Just two days after Democrat Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, drugmaker Pfizer announced its COVID-19 vaccine proved effective in protecting people from the sickness.
Then-President Donald Trump questioned the timing of the announcement, saying, “Pfizer and others even decided to not assess the results of their vaccine, in other words, not come out with the vaccine until just after the election.”
He suggested the delay was payback for Trump’s effort to rein in the cost of medications for elderly patients.
“[It’s] because of what I did with favored nations and these other elements,” he said.
In September 2020, Trump signed an executive order benchmarking the price Americans pay through Medicare for prescription drugs to the cost of those same drugs in other markets outside the U.S.
Trump asserted that the original plan called for the COVID vaccine data to be released in October.
Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla, in fact, told NBC’s “Today” at the time that his company would know whether the vaccine worked by the end of October.
If positive news regarding a vaccine had come out before the election, “It probably would have had an impact,” Trump asserted.
His administration had pushed hard through Operation Warp Speed to marshal the resources to enable pharmaceutical companies in their work to develop a vaccine.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan is looking into statements allegedly made by former Pfizer scientist Phil Dormitzer, who led the company’s efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine.
Dormitzer left Pfizer in 2021 to work for rival GSK.
In late 2024, he told GSK executives that Pfizer delayed announcing the success of its COVID vaccine trials until after the 2020 presidential election, according to “people familiar with the investigation,” the Journal said.
“The scientist disputes that account of what he told colleagues. But prosecutors are taking a closer look at what GSK shared with them, which is potentially politically explosive,” the outlet reported.
“The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan has interviewed at least two people in connection with the allegation, including a GSK executive who took notes of a conversation with the former Pfizer scientist, according to one of the people familiar with the matter,” the Journal added.
“Prosecutors are planning to interview a third person in coming days, some of the people familiar with the probe said. Pfizer officials haven’t been interviewed.”
In a statement, Dormitzer, 61, told the Journal, “My Pfizer colleagues and I did everything we could to get the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization at the very first possible moment.
“Any other interpretation of my comments about the pace of the vaccine’s development would be incorrect,” the scientist said.
Pfizer also defended the timing of its vaccine announcement, saying it was driven by science and by Food and Drug Administration guidance.
“Pfizer remains ready, willing, and able to explain why any allegation of impropriety is utter nonsense,” the statement said.
The Journal further noted, “The review of the Pfizer vaccine’s effectiveness and safety was performed by an outside panel of independent experts known as a data-safety monitoring committee, which then shared its findings with Pfizer and partner BioNTech. Pfizer filmed and broadcast the moment executives learned the results from Pfizer’s senior scientists, on Nov. 8.”
The DOJ will be looking into all of the competing claims regarding Pfizer’s announcement timing.
Did the company put its hand on the scale of the 2020 election? Time will tell, but it’s shaping up to be yet another instance of Trump being right.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Bombshell: Prosecutors Question Timing of Pfizer Announcement Released Just After 2020 Election appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.