Please Do Not Send Me Another Half-Ass Reported Emily Kopp “Daily Caller” Story

“She constantly gets her facts wrong, and she’s gotta stop. Serious question: Does the Daily Caller have editors?”

Nov 25, 2025

9 minute read

We’re heading into the holidays for food, family, friends and a bit of rest. Enjoy the short vacation this weekend. Eat, drink, and goof off, as much as possible, but during the holiday break, please do not send me another half-ass reported Emily Kopp “Daily Caller” story. It’s a distraction and waste of everyone’s time, because she doesn’t get her facts straight.

In response to a slew of questions I sent last week, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon confirmed that much of Emily Kopp’s “exclusive” reporting on the NIH and development of President Trump’s gain-of-function virus research policy is misleading and error-riddled. A senior Trump administration official helping to develop the policy was a bit more blunt, dismissing Kopp’s work in the Daily Caller as juvenile.

“There’s an adult process going on, and we don’t have time for kids,” he said in an interview.

“NIH is not running this process. They are participating along with the rest of us.”

Kopp is employed by the Daily Caller’s nonprofit, called The Daily Caller News Foundation, which did not answer questions I sent regarding factual errors and misleading statements in her published stories.

Spaniards don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, obviously, so this Thursday is a normal work day. Still I’m cooking up a small Thanksgiving dinner for my wife, daughter, and a brother who’s flying in from the States to celebrate. On Friday, I’m taking my brother around the city for boozy celebration, a tour bus that hits all the palaces, plazas, and museums, before ending the night at a century old sherry bar that was once a favored hangout spot for Ernest Hemingway and serves some amazing finos, amontillados, and olorosos, in an historic, dusty venue adorned with colorful bullfighting posters.

Saturday is when us Americans in Spain gather to celebrate Thanksgiving, and I’m heading over to a fellow reporter’s home early in the morning to assist with the turkey and begin the festivities. We’re starting the morning with Mimosas—Spanish cava, not French champagne—and will spend the morning cooking, goofing off, and shooting the breeze. The apartment will start to fill with people by 1, and at 2 we’ll begin serving up the food: turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and someone will likely bring a bean casserole drowning in a horrible can of Campbell’s mushroom soup they brought back “special for all of us” from the States.

The food will be traditional American, but the meal will be Spanish, stretching on for at least 3 hours, lasting well past dessert, until the last bottle of wine has been drained. No more wine?! How sad.

Sunday is gonna be another day of sight-seeing, a multi-hour lunch with friends, and ignoring professional obligations. I plan to introduce my brother to flaneuring, the European practice of random wandering throughout the city, with no destination in mind, no particular activity on the agenda. Just walk and see what comes our way.

In short, I’m gonna be busy this holiday weekend, busy doing nothing, and consumed with having fun while doing nothing. And so will you. Thanksgiving is a great tradition, an American gift to world, and I hope you’re having a blast over the next four days loafing about with family, food, and friends.

Still, I’m a journalist, and my time is never my own. I’m constantly online, reading emails, texts, and tracking the news on social media. Even while vacationing, I’m available to take your emails, calls and texts. “Daddy, you always work!” my daughter tells me.

I try my best to act on every tip, but if you’re gonna contact me this Thanksgiving weekend, please do not send me another half-ass reported Emily Kopp “Daily Caller” story.

Even I have limits.

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“I can’t take this, I’m shutting my phone down,” he said. “I’m on vacation. All these stupid texts about Emily. She doesn’t get her fact straight.”

I hung up my phone and ordered another tinto de verano. It’s August and a bit hotter than I’d like on the island of Gran Canaria. The call from the science official in HHS Secretary Kennedy’s office was the third I’d taken that day about Emily Kopp’s “Daily Caller Exclusive” alleging the NIH was scheming to subvert Trump’s executive order to end dangerous gain-of-function research—the same type of studies that likely caused the pandemic.

“I’m on vacation and don’t have time for this,” the HHS official said.

