On Friday, House lawmakers emphasized that the Biden administration must reveal what it knows about the origin of COVID-19.
Both Republican and Democratic House lawmakers voted to release intelligence information about the origins of COVID-19, putting pressure on the Biden administration to reveal what it knows about the virus’s beginnings. This significant move has garnered attention because it was a rare instance of bipartisanship in the typically divided House of Representatives.
If the bill is signed into law, the release of the intelligence on COVID-19’s origin would be mandated within 90 days.
After new assessments from the Department of Energy and the FBI pointing to a lab leak in China as the most likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic, the House and the Senate feel the American people deserve access to all of the information surrounding the origin of the virus. The bill now awaits President Biden’s signature.
FBI director Christopher A. Wray said Tuesday that covid-19 “most likely” originated from a lab incident in Wuhan, China, his first public comments on the agency’s position on the origins of the coronavirus.https://t.co/yNJ0xXuGOy
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 1, 2023
House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) had this to say, “The American public deserves answers to every aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic, including how this virus was created and specifically whether it was a natural occurrence or was the result of a lab-related event. The House Intelligence Committee, which oversees our intelligence community, is aware of classified information that could help inform the public of why COVID-19 as a lab-leak theory is not just a possibility but approaches the idea that it is likely.”
Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC) has claimed that Dr. Anthony Fauci had knowledge that COVID-19 originated from the Wuhan lab in China and attempted to conceal the information.
Murphy said, “In January of 2020, Dr. Fauci received emails that promulgated that COVID-19 looked engineered and not from the wild. Yet three weeks later, to save his own skin, he commissioned a scientific paper which ‘debunked’ the lab theory. He was academically and intellectually dishonest.”
He continued, “The truth is that Dr. Fauci and his institution funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money to promote dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology without proper guardrails,” Murphy charged.
According to Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), the classified information he has seen suggests that the origin of COVID-19 is still unclear and that intelligence agencies remain divided on the issue, but he still supports declassifying the information so people can make their own judgments.
Because the bill has passed both the House and Senate, President Biden’s signature is irrelevant. If he chooses to sign it, the bill will become law, but even if he were to veto it, both chambers have demonstrated that they have more than enough votes to override his veto.
