President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 response coordinator, Dr. Ashish Jha, raked in six-figure consulting fees during the pandemic before joining the White House.
Jha made more than $440,000 consulting corporations on coronavirus preparedness and giving speeches while he was the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, Politico’s Pulse newsletter reported Friday. During that time, he also occasionally served as an outside adviser to the president on how to deal with the coronavirus.
White House Covid response coordinator Ashish Jha made more than $440,000 as a corporate consultant and speaker on pandemic-related issues in the months before he joined the Biden administration, per disclosures. https://t.co/vlg0glcfew
— Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago) June 24, 2022
Jha made $141,000 from Bessemer, a financial firm, and AES Corp. prior to March, when he joined the White House, for consulting on COVID-19 workplace safety policy, according to Politico. Hedge fund D.E. Shaw reportedly paid him $15,000 for COVID-19 modeling guidance.
He claims to have donated $24,000 he collected for a speech to vaccine developer AstraZeneca.
Jha did not file his financial disclosure paperwork until May 2, according to Politico, more than a month after he took over as Biden’s COVID-19 czar. (RELATED: Joe Biden Claims His Personal COVID Czar Is ‘Running The CDC’)
The disclosures indicate that Jha was simultaneously advising Biden’s COVID-19 team at the same time he was collecting pay days from corporations on COVID policies.
Jha was appointed to head the Biden COVID-19 response in March when the administration wanted to shift from a “war-time” approach to the pandemic to one that treated the virus as endemic. He replaced previous COVID czar Jeffrey Zeints.