Well, I was on vacation too, but I had to make time for this. Plus, I was getting some of the same emails and texts from my contacts, all asking me if I knew what was going on. I had placed several calls to sources throughout the administration and pieced together parts of what was really happening.

Chewing up family vacation time with a bunch of calls and texts about a half-ass reported Emily Kopp “Daily Caller” story was not on the agenda when I booked the Airbnb in the Canary Islands. I screwed up the reservation, didn’t pay enough attention to the reviews, and found I had paid for a crappy apartment, with no air-conditioning, and a bug problem. Thankfully, the village on Gran Canaria’s south end had a lovely fishing port and plenty of good restaurants, all surrounded by stark desert hills.

Restaurants and bars fringed the beach, which was sheltered by a breakwater, an ideal habitat for crabs and various tiny fish, darting in and out of the boulders. I spent much of one afternoon scrambling around the rocky breakwaters, catching some of them with my daughter. Our little fish net broke, but I used a cup to catch a couple gobies, small fish that scuttle along the sand and cling to the side of rocks.

But instead of doing Daddy things and hanging out with my daughter, or trying to finish another Patricia Cornwell mystery, I was stuck on the phone, trying to figure out if there was any truth to this half-ass reported Emily Kopp story claiming the NIH had fired people trying to keep the public safe and was putting the old guard back in charge to subvert Trump’s order that the country end dangerous virus experiments.

After only a few calls to sources inside the administration, I figured out that Kopp’s August exclusive had facts that didn’t add up and resembled an exclusive investigation as much as can of paint chucked on a wall smacked of a Picasso. Unfortunately, she’s followed that first report up with even more NIH “exclusives” that lead readers down a rabbit hole of paranoia, all designed to place her at the center of the story.

“MAGA’s mighty watchdog for the NIH,” a reporter who has covered the pandemic told me. “She’s now all bark and no bite.”

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Shortly after the Senate confirmed Jay Bhattacharya as the NIH Director, he brought several allies to the agency as contractors to help him work on various policies, including an executive order President Trump signed last May to end dangerous gain-of-function research. None of these contractors had government experience, however, and this lack of skill and practice in creating federal policies ended when one of them leaked internal deliberations to Emily Kopp, causing them all to get fired.

“After a government career lasting a little over two months, this is my final day at the NIH Office of Science Policy,” contractor Ed Hammond posted, August 21, on X. A transparency activist from Texas, Hammond spent his short time in the government battling everyone around him at the NIH, including fights with another contractor, microbiologist Alex Washburne.

Along with two biology professors, Washburne published a 2022 paper that found the COVID virus was likely man-made. Washburne’s analysis was later buttressed when drafts of a research proposal to perform gain-of-function research became public in 2024. So when he was asked if he would like to join NIH as a contractor to work on a new policy to stop dangerous gain-of-function research, Washburne jumped at the opportunity.

Working together, Hammond, Washburne, and NIH employees faced a daunting task to reform gain-of-function policies. Since virus research involves all agencies funding scientific studies as well as intelligence agencies that negotiate and monitor bioweapons treaties, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is overseeing the process.

So to get the policy they want, NIH has to work—not just with OSTP—but with departments, agencies, and offices scattered across the federal bureaucracy, including HHS, FDA, USDA, CDC, DOD, State Department, DNI, CIA, and branches of the military.

The last time the federal government made a major update to gain-of-function virus research guidance was in 2017. When White House National Security Council Advisor Hillary Carter emailed the virus research policy’s final version, she copied in those who had participated in the process. The list of government employees stretches on for four pages.

Emails regarding the government’s gain-of-function policy were provided to me by an anonymous intelligence official.

“Please find the final version attached,” Carter emailed. “We expect the P3CO policy and summary of conclusions from the Paper Deputies to be sent out through ExecSec channels later.”

In short, the process to rewrite virus research policy is incredibly byzantine, complicated by dozens of stake holders coming at the issue from different viewpoints. Even agreeing on the same terminology is sometimes fraught, as some offices use different language to describe the same thing. Yet, this complexity was lost on transparency activist Ed Hammond, who saw himself as a lone wolf battling against NIH officials to make the policy stronger and save the world from future pandemics.

