According to an exclusive report from the Daily Caller News Foundation, US Secretary of State John Kerry funneled $8 Million in taxpayer dollars to his daughter’s non-profit foundation over the past several years.
Attributing the Daily Caller News Foundation, Breitbart News reported that Dr. Vanessa Bradford Kerry started a non-profit that trains doctors and nurses in Africa and funded it with more than $8 Million provided by American taxpayers over seven years.
Dr. Kerry is the daughter of Democrat John Kerry and is the CEO of Seed Global Health, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that received an initial funding of $2 Million from the State Department for three years through the Peace Corps back in 2012 in a no-bid award. At the time of the non-competitive bid, Kerry’s father was the U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and served as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which approves the annual budget of the State Department and also oversees the Peace Corps.
In 2015, Seed Global Health secured another no-bid, four year extension and this time the Peace Corps gave the nonprofit $6.4 million provided by the Department of State while John Kerry was secretary of state.
Dr. Kerry’s non-profit also received an additional almost $1 million from a modification to the first award, as well as from Department of State funds the group secured outside the Peace Corps.
Secretary of State Kerry and government officials colluded to launch the Peace Corps program called The Global Health Service Partnership and ensure that Kerry’s daughter’s non-profit would get the contract. A memo from one year before Seed received it’s first award states that Dr. Kerry and Peace Corps Directors Buck Buckingham and Sarah Morganthau would be meeting with Ambassador Eric Goosby, who headed the Office of the US Global AIDS Coordinator – the State Department office that later funded the Global Health Services Partnership. A meeting a month later revealed the strategy to send tax dollars to Seed. According to the minutes from a November 18, 2011 meeting, officials assured Dr. Kerry that she would not have to compete with other groups for Department of State Funds.
The news of Kerry funneling money to his daughter’s non-profit foundation falls on the heels of the scandal of Heather Bresch, daughter of Democrat Senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, whose company Mylan made headlines by gouging the price of life-saving Epipens by 400% since 2007.
Mark Marino, Chief Development Officer of Seed Global Health, told Breitbart that “no conflict of interest exists in Seed Global Health’s Partnership with Peace Corps and the U.S. Government.” Marino further went on to say that “for the record and to clarify false statements, Seed Global Health CEO, Dr. Vanessa Kerry’s father, Secretary of State John Kerry, has had no role or influence in the decision making for the global health service partnership either in the senate or at the state department.”
Breitbart reports that they asked if it was ethical for Secretary of State Kerry’s daughter to seek and obtain $8.4 million in federal funding for what is essentially her private charitable project, and Marino responded by saying that it was legal and “not a conflict of interest” for her to do so.
Breitbart says that Marino’s answer leads to questions about ethics and the appropriate role of government when it comes to charitable activities as most charitable organizations are funded mostly through personal private funds.
Kerry’s daughter is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. She is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Medical School.
According to Seed Global Health’s website, they send volunteer physicians and nurses to medical and nursing schools in Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Liberia. More than 40 clinical educators worked at 13 sites in the 2014-2015 program.
Andrea Mayer-Bruestle
Andrea Mayer-Bruestle is a former writer for Alpha News.
