Top NIH virologist and gain-of-function advocate, Vincent Munster, has been charged with allegedly smuggling undeclared pathogen samples into America from Africa.
For years, animal testing watchdog White Coat Waste has documented how Munster’s reckless, cruel experiments on primates and bats waste millions in taxpayer dollars while posing serious biosafety and national security risks.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan announced that Munster, 53, a Dutch citizen and Chief of the Virus Ecology Section at NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) in Hamilton, Montana, and his colleague Claude Kwe, 38, a Cameroonian research fellow in Munster’s lab, were charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy to smuggle monkeypox into the United States and making false statements to federal law enforcement.
According to the Justice Department complaint, Munster and Kwe flew into Detroit Metropolitan Airport’s McNamara Terminal on January 25 after traveling from Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, where a monkeypox outbreak was actively underway.
Customs and Border Protection officers noticed the pair carrying a large black plastic case. When questioned, both men falsely claimed it contained only “diagnostics and testing equipment.”
According to the DOJ, “subsequent investigation by CBP and FBI agents revealed that the case actually contained 113 vials in Styrofoam coolers. As of the date of the complaint, the FBI has tested 20 of the 113 vials. Seventeen of them contained deactivated monkeypox virus, one contained the Chickenpox virus, and two contained only human DNA.”
The press release added, “the work of both men is focused on ’emerging viral pathogens’ and how those pathogens ‘cross the species barrier.’ They work at a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory, which employs the highest level of biosafety precautions for scientific research of known and potential human pathogens.”
In a statement, U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon Jr. did not mince words: “These NIH experts apparently broke our laws by smuggling viral pathogens on a packed commercial airplane from an outbreak in the Republic of Congo. Let that sink in.”
FBI Detroit Special Agent in Charge Jennifer Runyan added, “No researchers should believe their positions, credentials, or professional status place them above the law… The allegations in this case are serious. They involve the dangerous and unlawful smuggling of deactivated Mpox virus into the United States and alleged efforts to mislead our federal agents.”
This is the exact smuggling incident White Coat Waste exposed weeks ago, as The Gateway Pundit previously reported.
In May, we reported that the FBI had launched a criminal probe into Munster for attempting to bring back dozens of undeclared viral hemorrhagic fever samples, including monkeypox, from Africa without proper permits.
At the time, an NIH whistleblower told White Coat Waste Project that senior officials in Bethesda were in “full cover-up mode” to protect Munster. Both scientists were placed on administrative leave, their HHS directory profiles scrubbed, and the agency referred all questions to the FBI.
The same whistleblower alleged that a separate lab accident at RML, first exposed by White Coat Waste in January, involved a staffer being bitten by a macaque monkey infected with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF), a deadly foreign virus.
The monkey was being subjected to NIH’s notorious “maximum-pain” experiments with no pain mitigation whatsoever.
The bite reportedly penetrated the worker’s protective suit.
Instead of being transparent with RML employees, the incident was allegedly hidden from most of the campus, and the exposed staffer was quietly “flown out” to avoid drawing attention.
White Coat Waste, which has been hammering Munster’s taxpayer-funded animal experiments with billboards near the Montana lab for months, was the first to notice and report on his sudden removal from the official NIH employee directory.
Munster’s lab at RML is a high-containment BSL-4 facility focused on how “emerging viral pathogens” cross the species barrier, precisely the kind of gain-of-function-style work long associated with Fauci’s NIAID and the COVID pandemic.
The mad scientist was also the main author on a 2018 NIH experiment exposed by White Coat Waste that infected bats purchased from a Maryland zoo with a Chinese bat coronavirus strain cloned from a virus collected by the Wuhan Institute of Virology and EcoHealth Alliance.
WCW Senior Vice President Justin Goodman appeared on investigative journalist Laura Loomer's show to discuss.
WATCH:
Loomer, who has been working with WCW to expose the deep corruption and pressure the administration to end these barbaric tests once and for all, wrote in a post on X, "White Coat Waste and I are totally vindicated after we broke this story several weeks ago about how NIH was covering up the fact that several foreign born virologists working at NIH under the Trump admin at Rocky Mountain Laboratory, a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory, snuck lethal pathogens into the US. They work at the same lab where an Ebola-infected monkey bit an NIH researcher, and this was also covered up by @DrJBhattacharya and NIH."
WCW has repeatedly called on Congress and now, on the Trump administration’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to defund and decommission the Rocky Mountain Laboratory entirely.
The whistleblower’s letter to WCW reinforced those concerns, claiming the cover-up culture at NIH continues unchecked even after Fauci’s departure.
“RML needs to be defunded and decommissioned before Munster and his cronies cause another pandemic,” the letter warned.
In 2023, WCW teamed up with then-Rep. Matt Rosendale, a Montana Republican, in an attempt to slash Munster’s salary to $1 as part of an amendment to the Labor-HHS appropriations bill. The amendment read, “Reduces the salary of Vincent Munster, Chief, Virus Ecology Section, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to $1.”
Unfortunately, it ultimately failed.
If convicted, both researchers face up to five years in federal prison.
President and founder of White Coat Waste, Anthony Bellotti, said in a statement provided to The Gateway Pundit last month:
“For years, White Coat Waste investigations have exposed how Vincent Munster’s reckless, Fauci-funded animal experiments with Chinese coronaviruses, Ebola, and other foreign bioagents threaten public health and national security. Munster was even part of the original proposal to engineer COVID-like viruses at the Wuhan lab, where White Coat Waste first uncovered and ended Fauci’s funding for gain-of-function animal tests that almost certainly prompted the pandemic. White Coat Waste has led efforts to shut down Munster’s maximum-pain animal labs, and we are now calling out their continued funding with our ‘WTF, RFK?’ billboards near his NIH lab in Montana. Munster’s wasteful and dangerous animal experiments are a recipe for disaster, and if he is suspended—as our sources suggest—and finally held accountable, taxpayers and animals should celebrate.”
Special Agent in Charge Marcus L. Sykes of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General said in a statement, "The arrest of these individuals on serious federal charges sends a clear and unmistakable message that no one—including HHS employees who have an obligation to safeguard our federal programs—is above the law. Any deliberate effort to conceal and smuggle biological materials into the United States without proper authorization is a breach of the public’s trust and could have placed the public at risk. HHS-OIG will continue to work alongside our law enforcement partners to ensure that anyone who is entrusted with protecting the health and well-being of the public is held fully accountable.”
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