And unbeknownst to his NIH colleagues, Hammond began secretly dishing inside information and details of his arguments to Emily Kopp.

Kopp is the perfect sounding board for the world’s Ed Hammonds. Like Hammond, Kopp has little to no understanding of science and no experience in government policy-making. Kopp did make a name for herself during the pandemic as the lead reporter on COVID’s origin for the nonprofit U. S. Right to Know, but her impressive reporting was only possible because she was supported by the group’s massive litigation machine.

Before hiring Kopp, U.S. Right to Know had worked with former government insiders to file targeted FOIA requests, and then poured thousands of dollars into litigation, hiring lawyers who sued to get those internal documents. When U.S. Right to Know brought Kopp on board, they then passed her those documents, which she then farmed out to experts to review for the stories that helped to make her name. (Full disclosure: when U.S. Right Know executive director Gary Ruskin told me he was reviewing Kopp’s application for a job, I recommended at the time that he hire her as she had a good track record of reporting.)

Since Kopp left U.S. Right to Know to join Daily Caller in January, she lost all of this. No massive litigation machine to dump an exclusive set of documents in her lap. No coterie of science experts to explain to her what those documents mean. Kopp now has to hunt down stories just like other reporters.

But with few sources inside the government and a poor understanding of science and policy, Kopp has been reduced to reporting rumors in Daily Caller “exclusives” that are misleading and rife with falsehoods.

Last August’s drama began when Kopp called contractor Alex Washburne to inform him that she had a Daily Caller exclusive coming. Kopp and Washburne had known each other for some time. After Washburne helped Kopp review documents for one of her stories at U.S. Right to Know, the two appeared together on a Reason podcast in January to discuss the matter.

But on the August call, Kopp informed Washburne that he was no longer her helper, he was now her target.

“I have a dead mom Alex,” Kopp texted. “It’s what propelled me into doing the COVID origins work.”

Thinking that her mom died of COVID, Washburne responded. “I’m very sorry about your mom, genuinely, and I hope you can tap intothe friendship we have to remember who I am and how much I mean that.”

Kopp told Washburne that two sources told her that he was working with NIH official Jeffrey Taubenberger to undermine Trump’s executive order to end gain-of-function research. She also alleged that Washburne had a conflict of interest because he was somehow developing gain-of-function bioweapons himself.

When Washburne pushed Kopp to explain herself, he realized her source was Ed Hammond, who had been fighting with everyone inside the NIH.

Washburne then notified NIH leadership there was a leak, and the director of OSTP then told NIH to fire all the contractors for discussing internal deliberations with outsiders. Washburne survived at first, but the White House later shut down the entire contract that brought him and others to help advise the NIH.

After Kopp’s phone call triggered the firings, the firings then triggered the emails and text messages that I and others began receiving during the August vacation. But when Kopp rolled out her Daily Caller “exclusive” some days later, she played up the firing as a battle between “biosafety hawk” Ed Hammond who had been “marginalized” in favor of NIH officials Jeffrey Taubenberger and Lyric Jorgenson.

At no point do we learn that it was Kopp herself whose phone call led to the firings.

Kopp’s story makes the bizarre claim that the NIH is undermining the White House policy—a policy that is controlled by the White House and involves input from across the federal government. How the NIH has managed to take over the White House and usurp input from the Department of Defense and the CIA is never explained, however.

Kopp also misleads readers, as neither Taubenberger nor Jorgenson attend the White House meetings to hammer out the new policy. Deputy Director Matt Memoli is the NIH’s lead on negotiations with the White House, and agencies scattered across the federal government.

HHS confirmed my reporting in a statement.

“NIAID and its acting director, Dr. Taubenberger, will follow the policy once OSTP issues it,” said HHS spokesperson, Andrew Nixon, in an email. “He has not contributed to the development of the policy and has not attended any meetings related to the Executive Order. NIH’s input to the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is being coordinated by NIH leadership, primarily Director Bhattacharya, along with Dr. Matt Memoli, his Deputy Director.”

