There’s been lots of recent chatter about the origins of Covid-19. But House Intelligence Committee Republicans think they have the answer — Covid came from a Wuhan lab leak. After completing their research, they published a report outlining their evidence on Wednesday evening.

With Rep. Devin Nunes at the helm, GOP Intelligence members released their findings in a 21-page report entitled, “In Focus: COVID-19 and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

From the report:

“The threads of circumstantial information suggest the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 and resulting COVID-19 pandemic could have been the result of an accidental leak from the WIV, particularly given the absence of credible information that supports a zoonotic transmission.”

“Unfortunately, Beijing has hindered the conduct of a full, credible investigation. There is overwhelming circumstantial evidence, however, to support a lab leak as the origination of COVID-19, while there is no substantive evidence supporting the natural zoonosis hypothesis.”

The GOP Intelligence members used open source information to make their case. These include the following:

• Several researchers at the WIV became sick with Covid-like symptoms in fall, 2019. This was according to a US State Department memo.
• Between October 7 and October 24, 2019, there was no cell-phone activity present inside the lab. This may indicate a shutdown or blackout.
• In 2017, US diplomats to China warned that WIV was “conducting dangerous research on coronaviruses without following necessary safety protocols, risking the accidental outbreak of a pandemic.”
• The Covid-19 virus itself has characteristics that can’t be explained by natural occurrence. In Medium, journalist Nicholas Wade explained how Covid’s manipulated mutations made it ideal for infecting people.
• Finally, China has a history of lab leaks, including one in 2004 in Beijing. In that case, an earlier coronavirus called SARs caused severe acute respiratory syndrome.

Not only that, but the intelligence report also cited “involvement in the Wuhan lab of the Chinese military, which has a documented biological weapons program.”

Even CDC director Rochelle Walensky admitted that yes, Covid may have come from a lab leak. When Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) pressed her on Covid’s origin during a Senate hearing, also held on Wednesday, she hemmed and hawed. She tried to hedge her responses. But finally she told Kennedy that yes, Covid could’ve come from the lab.

When Kennedy asked if the US was funding “gain of function” research, Walensky suggested getting answers from Dr. Anthony Fauci. But Kennedy would have none of it:

“Dr. Fauci seems confused.”

“I’m asking, with all due respect, I’m asking you to give us that information. . .”

And speaking of Fauci, his National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, funded by the United States, may have been involved in gain of function research at WIV. From the GOP intelligence report:

“Committee Republicans are concerned that the U.S. Government directly or indirectly engaged in dangerous scientific research with China despite knowing of the Chinese military’s participation. The Committee must determine what role, if any, the Intelligence Community (IC) had in monitoring or evaluating U.S. policy risks related to these efforts.”

Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0. 

While Fauci has emphatically denied funding gain of function research, the report also cited an example of such funding. In 2015, NIAID funded the EcoHealth Alliance, which teamed up with China to create “a hybrid virus that combined elements from two bat-borne coronaviruses, including the one that caused SARS in 2002.” As the report noted:

“This study is an example of a Gain of Function research experiment, which enhance a pathogen’s natural traits.”

Heading up the EcoHealth Alliance is Peter Daszak, who funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars — taxpayer dollars — into the Wuhan lab. Daszak talked about participating in such experiments at the December, 2019, Nipah Virus International Conference in Singapore. While there he spoke with Dr. Vincent Racaniello of the University of North Carolina, in an interview.

“You can manipulate [coronaviruses] in the lab pretty easily. Spike protein drives a lot of what happens with the coronavirus, zoonotic risk. So you can get the sequence, you can build the protein — and we work with Ralph Baric at UNC to do this — insert into the backbone of another virus, and do, do some work in the lab.”

Yet what did Peter Daszak say about the idea of a lab leak?

“It’s a good conspiracy theory. Foreigners designing a virus in a mysterious lab, a nefarious activity, and then the cloak of secrecy around China.”

But now Daszak is complaining of getting hate mail. Not pleasant, to be sure, but consider what Sen. Tom Cotton endured at the hands of the mainstream press.

You may recall that in February, 2020, the senator — who has no love for the Communist Chinese — suggested that maybe, just maybe, Covid-19 came from that lab in Wuhan. In a series of tweets, as well as in an interview on Fox News, Cotton said:

“We don’t have evidence that this disease originated there, but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says, and China right now is not giving evidence on that question at all.”

The New York Times pounced. Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins, clamored their headline.

CNN piled on, claiming that release of Covid from the lab “was almost certainly not true,” and that the WIV was “the focus of conspiracies.” They also gave lip service to Chinese propaganda:

“We urge the US to stop spreading disinformation.”

CNN’s Chris Cillizza accused Cotton of “playing a dangerous game with his coronavirus speculation.” And Jake Tapper said Cotton’s ideas were something he “put in the conspiracy theory bucket.”

Those comments didn’t age well, did they?

So now Tom Cotton has been vindicated. But the report from the House Intelligence Committee Republicans also exposes the corruption of Anthony Fauci and his cohort Peter Daszak. These two used taxpayer dollars to help the CCP and its military develop a deadly virus that was unleashed across the world, and yet they still lie about the level of their involvement.

Featured image: SARS-CoV-2 under electron microscope. NIAID/flickr/cropped/CC BY-2.0.