House Republicans claim they’re being stonewalled by the intelligence community regarding the details of its investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
The minority on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released its report on the origins of COVID-19 this week, concluding that there are “indications” that COVID-19 may have been linked to the Chinese Communist Party’s bioweapons program and have been accidentally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
Congress is supposed to be able to conduct oversight.
What could justify this level of secrecy?https://t.co/d9HADESSzP pic.twitter.com/nKwna4K6V5
— Emily Kopp (@emilyakopp) December 15, 2022
Those findings are consistent with a report released by Senate Republicans in October, which concluded that COVID-19 “most likely” originated in the WIV. Scientists in the WIV were conducting gain-of-function research on bat-based coronaviruses, sometimes with taxpayer funding from the United States.
The Biden administration has repeatedly referred back to an intelligence community report from 2021 when asked about the origins of COVID-19. The report did not come to a conclusive assessment of how the COVID-19 pandemic started, stating that some elements of the intelligence community believe it originated from the WIV while others believed it was naturally-occurring. They did reach a consensus that the virus was not a Chinese bioweapon.
But the House Republicans’ report accused the intelligence community of hiding details on how it conducted its investigation. Specifically, the intelligence community would not answer inquiries about which outside experts it consulted while conducting its investigation.
“The Committee believes the IC downplayed important information relating to the possible links between COVID-19 and China’s bioweapons research based in part on input from outside experts,” the report states. “[The IC] refuses to be transparent with the Committee regarding which experts it relied on.”
“Contrary to the implication of the [Intelligence Community’s] declassified report, based on our investigation involving a variety of public and non-public information, we conclude that there are indications that SARS-CoV-2 may have been tied to China’s biological weapons research program and spilled over to the human population during a lab-related incident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” a summary of the report said. (RELATED: Biden Officials Appeared At Conference Endorsing ‘Natural Origin’ Of COVID)
The State Department has repeatedly referenced the intelligence community report in response to questions about holding China accountable for its lack of transparency regarding COVID-19. The CCP has continuously refused to cooperate with a thorough investigation of the origins of COVID-19 involving outside actors.