HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has personally confirmed to me that HHS referred Dutch-born NIH virologist Vincent Munster to the FBI after explosive whistleblower allegations accused him, and several foreign-born colleagues, of illegally smuggling dangerous virus samples from Africa into the United States.
Sec. Kennedy confirmed the referral in response to my reporting on a whistleblower letter first exposed by White Coat Waste, which alleges a disturbing cover-up inside the NIH’s taxpayer-funded Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana.
“We sent the referral to the FBI immediately,” Kennedy told me. He added, “I assume he is going to prison.”
That is a major admission from the sitting HHS Secretary. HHS has declined to comment to other reporters because this is an active FBI investigation, but my independent reporting on Kennedy’s confirmation blows this story wide open.
Anthony Bellotti, President and Founder at government watchdog White Coat Waste, released the following statement on my findings:
“White Coat Waste, founded in 2011, was the first to uncover, document, and expose Dr. Fauci’s funding for gain-of-function animal experiments in Wuhan that almost certainly caused a lab leak and COVID—and we’ve warned that Vincent Munster’s Fauci-backed animal tests with deadly bioagents at NIH’s Rocky Mountain Lab (A.K.A. “Wuhan West”) were another disaster waiting to happen on U.S. soil.
Now, explosive new whistleblower claims exclusively obtained by White Coat Waste—alleging NIH cover-ups about Munster’s reported virus smuggling and a monkey bite at RML, two stories we first scooped—have now been confirmed by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to Laura Loomer, further validating what we’ve been saying: Fauci-era taxpayer-funded animal labs are a grave threat and must be stopped.
Our investigations and lawsuits have previously exposed Munster’s maximum-pain animal tests with Ebola, his bat experiments with Chinese coronaviruses prior to the pandemic, and his involvement in a new Fauci-funded bat virus lab in Colorado.
Munster is a mad scientist who has deep ties to EcoHealth Alliance and was involved in early proposals to engineer COVID-like viruses at the Wuhan lab. For years, White Coat Waste has led the fight to defund Munster and his maximum-pain animal labs, and we’re currently calling out their continued Fauci-era funding with our ‘WTF RFK?’ billboards near NIH’s Montana lab. The solution is simple: Stop the money. Stop the madness!”
What is really going on inside Rocky Mountain Laboratories, also known as RML? The whistleblower letter alleges that senior NIH officials went into “full cover-up mode” after a dangerous monkey bite incident and an alleged international pathogen smuggling scandal involving NIH researchers.
Chief of the Virus Ecology Section at RML, Vincent Munster, was reportedly removed from the HHS staff directory and placed on administrative leave following allegations that he and a colleague brought undeclared pathogen samples into the United States from the Democratic Republic of Congo without proper permits or documentation. This area is the origin of some of the deadliest diseases known to man like the Ebola virus.
The smuggled materials allegedly included samples tied to viral hemorrhagic fevers and monkeypox. According to the whistleblower letter sent to White Coat Waste:
“Three foreign nationals with TDS who hate America and worked to weaponize the Covid virus got caught trying to sneak VHF samples into the United States from Africa.”
VHF stands for viral hemorrhagic fever, and it includes some of the most dangerous pathogens in the world. Taxpayers have every right to know why anyone connected to a federal lab would allegedly attempt to bring undeclared pathogen samples into the country.
The whistleblower letter includes several other disturbing details that align with previously reported concerns about RML. The whistleblower alleges:
“Animal handler [name redacted] was bitten by an infected monkey (macaque) that was being tortured (infected and sickened with no pain mitigation) as an experiment for Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic fever.”
White Coat Waste previously exposed a lab accident involving the same virus at the same NIH lab, making this part of a disturbing pattern. In January, White Coat Waste reported that documents showed RML had quietly reported a deadly “select agent” was “released, lost, or stolen” in November 2025.
The monkey bite detail had not previously been public. If true, and Kennedy didn’t deny any of the claims made in the whistleblower letter, this is a massive taxpayer-funded biosecurity scandal.
According to the whistleblower, senior NIH officials allegedly failed to properly alert the broader RML campus community about the risks after the monkey bite incident. The letter further alleges that decisions made by senior officials at NIH headquarters under NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya have protected legacy programs and entrenched bureaucrats rather than fully exposing what happened. The whistleblower claims:
“Decisions made by the deep state, Fauci acolytes seem designed to prevent any attempts at accountability and to thwart the new administration’s attempts to reign in the NIH bureaucratic kingdoms that have developed and thrived under the Fauci system of bioweapons research.”
For years, Americans were told to blindly trust the same federal health bureaucracy that funded risky research, hid behind redactions, smeared critics, cried “trust the science,” defended animal abuse in government labs, and demanded endless taxpayer funding with almost no accountability.
Now, another whistleblower is alleging that dangerous pathogens, foreign researchers, and animal experiments were mishandled inside RML. We deserve answers.
Munster’s research background includes work on virus ecology, zoonotic transmission, and bat coronavirus studies, all of which have become major flashpoints in the national debate over gain-of-function research, pandemic origins, biosafety failures, and the role of foreign-linked researchers inside America’s federal science agencies. His name and active email address still appear on the NIH website despite Kennedy’s admission to me that Munster is under FBI investigation and will likely go to prison.
White Coat Waste and I have been warning the public and the White House for over a year about anti-Trump and pro-Fauci holdovers still embedded inside HHS and NIH. Bureaucrats at these agencies are still funding Fauci’s horrible beagle tests, protecting dangerous animal labs, and defending the same system that helped create the COVID-era nightmare of government lies, mandates, and scientific corruption.
Fauci’s replacement, Jeffrey Taubenberger, a senior NIH virology official and gain-of-function researcher, now oversees the NIH animal lab involved in these incidents that are now allegedly being covered up.
HHS is allowing the same bureaucracy that created the crisis to police itself. That’s a recipe for disaster and zero accountability. The public cannot rely on federal health bureaucrats to investigate other federal health bureaucrats, especially when the same agencies have spent years defending the research networks and flawed institutional culture that is now under immense public scrutiny.
The alleged monkey bite incident involving Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever was just the tip of the iceberg. Earlier reporting had already raised concerns about a lab accident involving the same virus at RML, but the whistleblower’s allegation that a macaque bite occurred during these experiments is being reported here for the first time.
Without whistleblowers, the public would never know what is happening inside these taxpayer-funded labs. Without outside dedicated watchdogs like White Coat Waste, the NIH would keep hiding behind bureaucratic obscurity, redactions, and “no comment” statements while Americans are forced to fund dangerous virus experiments and abusive animal testing at their own expense.
No criminal charges have been publicly announced at this time, and the FBI investigation remains active. NIH and HHS have not issued a detailed public explanation beyond the reported administrative actions and Kennedy’s confirmation that the matter was referred to federal law enforcement.
Taxpayers are once again being asked to trust a federal health bureaucracy that has repeatedly demanded secrecy while spending public money on dangerous and morally indefensible “research” that is ultimately just animal abuse conducted by mad scientists in white lab coats.
This is why the Trump administration must immediately accelerate reforms at NIH. That means stricter oversight of foreign researchers, immediate transparency on biosafety incidents, tougher import controls for pathogen samples, a full public audit of animal testing programs, and the removal of every Fauci, Obama, and Biden-era holdover who protects the flawed system instead of protecting the American people.
The NIH’s abusive animal labs must be shut down before another lab accident, cover-up, or global health disaster is unleashed on the public.
NIH does not need another internal review designed to protect the institution. It needs accountability, transparency, and a full public reckoning.
