Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Alex | Email Max One of the media organizations that ran an op-ed by JOE BIDEN’s top science adviser added a disclaimer today, noting he had previous financial ties to a Covid-19 vaccine producer while boosting the administration’s vaccination campaign. Another said they were never made aware of the potential conflict prior to publication. Last summer, ERIC LANDER , the head of the Biden’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote columns for the Washington Post and the Boston Globe encouraging people to get vaccinated and arguing for a multibillion-dollar plan to prepare for the next pandemic. Lander, who announced on Monday his resignation by February 18 after POLITICO reported he bullied subordinates, was writing in his capacity as the White House’s top science official, as part of the administration’s broader vaccination efforts. But neither column included the disclosure that, at the time they were published, Lander still owned stock worth between $500,000 and $1 million in BioNTech SE, the German biotechnology company that had partnered with Pfizer to create one of the first successful Covid-19 vaccines, according to his financial disclosure. On Wednesday, POLITICO published a story noting that Lander promoted the vaccine while having a financial stake in BioNTech SE. He had 90 days, upon confirmation, to sell those stocks but waited until Aug. 5 — 69 days into serving in his post — to do so. Shortly after the story was published, the Boston Globe appended an update to Lander’s column noting that “at the time this column was published, Eric Lander held stock in BioNTech SE, Pfizer’s partner on the COVID-19 vaccine.” Asked if they were going to update their piece, The Washington Post’s spokesperson SHANI GEORGE did not directly answer, telling West Wing Playbook that “we believe in giving our readers transparency. We typically ask contributors to disclose any conflicts of interest and were not made aware in this case." Government ethics experts told Politico that Lander’s promotion of Covid vaccines while he was still holding stock in one of the leading vaccine makers likely did not violate the ethics agreement he signed when he joined the Biden administration. But, they said, it looked unseemly and raised questions about the robustness of the White House’s ethics agreements. An OSTP spokesperson argued that “conversations and opinion pieces telling people they should get vaccinated during a global pandemic are not even close to an ethics concern.” At the time he was nominated in January, Lander was the richest man in Biden’s Cabinet, reporting over $45 million in assets — many of them in the areas he has had influence over as head of OSTP. This was an issue early on for Biden ethics officials. When Lander applied for a certificate of divestiture — essentially a way to offset capital gains taxes when you are forced to divest — his then-general counsel wrote that Lander’s assets, including the BioNtech stock, were “in companies whose products and services could be particularly and significantly impacted by Dr. Lander’s statutorily mandated responsibilities as director,” according to a copy of the application obtained by West Wing Playbook. Ultimately he received a certificate of divestiture from many of his assets including his 6,552 shares of BioNTech stock. Some of them he sold in June. But others he held on to. His then-general counsel RACHEL WALLACE — who is now being represented by the Government Accountability Project as a whistleblower following POLITICO's reporting this week — said that she was surprised to learn today he had taken months to fully offload his BioNtech stock. “Numerous conversations were held with him to explain to him which investments needed to be sold and why. Moreover, as with every new staff member, he was given an in-depth ethics briefing,” she told West Wing Playbook. “He was aware of BioNTech's work with Pfizer and had raised it in discussions regarding his financial disclosure. This made it all the more astonishing that he took steps that would have directly and predictably benefited BioNTech before he sold the stock. Unfortunately, because he had retaliated against me by ignoring me and telling others not to seek my counsel as the lead agency ethics attorney, I was not only unaware that he was taking these steps, I was unable to stop him.” TEXT US — Did we miss something about Lander’s BioNTech investments? Send us an email or text and we will try to include your thoughts in the next day’s edition. Can be anonymous, on background, etc. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com or you can text/Signal Alex at 8183240098 or Max at 7143455427. WHAT YOU TEXTED — In response to yesterday’s top about Lander, ANDREW BELMONT, a biophysics and quantitative biology professor at the University of Illinois wrote in to say he thought the outrage toward Lander was misplaced. “We have lost roughly twice as many lives to COVID in the US in two years that we lost during WW2 in four years. And we essentially fire the person in charge of developing our response to COVID because he was “disrespectful” to his staffers?,” Belmont wrote. “Frankly I’d like to see more competence in the government's response to COVID and that is a hell of a lot more important than the feelings of the staff and Director leading this response…. We need the best people working on this, regardless of how polite or rude they are.” Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you JOHN KIRBY, Pentagon press secretary? Email/text us! Please?
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