FUNDING PRIORITIES?

RFK Jr.’s Secret Link to Russia’s Killer Plague Lab Revealed

The funding revelations come as questions swirl over the death of a Siberian lab worker.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s department funneled nearly $800,000 into a U.S-based research project linked to a Russian lab at the center of a chilling plague mystery.

Federal records obtained by the watchdog group White Coat Waste show that the latest grants landed just weeks ago, just before the death of a worker at the Siberian facility sparked widespread panic.

According to the group, the Kennedy-run National Institutes of Health awarded $779,689 to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for research conducted in partnership with Russia’s state-run Institute of Cytology and Genetics.

But the Russian institute has previously collaborated on plague research with the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute, the Siberian facility now under international scrutiny after the death of 28-year-old researcher Darya Shipilova.

Shipilova reportedly fell ill after a Sept. 25 laboratory incident involving a broken test tube. She subsequently died of what Russian authorities identified as “pneumonia of unknown etiology,” while some local reports claimed she had been ill with pneumonic plague. Authorities placed nearly 200 people in quarantine immediately after her death.

Russian authorities have insisted that testing found no dangerous pathogens connected to her work.

But the mysterious circumstances have triggered international concern, with the U.S and World Health Organization formally demanding more information from Moscow to establish what happened.

Outside the White House on Tuesday, Trump told reporters he “has a call scheduled for very soon” with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the matter.

NIH is part of Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services. According to White Coat Lab, the NIH grants came in two chunks: $389,943 in July 2025 and another $389,746 in September 2026.

There is no evidence that the NIH helped fund the Russian lab directly, the suspected incident in Irkutsk or that the American researchers were involved in it.

The NIH-funded research instead examines the genetic underpinnings of foxes raised at a Siberian breeding facility.

But the grants and their timing are particularly awkward for Kennedy, who has spent years warning about the dangers of lab research, accusing government scientists of recklessness and repeatedly raising the specter of lab-created pandemics.

Last year, for instance, when Trump announced an executive order restricting gain-of-function research, he declared “there’s no laboratory that does this right” and that no lab “was immune from leaks.”

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In 2024, he also warned about the possibility of another lab-derived pandemic, asking why the government would need a bird-flu vaccine unless it expected a more virulent virus to emerge.

“Will there be another lab-derived pandemic? Not on my watch!” he vowed at the time.

A HHS spokesman told the Daily Beast that White Coat Waste’s characterization of this research “is misleading and creates a false impression about how American taxpayer dollars are being spent,” noting that the department “is not funding a Russian plague laboratory.”

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“NIH funds research conducted at a U.S.-based laboratory in Chicago examining genomic and protein mechanisms associated with behavior to advance our understanding of psychiatric diseases,” the spokesman said.

“NIH funding is directed exclusively to the U.S. laboratory and does not support the Russian laboratory. HHS takes seriously its responsibility to safeguard taxpayer dollars, protect research security, and ensure rigorous oversight of federally funded research.”

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But Erik Polyak, the executive director of 314 Action, lashed out at the Health Secretary for funding the project given he “can’t find a dime for American cancer researchers.”

“This is what you get when you hand America’s health agencies to a conspiracy theorist: idiotic decisions that create a national security liability,” said Polyak, whose group is working to elect more scientists and doctors to Congress.

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Farrah TomazinPolitical Correspondent

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