Justin Goodman is the Senior Vice President for Advocacy and Public Policy at White Coat Waste Project, a government watchdog group dedicated to finding, exposing, and defunding $20 billion in wasteful government spending on animal experiments.
In an exclusive interview with TGP’s Cullen Linebarger, he describes the ways the NIH under Anthony Fauci used taxpayer dollars to torture and kill animals for years, especially overseas. He also explains how White Coat Waste Project was able to expose NIH’s funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the pandemic almost certainly originated from, and discusses the victories WCWP has secured to save animals and American taxpayer dollars.
TGP: The first question I have is specifically for our readers at Gateway Pundit. Can you tell us a little about the organization, its founding, and what its ultimate mission is?
Goodman: Sure, White Coat Waste Project is a government watchdog group that is dedicated to finding, exposing, and defunding $20 billion in wasteful government spending on animal experiments. We were founded by Anthony Bellotti, our president who actually worked in an animal laboratory as a teenager and was so horrified by what he saw he committed to one day coming back to the issue and working to cut waste and abuse in government funded labs. He started White Coat in 2013 to build a new movement of liberty lovers and animal lovers who would join forces to fight against the torture of puppies and kittens by the federal government.
We’re a big tent group with no litmus test. We work with members of Congress from the Freedom Caucus to the Squad and everybody in between. We are the only group that successfully unites those diverse constituencies on Capitol Hill to fight against this problem.
TGP: When you joined in 2016, you were on Dr. Anthony Fauci from the very beginning along with the National Institute of Health.
Goodman: Absolutely. Our very first investigation when we launched our campaign in 2016 was a report called “Spending to Death.” This was an expose of dog testing inside the government’s own laboratories in the Beltway. And what we found back then was that agencies including the NIH, the VA, and the FDA were torturing hundreds of dogs each year in wasteful experiments. One of the laboratories that we exposed in that investigation was in Anthony Fauci’s in-house laboratories at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). And those experiments all involved taking beagle puppies, strapping capsules full of sandflies to their bare skin so that the insects could bite them. We even obtained photographs of that though the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
TGP: This was in the United States, but I was actually going to ask about this happening in Tunisia later.
Goodman: They’re connected. Anthony Fauci’s division at the NIH has one of the largest budgets of the entire agency. They have over $6 billion a year of taxpayer funds that they waste on useless experimentation. Mostly which involves animals. Our BeagleGate campaign has exposed the extensive testing on puppies and dogs that have been funded by NIAID both in the US and abroad including the studies in Tunisia.
When we launched that campaign back in 2016, we were the first group in history to shut down dog testing across an entire federal agency. As a result of these defund efforts since then, we have completely ended dog testing across the entire Department of Veterans Affairs through gradually tightening the reigns and making it more difficult for the agency to spend taxpayer dollars on these cruel, wasteful experiments. Now we’re trying to take that success we had at defunding dog testing at the VA and do the same thing at the NIH, which is the single largest funder of animal testing in the world.
TGP: In the beginning, White Coat focused on the abuse of animals in domestic research. Can you tell me what was the impetus to expand your focus to what was going on in overseas nations like Russia and China?
Goodman: Great question. In 2018, we were leading a campaign against a USDA laboratory in Maryland that we called the Kitten Slaughterhouse. We exposed that government experimenters were using taxpayer money to fly to the Chinese wet markets, buy cat and dog meat, put it in their carry-on luggage, fly back to the United States, and then force-feed kittens cat meat in taxpayer-funded cannibalism experiments.
The Trump Administration announced that as a result of our campaign that they shut those experiments down. We actually saved the remaining cats in the lab and Anthony Bellotti adopted two of the cats out of that lab. But that is when we first got a glimpse of that there was taxpayer dollars being spent abroad for animal experiments. So we started to dig in and what we found was that there were over 350 laboratories in 50 different countries around the world that are currently authorized to receive US taxpayer dollars for animal testing. In particular, we documented over 30 animal testing labs in Russia and China are currently authorized to receive taxpayer dollars from the NIH for animal testing specifically.
TGP: So arguably our two biggest adversaries are still getting taxpayer dollars for animal experiments?
Goodman: Correct. In 2018-2019, we started discovering the problem was much bigger than what was happening at the Kitten Slaughterhouse. So we started to dig into what these laboratories were doing. We worked with Rand Paul and exposed some stupid experiments. In England, for example, they were addicting monkeys with heroin and getting zebrafish hooked on nicotine. And as we kept investigating where the money was going, we found that there was a laboratory in Wuhan on this list of facilities that were getting taxpayer dollars.
We met with the Trump White House in January 2020 and flagged for them before the pandemic was declared that this laboratory in Wuhan was getting money from the NIH. In April 2020, we released our big investigation that documented how taxpayer dollars were being funneled from NIH thru the EcoHealth Alliance to the Wuhan lab for these experiments. They (EcoHealth Alliance) were traveling to Southern China to collect bat viruses, bringing them to Wuhan, and manipulating them in the laboratory. We were proud to be the first to expose the fact that US taxpayer dollars were funding the experiments that most people now believe caused the pandemic.
