A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it
answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.
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Okay. So here's the email. Your response is dated November 7, 2015, and it's back to Dr. Shi. [Exhibit No. 1 shown.]
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And you asked her, "Was work performed under these grants?" So did she not answer? Because it looks like the initial email was from Peter Daszak that same day and it says, "Urgent. Please acknowledge USAID DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com PREDICT and our NIAID grant in the paper with Ralph Baric." And she does ask you to do that.
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Well, if she asked me to do it, then I would've done that, yes.
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So is there a reason why that correction wasn't issued until 2020?
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2026-04-10 09:00
Ralph S. Baric
Not that I know of.
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Okay. Was it an attempt conceal the USAID funding?
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I don't know why I would have any interest in doing that.
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Okay. Was that the only USAID -- I mean, part of this is it's hard for us to understand, too, because it seems like there are different funding streams that all contribute, for very different work, and, you know, I don't know if you're familiar with my boss's questions to Samantha Power on this, but he asked her if USAID funding had ever -- let's see, I have it here. I don't want to misstate it -- I mean, he said, "Does USAID fund gain-of-function research? We have no evidence that USAID has funded gain-of-function research, and we certainly have not authorized gain-of-function research." Then Senator Paul talked about the paper, and her response was that she just said, unequivocally, that USAID has not authorized gain-of-function research. Do you agree with DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com her statement?
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I don't know what was in this grant. My guess is that USAID paid for surveillance work that picked up samples that ultimately were used with, you know, in terms of sequence discovery and that sort of thing that we used, and they wanted to acknowledge the fact that the discovery portion of the grant, that that contributed to the discovery portion of the grant. But again, this is not my grant, and it's not in the RO1 that they had with Daszak and Shi were not my grant, so I don't know the intricacies of what was in each and why they felt it was appropriate.