his research.

Most striking is the disclosure of an anonymous donor, funding Daszak through “Schwab Charitable” a donor assisted charity, which allows wealthy donors to hide their names.

As I reported in 2023 for Tablet, the Center for Countering Digital Hate is a pro-censorship organization that uses the Schwab Charitable Fund to hide its donors.

If you have thoughts about who is providing anonymous donations to Peter Daszak and his new group, please put them in the comments below.