NIH Director Accepts Award From Anti-Vax Group Founded By Ally Accused Of Sexual Misconduct
Jay Bhattacharya reunited with his old ally Jeffrey Tucker weeks after the political operative was revealed to have faced a sexual harassment scandal.
Over the weekend, the Director of the National Institutes of Health accepted an award from a Robert Kennedy Jr.-allied anti-public health dark money group founded by an accused serial sexual harasser. He called it “the most fun I’ve had in ten months” and said “I feel like I’m at home.”
On Sunday, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, who has faced criticism and allegations from inside his own agency over what staffers call the politicization of science and devastating cuts to critical research, appeared at the annual conference of the Brownstone Institute in Salt Lake City, Utah. There, he received the group’s first ever annual prize along with two other recipients, both of whom are involved with the Institute. Bret Weinstein, a notorious anti-vaxxer, promoter of ivermectin for COVID-19, and ally of tech billionaire Peter Thiel, and Brownstone fellow was awarded alongside Bhattacharya. So too was Thomas Harrington, a professor of Hispanic studies from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, who wrote a book for the group called “The Treason of the Experts,” and is listed as one of its senior scholars.
Brownstone was founded in May 2021 and has quickly emerged as a major player in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement started by Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy, which serves as a bridge between the traditional right and the so-called “medical freedom” movement. Brownstone has partnered with groups like The Heritage Foundation and Kennedy’s old anti-vax organization Children’s Health Defense.
The main function of the Institute has been waging a war on public health in the name of preventing the return of mitigation measures implemented amid the pandemic. The group is a hub of anti-vaccine misinformation, right-wing grievance, and conspiracy theories—particularly those focused on COVID. It has amplified individuals who have called for violence against former public health officials, given column space to conspiracy mongers, and proudly trafficked in pandemic misinformation. Its writer roster is a who’s who of anti-vaxxers and public health contrarians.
The group’s reach extends to the highest levels of the Trump administration beyond just Bhattacharya. Brownstone has ties but HHS Secretary Kennedy, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Vinay Prasad, senior FDA advisor Tracy Beth Høeg, as well as various members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, including its chairman Martin Kulldorff. To wit, ACIP member Dr. Robert Malone was also in attendance and slated to speak at this year’s conference and gala.
Brownstone was founded by Bhattacharya’s longtime friend and ally, Jeffrey Tucker, a child labor and youth tobacco use advocate with ties to the crypto industry and neo-Confederate groups, who was formerly the editorial director of the libertarian think-tank American Institute for Economic Research. Tucker had recruited and organized the October 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, which the NIH director co-authored, calling for pursuing pandemic herd immunity via mass infection of the healthy population. Bhattacharya also appeared at last year’s Brownstone conference.
Two weeks before this year’s event, dubbed “The Great Transition,” Politico revealed that Tucker and his Brownstone co-founder Lucio “Lou” Eastman had left their positions at AIER amid sexual harassment allegations. Tucker, the report noted, had left a previous job at the Foundation for Economic Education as well under similar circumstances.
Politico uncovered a 2022 response filing from the think tank, the chairman of its board of trustees, and Tucker to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination outlining the allegations. Based on the document, Tucker was accused of inappropriate behavior toward the women working at AIER. Among many other allegations addressed in the document is the claim he would allegedly buy female interns and staff fur coats from estate sales with company money and encourage them to model them and pearl necklaces. Tucker and other male colleagues in leadership would then allegedly “ogle the women and gape at them, asking the males and females in attendance, i.e., the females’ coworkers and managers ‘Isn’t’ she beautiful?’ and ‘Doesn’t she look lovely dressed like this?’”
Brownstone co-founder Eastman, meanwhile, was accused of making interns uncomfortable by allegedly visiting their living quarters at inappropriate times, like when they had gotten out of the shower, “under the guise of bringing them coffee.” AIER denied the allegations against the men.
Despite the damning reporting, Bhattacharya delivered remarks at this weekend’s Brownstone conference. He used his time to hit familiar talking points and grievances, lamenting public health measures taken in the spring of 2020 to stem the spread of COVID, which has killed well over a million Americans to date. During his address, the NIH director called for a pandemic “reckoning” and praised Brownstone for the work it was doing to “grapple with”—and keep people talking about—“the dark days.”
“I think, to me, that’s the most important part of what Brownstone is doing,” Bhattacharya said. “I mean, there’s so much else. Like, it’s not just about the lockdowns anymore, it’s about a fundamental culture shift—a group of people who are so different in so many ways, think very, very differently from one another, have different backgrounds, and yet somehow we’re tied together. I feel like I’m at home.”
Bhattacharya continued on, laying out the metric for the anti-public health group’s success. “When will we know that Brownstone is a successful organization?” he asked the audience. “When we can all confidently answer ‘could the lockdowns happen again?’ And the answer is no. But we’re not there yet.”
The NIH director then segued into a familiar diatribe about how his professional peers had ostracized him over his advocacy for pursuing herd immunity through widespread COVID infection, calling it “a vicious attack on me.” Throughout the speech, he repeatedly joked that his current job is “terrible.”
Closing out, Bhattacharya offered the anti-vax group’s audience “my main source for hope,” noting that if a new pandemic threat emerged, “There is now a vast army of people—and Brownstone, we’re just the tip of the spear of it—a vast army of people that would say ‘this was wrong before and we should not ever do it again,’” referring to lockdowns.
“The protests that didn’t happen in March of 2020, this time would happen,” he said, adding that he would personally join anti-lockdown protests.
Tucker is not the only man accused of sexual misconduct that Bhattacharya has allied himself with. Trump has faced a slew of assault allegations by multiple women. Last year, Kennedy apologized over text to a former family babysitter who accused him of sexual assault, claiming he had no memory of the incident. In 2022, Business Insider reported that four years prior, another of his allies, billionaire Elon Musk, paid $250,000 to a flight attendant to settle a misconduct claim after he allegedly exposed himself to her and offered her a horse in exchange for an erotic massage. In 2023, after he purchased Twitter, Musk met with Bhattacharya and promised him to access Twitter’s files to determine how his account had ended up on a trending ban list.