TGP: With the Wuhan Institute of Virology, did you all have anyone who tipped you off or was this just good-old fashioned research?
Goodman: Just good-old fashioned sleuthing by White Coat Waste Project investigators. We follow the money. So we looked at where the NIH money was going, we looked at this list of labs and dug into see who was getting money and what they were doing with it. Of course, we have come to learn since then that dating back to 2018, the State Department was expressing concerns about the Wuhan lab and the fact that it was involved with coronavirus experiments that could spark a pandemic.
TGP: So there were concerns about a potential pandemic going back to 2018 because the Chinese were playing around with these viruses?
Goodman: That’s right. We knew that these experiments were going on and they were dangerous at their core, however, we had come to learn from whistleblowers subsequently and thru Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents that were related to White Coat and other organizations that there had been longstanding concerns about what was happening in the Wuhan laboratory.
TGP: Let me ask about EcoHealth Alliance because they were getting a lot of taxpayer dollars via Fauci’s NIH and from my understanding a lot of this was illegal too.
Goodman: The EcoHealth Alliance is a non-profit based in New York City and they fashion themselves as virus hunters. They fly around the world into remote places and they capture animals and harvest viruses from them. Then like we saw in Wuhan bring them into the lab and manipulate them (the viruses). They have never stopped or prevented a pandemic thru these projects. But they have raked in tens of millions of dollars from the federal government including just since the pandemic began. So despite the fact the EcoHealth Alliance is at the center of allegations that it sparked the pandemic with the experiments they were funding in Wuhan, taxpayers still foot the bill for their reckless research around the world.
From 2014-2017, there was essentially a federal ban for funding of gain of function experiments. It was implemented by the Obama-Biden Administration because there were concerns that these experiments would cause a pandemic. White Coat Waste obtained documents thru FOIA showing that in 2016 the EcoHealth Alliance and the NIH via email conspired to violate the gain of function ban by redefining what their research was and saying that it actually wasn’t gain of function. Of course, we came to learn later on that it was.
EcoHealth Alliance has repeatedly violated federal transparency laws that require them to show how they are spending federal taxpayer dollars. They have violated reporting requirements that mandate they report certain information to the NIH.
TGP: The next question I’m going turn to involves Tunisia. The Gateway Pundit actually wrote about this back in 2021. Can you just elaborate a little bit more on that because it is absolutely heart-wrenching?
Goodman: Yes, absolutely. Cassandra Macdonald broke the story. I remember working with her on that. We exposed that Fauci’s division of the NIH was funding experiments in Tunisia where they were taking beagle puppies, drugging them, and sedating them. And then locking their heads in mesh cages and filling them with hungry sandflies who bit them and ate them alive to infect them with diseases. The experimenters published a paper including a photograph of the experimental setup with the dogs in these cages and noted that the NIH had funded it.
TGP: I have actually seen those photographs. I can barely look at them.
Goodman: I believe that photograph is going to become iconic in the movement to end animal testing. It’s just so deplorable. We exposed that they were funding this project and once it started to gain traction, the NIH began to deny that they funded it even though the paper cited them as the funding source. The NIH and the experimenters said it was a mistake they were cited as a funding source. Thru FOIA, however, we exposed that the NIH did fund that experiment.
The photograph really helped spark this national movement to end taxpayer funded dog testing. It enraged people across the country. The flooded the phone lines of the NIH. It was one of the biggest scandals of Fauci’s tenure at the NIH. I think it’s going to lead to massive reforms in the way taxpayer dollars are being spent. So we are certainly proud of exposing it.
TGP: I next want to delve into the victories you all were able to secure in the omnibus bill. Would you just like to elaborate on what you think were the biggest wins for White Coat Waste?
Goodman: Sure. We were able to prohibit funding for dangerous virus experiments in laboratories in countries of concern like Russia and China. We were able to continue our defund of dog, cat, and primate testing in the Department of Veterans Affairs. We cut funding for practical live tissue training at the Department of Justice where they stab, shoot, and blow up live animals for these outdated training exercises.
TGP: They were actually blowing up animals?
Goodman: We exposed that the FBI a few years ago through FOIA was contracting for live tissue training which is a really outdated mode of medical training where they take live animals, usually pigs and goats. In the past they have used dogs as well, where they stab, shoot them, and sometimes burn blow them up. Then personnel would try to treat the wounds and then they kill the animals that survive. That’s something we’ve been able to stop at the DOJ thru our campaigning over the last few years. Now we have defunded it.
TGP: Final question. What are the ways Gateway Pundit readers can help White Coat Waste going forward?
Goodman: We are building an army of waste warriors to hold the government accountable. We have numerous campaigns going at any time, urging Congress and federal agencies to take action and stop wasting tax dollars on animal abuse. So if people want to visit and get involved in our campaigns, they can keep track of our work at whitecoatwaste.org and White Coat’s social media platforms. They can follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the most up-to-date information about what we’re up to and how they can get involved.
TGP: Justin, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to speak with me today.
Goodman: I’m really grateful for your interest in our work.