Democracy Alliance-Linked Drug Company Lobbyist Made Ebola Czar
Ron Klain appointed despite no medical background
AP
The new Ebola czar has ties to a secret liberal dark money group and once worked as a lobbyist for a prescription drug company that denied experimental drugs to dying cancer patients.
Ron Klain, a former adviser to former Vice President Al Gore, Vice President Joe Biden, and President Barack Obama, currently is president of Case Holdings and is general counsel to the investment firm Revolution LLC.
Klain is also a trustee for Third Way. Claiming to be the voice for the “vital center,” Third Way is a progressive think tank that advocates for immigration reform, gun control, and a “credible alternative to neoconservative security policy.”
Third Way is also listed on the Democracy Alliance’s “Progressive Infrastructure Map.”
The map, which is detailed in a report by Politico’s Kenneth Vogel, includes organizations that are “politically active and progressive” and “strategically significant.” Third Way is one of the groups listed with a note of special appreciation for playing “instrumental roles in building a stronger, more integrated progressive infrastructure.”
The Democracy Alliance solicits contributions from liberal millionaires and billionaires and serves as a “pass through” between those donors and top liberal advocacy groups, including the Center for American Progress, Media Matters for America, and Democratic Super PAC Priorities USA.
Klain is also on the Board of Directors for the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
He will be in charge of the administration’s emergency response efforts to Ebola, despite having no medical or health care background.
Klain did lobby on behalf of a prescription drug company that was accused of withholding life-saving drugs from dying patients.
While working at O’Melveny & Myers after he left the Clinton administration, Klain helped ImClone push back on a congressional investigation into the company’s procedures for granting cancer patients experimental drugs.
The company only granted 30 so-called “compassionate use” supplies out of more than 10,000 requests, according to Politico. Klain and his team lobbied House members on the Oversight committee for ImClone before a hearing that featured family members of cancer patients who died while waiting for the company to grant them use of an experimental drug.
Klain and his firm were paid $40,000 to lobby for ImClone for two weeks.
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