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GovExec Daily: What Whistleblowers are Facing During Coronavirus
The Project on Government Oversight's Nick Schwellenbach joins the podcast to discuss the challenges whistleblowers see during the pandemic and beyond.
This week, former Director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority Dr. Rick Bright filed a whistleblower complaint over his reassignment. In his 89-page complaint, Bright alleges that he was pressured to promote unproven COVID-19 therapies by political leadership.
Since his reassignment, Bright’s outspokenness has garnered criticism from the political world and his lawyers claim that subsequent public comments about Bright's effectiveness at BARDA ”only underscore its retaliatory motive for his removal.”
Nick Schwellenbach is a senior investigator at the Project on Government Oversight. His organization received data on more than a dozen COVID-19-related official whistleblowers complaints filed to the Office of Special Counsel. He joined the program to talk about the state of whistleblowers during the Trump era.
