NEW YORK (AP) — A former New York City official who helped coordinate the city’s response to the pandemic was fired from his private-sector job after a recording showed him talking about attending a sex party and other private gatherings when the city was urging people to practice social distancing.
Dr. Jay Varma was terminated from his position as executive vice president and chief medical officer at SIGA Technologies, the New York-based pharmaceutical company disclosed in a filing Monday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Varma served as a senior public health adviser to then-Mayor Bill de Blasio from April 2020 to May 2021. He regularly appeared with the Democratic mayor at press briefings discussing the city’s COVID-19 response and helped develop programs and strategies to combat the virus, including encouraging people to wear masks in public, get tested regularly and get vaccinated, once vaccines were available.
A hidden-camera video posted last week by podcaster Steven Crowder shows Varma speaking casually to a woman about attending gatherings even as he served as a face of the city’s pandemic response.
“I did all this deviant, sexual stuff while I was on TV and people were like, ‘Aren’t you afraid? Aren’t you embarrassed?’” he said at one point in the edited recording. “And I was like, no, I really like being my authentic self.”
Varma also acknowledged how disastrous his actions would have been to the city’s efforts had they been exposed at the time.
“It would have been a big deal,” he said at another point in the video. “It would have been a real embarrassment.”
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned in 2023 after a yearslong government inquiry revealed he and members of his administration attended parties in government offices in violation of COVID-19 lockdown rules at the time.
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom faced criticism for flouting his own pandemic rules when he attended a friend’s birthday party at the swanky French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley in November 2020.
Varma declined Tuesday to comment on his firing, but acknowledged the authenticity of the video in a statement provided by a spokesperson.
“I take responsibility for not using the best judgment at the time,” he wrote, adding that the recordings were from private conversations that had been “secretly recorded, spliced, diced, and taken out of context.”
Varma didn’t elaborate on the events he referenced in the video, but acknowledged attending at least three private gatherings during his City Hall tenure.
Varma, in the video, said one party took place in a hotel room in August 2020 with about 8 to 10 people, including his wife, who were naked and taking the recreational drug molly, or ecstasy.
By then, New York’s governor had begun easing restrictions, with indoor gatherings of up to 10 people permitted months earlier. Varma said he still took precautions to make sure he wasn’t caught.
“I had to be kind of sneaky about it,” he said. “I was running the entire COVID response for the city.”
He also attended a drug-fueled dance party with roughly 200 people in a space under a Wall Street bank in May or June of 2021, according to the recording. In mid-May, New York state had raised the limit on indoor gatherings to 250 people and by mid-June, it had lifted most pandemic restrictions.
Varma, who left his City Hall position around that time but continued to serve as a part-time consultant, according to his LinkedIn bio, recalled being worried about being spotted at the party at the time.
“This was not COVID-friendly,” he said in the video, which appears to have been stitched together from recordings made secretly during a number of different social encounters with an unidentified woman, who is off camera.
A spokesperson for SIGA Technologies didn’t respond to emails seeking comment.
Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, declined to wade into the controversy Tuesday during his regular City Hall briefing with reporters. Some local conservatives called for a government inquiry.
“The hypocrisy is outrageous,” said City Council Member Robert Holden, a Queens Democrat, who applauded Varma's firing. “Millions were impacted by their heavy-handed policies, and the public deserves accountability.”
Varma in his statement defended his efforts to respond to the pandemic and denounced the video as part of “dangerous extremist efforts to undermine the public’s confidence” in vaccines.
“Facing the greatest public health crisis in a century, our top priority was to save lives, and every decision made was based on the best available science to keep New Yorkers safe,” he wrote.
Follow Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo.
This photo provided by the New York City Mayoral Photography Office shows Jay Varma, a senior advisor to Mayor Bill de Blasio, during a media availability in New York, Oct. 4, 2020. (Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's photo portrait display at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery has had references to his two impeachments removed, the latest apparent change at the collection of museums he has accused of bias as he asserts his influence over how official presentations document U.S. history.