Nixon added “there is no basis for the claim that anyone was ‘marginalized’ for advocating a stricter policy” as Hammond, nor any of the contractors, ever had the authority to develop the policy. Hammond’s contract was to advise the NIH. Oddly enough, when Hammond was offered the chance to work at OSTP where he could have directly negotiated with other agencies outside the NIH, he declined.

As for Kopp’s claim that Washburne is developing a possible bioweapon, Washburne told me that this is not true. In fact, Kopp’s “investigation” has not uncovered a scintilla of evidence that Washburne has such a weapon in development—not a paper, study, nor a patent. She’s just repeating garbled claims about Washburne’s past scientific work that she doesn’t understand.

To be clear, Washburne doesn’t even work in a lab, so how is working on a bioweapon? Kopp’s reporting on this is so terrible that the Daily Caller should either produce evidence Washburne is developing a bioweapon or retract the defamatory claims. The Daily Caller News Foundation did not provide any evidence to Kopp’s claim that Washburne has a bioweapon.

Taubenberger remains a favored boogeyman in Kopp’s reporting because he helped lead virology research for years under Tony Fauci. But Taubenberger’s job has been to implement NIH virus policies not to write them. Yet, Kopp doesn’t seem grasp the difference. Taubenberger is not writing the new policy and he wasn’t involved in writing prior gain-of-function policies.

Taubenberger’s name, for example, doesn’t appear among the list of NIH employees and other government officials who wrote the 2017 policy. Click on the link and read the emails yourself.

Another Kopp boogeyman is Lyric Jorgenson, who directs NIH policy.

“NIH Associate Director for Science Policy Lyric Jorgenson, who also led former Biden’s GOF research policy and whose expertise is in neuroscience, now leads NIH on writing Trump’s policy, according to two government sources,” Kopp falsely reported in August.

The idea that Lyric Jorgenson was in charge of Biden’s policy and somehow strongarmed the White House and all the other agencies involved—DOD, CIA, State Department, etc—is just risible. In fact, Jorgenson is not even leading the NIH’s current effort on the virus research policy, and she is not attending the White House meetings where the policy is being written.

So why does Kopp report that Lyric Jorgenson is in charge?

Washburne told me the answer is quite simple. Even before he came into the government as a contractor, Ed Hammond hated Lyric Jorgenson. When he got to the NIH, he actually thought he would get Jorgeson’s job, and he apparently spread gossip about her to Kopp as retribution.

“Ed wanted her job, that’s it. Full stop,” Washburne told me. He added that Hammond also didn’t get along with Taubenberger and is likely Kopp’s source for targeting Taubenberger as well.

Ed Hammond told me that he did not want Lyric Jorgenson’s job. “Now, a more formal position at a high rank specifically on biosecurity and biosafety policy,” Hammond told me “that was something that I was potentially interested in, but that’s very different than Lyric’s job.” However, it is unclear how someone with no scientific experience, and MA/MS in Latin American Studies and Community and Regional Planning would qualify for a high ranking biosecurity position in the United States federal government.

According to Kopp’s texts, her series of factual errors and other misreporting all came from a desire for good policy. The irony, however, is that Kopp’s August report to target Washburne led to the firing of her source—Hammond—and all the other contractors advising the NIH on virus research policy.

An odd outcome for someone professing “I just want a good policy.”

“She constantly gets her facts wrong, and she’s gotta stop,” said an intelligence official helping to write Trump’s gain-of-function policy. The official confirmed that Taubenberger and Jorgenson have never attended any of the White House meetings. “She has no sources, and doesn’t know who is writing the policy and how it’s negotiated,” the intelligence official added.

“Serious question: Does the Daily Caller have editors?”

While avoiding the questions I sent him, Daily Caller News Foundation managing editor, Thomas Phippen, sent me the following statement, “Your allegations are without merit and it’s unfortunate that you are attempting to smear Emily by using the death of her mother, who passed of cancer in 2017. Get help.”

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