Republicans within the House Intelligence Committee claim there is “significant circumstantial evidence” to suggest the COVID-19 outbreak came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the U.S. government “may have funded or collaborated” its development.
Fox News got the Republican panel’s report first.
They wrote, “International efforts to discover the true source of the virus, however, have been stymied by a lack of cooperation from the People’s Republic of China. Nevertheless, significant circumstantial evidence raises serious concerns that the COVID-19 outbreak may have been a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Within the report, they said China has a “history of research labs leaks resulting in infections” and referred to warnings by U.S. diplomats in China from 2017.
The diplomats reported the Wuhan Lab conducted “dangerous research” on different strains of coronaviruses and did so without “necessary safety protocols, risking the accidental outbreak of a pandemic.”
Republicans cited public reports made in the Fall of 2019 where, “several researchers in the Wuhan lab were sickened with COVID-19-like symptoms.”
The committee Republicans wrote, “By contrast, little circumstantial evidence has emerged to support the PRC’s claim that COVID-19 was a natural occurrence, having jumped from some other species to human.”
They continued to say Chinese authorities “have failed to identify the original species that allegedly spread the virus to humans, which is critical to their zoonotic transfer theory.”
Fox News wrote, “Committee Republicans also claimed there are ‘clear signs’ that U.S. government agencies and academic institutions ‘may have funded or collaborated in Gain of Function research’ at the Wuhan Lab, claiming that research “was published even after the U.S. government had paused these kinds of studies in the United States due to ethical concerns over their biowarfare applicability and their potential to accidentally unleash a pandemic.”
Republicans have written letters of demands to President Joe Biden and the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haimes. They claim the intelligence community wasn’t “forthcoming” about “what processes it undertook to make seemingly authoritative statements early in the pandemic about the origins of the virus — conclusions that are now in question.”
The letters also have a deadline set for May 31 for the intelligence community to provide the Republicans with all of the information on the origins of the COVID-19, and possible “collaboration” between the Wuhan Lab and the Chinese military.
It also asked for evidence to suggest the claim the virus originated from animals.