The wall text, which summarized Trump's first presidency and noted his 2024 comeback victory, was part of the museum's “American Presidents” exhibition. The description had been placed alongside a photograph of Trump taken during his first term. Now, a different photo appears without any accompanying text block, though the text was available online. Trump was the only president whose display in the gallery, as seen Sunday, did not include any extended text.
The White House did not say whether it sought any changes. Nor did a Smithsonian statement in response to Associated Press questions. But Trump ordered in August that Smithsonian officials review all exhibits before the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4. The Republican administration said the effort would “ensure alignment with the president’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”
Trump's original “portrait label," as the Smithsonian calls it, notes Trump's Supreme Court nominations and his administration's development of COVID-19 vaccines. That section concludes: “Impeached twice, on charges of abuse of power and incitement of insurrection after supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, he was acquitted by the Senate in both trials.”
Then the text continues: “After losing to Joe Biden in 2020, Trump mounted a historic comeback in the 2024 election. He is the only president aside from Grover Cleveland (1837– 1908) to have won a nonconsecutive second term.”
Asked about the display, White House spokesman Davis Ingle celebrated the new photograph, which shows Trump, brow furrowed, leaning over his Oval Office desk. Ingle said it ensures Trump's “unmatched aura ... will be felt throughout the halls of the National Portrait Gallery.”
The portrait was taken by White House photographer Daniel Torok, who is credited in the display that includes medallions noting Trump is the 45th and 47th president. Similar numerical medallions appear alongside other presidents' painted portraits that also include the more extended biographical summaries such as what had been part of Trump's display.
Sitting presidents are represented by photographs until their official paintings are commissioned and completed.
Ingle did not answer questions about whether Trump or a White House aide, on his behalf, asked for anything related to the portrait label.
The gallery said in a statement that it had previously rotated two photographs of Trump from its collection before putting up Torok's work.
“The museum is beginning its planned update of the America’s Presidents gallery which will undergo a larger refresh this Spring,” the gallery statement said. “For some new exhibitions and displays, the museum has been exploring quotes or tombstone labels, which provide only general information, such as the artist’s name.”
For now, references to Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton being impeached in 1868 and 1998, respectively, remain as part of their portrait labels, as does President Richard Nixon's 1974 resignation as a result of the Watergate scandal.
And, the gallery statement noted, “The history of Presidential impeachments continues to be represented in our museums, including the National Museum of American History.”
Trump has made clear his intentions to shape how the federal government documents U.S. history and culture. He has offered an especially harsh assessment of how the Smithsonian and other museums have featured chattel slavery as a seminal variable in the nation's development but also taken steps to reshape how he and his contemporary rivals are depicted.
In the months before his order for a Smithsonian review, he fired the head archivist of the National Archives and said he was firing the National Portrait Gallery's director, Kim Sajet, as part of his overhaul. Sajet maintained the backing of the Smithsonian's governing board, but she ultimately resigned.
At the White House, Trump has designed a notably partisan and subjective “Presidential Walk of Fame” featuring gilded photographs of himself and his predecessors — with the exception of Biden, who is represented by an autopen — along with plaques describing their presidencies.
The White House said at the time that Trump himself was a primary author of the plaques. Notably, Trump's two plaques praise the 45th and 47th president as a historically successful figure while those under Biden's autopen stand-in describe the 46th executive as “by far, the worst President in American History” who “brought our Nation to the brink of destruction.”
Barrow reported from Atlanta.
People react to a photograph of President Donald Trump on display at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery's "American Presidents" exhibit on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026 in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
Visitors to the National Portrait Gallery walk past the portrait of President Donald Trump, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
Visitors stop to look at a photograph of President Donald Trump and a short plaque next to it are on display at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery's "American Presidents" exhibit on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026 in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
A photograph of President Donald Trump and a short plaque next to it are on display at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery's "American Presidents" exhibit on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026 in Washington. (AP Photo/Anna Johnson)
President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with oil executives in the East Room of the White House, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
