Newly released government documents have revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation intervened to prevent U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents from questioning EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak upon his return from Wuhan, China in February 2021 — an inspection that CBP had formally prepared and scheduled. The documents, released by Sen. Rand Paul in his capacity as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, raise pointed questions about which federal agencies knew what about COVID-19’s origins, and why a figure CBP had flagged as “an extremely high person of interest” was allowed to pass through the border without examination.

CBP Had Built a Formal Targeting Action

According to documents now publicly available through the Senate committee, CBP’s National Targeting Center had constructed a formal targeting event and scheduled a Tactical Terrorism Response Team examination ahead of Daszak’s February 5, 2021, arrival at JFK International Airport. The agency’s rationale was detailed and specific.

Internal CBP records cited Daszak’s more than fifteen years of collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and his role as principal investigator on NIH grants funding bat coronavirus research in China. A January 11, 2021, CBP email flagged Daszak’s participation in the World Health Organization’s team investigating the pandemic’s origins in Wuhan as a potential “conflict of interest.” A February 2, 2021, email noted that much of the funding Daszak was receiving was “put toward gain of function research.”

The planned examination would have questioned Daszak about the business he conducted in China, his contacts at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and critically, whether he had collected or was carrying any biological samples or pathogens back into the United States.

The FBI’s New York Field Office Intervened

Three days before Daszak’s scheduled arrival, the planned inspection came to an abrupt halt. A CBP Joint Terrorism Task Force liaison sent an email on February 2, 2021, with a directive that stopped the process entirely: “Please be advised FBI New York requested we do not stop the subject.”

The inspection never took place.

The documents do not detail the FBI’s stated reasoning for the request. What is documented is the sequence of events: CBP identified Daszak as a high-priority subject, built out a formal process for questioning him, and then stood down at the FBI’s request — days before he landed.

Sen. Paul released the documents as part of his ongoing congressional investigation into the origins of COVID-19. According to a press release from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Paul stated the documents challenge the prevailing narrative around the pandemic’s origins and the government’s handling of key figures connected to Wuhan research.

Who Is Peter Daszak and Why Was CBP Watching Him?

Peter Daszak, Ph.D., is a British zoologist and virus researcher who served as president of EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based nonprofit that for years channeled NIH grant funding to bat coronavirus research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He traveled to Wuhan in early 2021 as a member of the WHO’s team tasked with investigating the origins of COVID-19 — a team whose composition drew criticism from independent scientists and lawmakers who pointed to Daszak’s deep institutional ties to the very laboratory under scrutiny.

Notably, the documents reveal that a U.S. Department of Homeland Security email, included in the CBP package as background on Daszak’s research activity, referenced reporting published by The Defender in January 2021 — indicating that federal agencies were actively tracking public reporting on Daszak’s work and potential conflicts of interest.

EcoHealth Alliance and Daszak: A Record of Subsequent Actions

The February 2021 intervention at the border was not the end of federal scrutiny of Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance — it preceded years of congressional investigation that ultimately led to significant consequences.

In January 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services formally debarred both EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak for five years, cutting off all federal funding to the organization. The HHS action cited evidence uncovered by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, including findings that EcoHealth routinely ignored government oversight requests, failed to report dangerous gain-of-function experiments conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and produced a required research report two years late. HHS stated in its debarment letter that “a period of debarment for Dr. Daszak is necessary to protect the Federal Government’s business interests.” EcoHealth terminated Daszak’s employment effective January 6, 2025.

Daszak had previously appeared before Congress on May 1, 2024, testifying before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability — a hearing that formed part of the broader congressional record on EcoHealth’s activities and oversight failures.

The Broader Investigation Into COVID-19 Origins

The newly released CBP documents arrive within a years-long pattern of congressional investigation that has steadily built a documented record around EcoHealth Alliance’s operations, NIH grant oversight failures, and the question of what U.S. federal agencies knew — and when — about the research being conducted in Wuhan.

The documents are now publicly available through Sen. Paul’s Senate Reading Room, an archive the senator established as part of his committee’s ongoing COVID-19 origins investigation. The release of the CBP package follows a separate document drop from the committee involving Slack messages from the authors of the “Proximal Origin” paper — a landmark scientific communication that shaped early public narratives about the pandemic’s origins.

What the CBP documents add to this record is a specific, documented instance of one federal agency preparing to gather firsthand information from a central figure in the Wuhan research network — and a separate federal agency directing them not to proceed. The documents do not explain the FBI’s motivation. They do establish that the intervention occurred, who made it, and what CBP had been prepared to ask.

Questions That Remain Unanswered

The documents released by Sen. Paul leave several significant questions open. No public explanation from the FBI has been provided as to why its New York Field Office requested CBP stand down. It remains undocumented whether Daszak was carrying any biological materials from China, as CBP had intended to determine. The chain of authority behind the FBI’s request — who authorized it and on what basis — has not been publicly disclosed.

What the record now shows is that CBP agents with formal jurisdiction over border security had identified Daszak as a figure warranting examination, built a process to conduct that examination, and were stopped before they could carry it out. The question of whether that intervention served a legitimate investigative purpose — or foreclosed one — remains, for now, unanswered.

This article draws on reporting from Activist Post / Children’s Health Defense, the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Fox News, and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.