Rubio sends letter to Pfizer CEO after Project Veritas’ undercover video
NEW YORK (FLV) – Sen. Marco Rubio, R-FL, sent a letter to Pfizer after an undercover Project Veritas video revealed the company may be conducting gain-of-function research, which it dubs “directed evolution” research, to mutate COVID-19 to create additional, more potent variants.
Project Veritas released a video where Jordon Trishton Walker, who they report is a Pfizer executive, said that the company may be exploring a way to “mutate” COVID via “directed evolution” to preempt the development of future vaccines.
“If the claims detailed in the video are true, Pfizer has put its desire for profit over the concern of national and global health and must hold itself accountable,” said Rubio.
While Pfizer has yet to confirm Walker’s employment, Project Veritas Founder James O’Keefe said they have confirmed it.
“We’ve had multiple sources confirm that this guy who he says he is, and put out some documents from inside Pfizer confirming the the identity of this individual, and his reaction and all of it,” O’Keefe said in a Twitter space Thursday evening.
In the undercover video, which has almost 17 million views on Twitter, shows Walker casually discussing the company’s possible manipulation of COVID.
“One of the things we’re exploring is like, why don’t we just mutate it [COVID] ourselves so we could create — preemptively develop new vaccines, right? So, we have to do that. If we’re gonna do that though, there’s a risk of like, as you could imagine — no one wants to be having a pharma company mutating f—ing viruses,” Walker said.
“Don’t tell anyone. Promise you won’t tell anyone. The way it [the experiment] would work is that we put the virus in monkeys, and we successively cause them to keep infecting each other, and we collect serial samples from them,” he explained.
Rubio said though Walker claimed the research is “exploratory,” he detailed how the research would proceed, such as how scientists would inject the mutated viruses into monkeys and collect serial samples from other monkeys who are infected.
“You have to be very controlled to make sure that this virus [COVID] that you mutate doesn’t create something that just goes everywhere. Which, I suspect, is the way that the virus started in Wuhan, to be honest. It makes no sense that this virus popped out of nowhere. It’s bulls–t,” Walker said.
Whether it’s gain of function research, or selected structure mutations through directed evolution, as Mr. Walker claimed would occur, any effort to make a virus more transmittable and deadlier is careless and dangerous. Further, Mr. Walker stated that Pfizer is willing to engage in this dangerous research because COVID and its variants are ‘a cash cow’ for the company and regulators will go easy on their efforts because a significant percentage of government officials aim to work for Pfizer and other biopharmaceutical companies and do not want to compromise their future job prospects.
Sen. Marco Rubio
In another viral video released, Walker is questioned by Project Veritas’ Founder James O’Keefe, who asked him about the comments.
“You work for Pfizer, my question for you is why does Pfizer want to hide from the public the fact that they’re mutating the COVID viruses?” O’Keefe said.
Walker proceeds to stand up and say, “Oh my god. What is this? Is this real life?”
“I was trying to impress someone on a date by lying,” Walker said.
“I’m just someone who’s working in a company that’s trying to literally help the public,” he said.
Later in the video, Walker is seen attempting to grab a device from O’Keefe, saying, “give it – what is going on here?”
Walker called the police during the situation, which ended up being diffused.
No arrests were made, but the NYPD officer said had O’Keefe remained on the scene, he would have arrested Walker.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-FL, praised Project Veritas for their report.
“God Bless Project Veritas and their brave journalists!” he tweeted.
Pfizer has not confirmed the employment of Walker and has not responded to Project Veritas for comment.
