President Joe Biden missed the Sunday night deadline set by a bipartisan law, which he signed, to declassify "any and all information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology" and the origins of COVID-19.
On Tuesday, Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., chair of the select committee on China who sponsored the House version of the bill, told the Washington Examiner "that "Congress overwhelmingly passed legislation requiring the [Biden] administration to declassify all relevant intelligence around the origins of COVID-19."
"Biden," he added, "cannot continue to ignore this overwhelming bipartisan consensus" and that "Congress must use every tool at its disposal to enforce this law and ensure the president makes this information available to the public."
As the law outlines, the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, was instructed to "declassify any and all information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin" of COVID-19, including intel on the "activities performed by the Wuhan Institute of Virology with or on behalf of the People's Liberation Army" and "coronavirus research or other related activities performed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the outbreak" of SARS-CoV-2.
But on Tuesday, and despite the Biden administration's abnegation of a law that they themselves agreed to, The Wall Street Journal corroborated the reporting of Twitter Files journalist Michael Shellenberger that "Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists who were sickened in November 2019 were working with SARS-like coronaviruses and being funded by the U.S."
In August 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) published an assessment indicating that four U.S. intelligence agencies, along with the National Intelligence Council, had "low confidence" in the theory that COVID-19 originated from a lab, adding instead that the virus was most likely of natural origin.
By October of 2021, the ODNI released a declassified report, "The Case for the Laboratory-Associated Incident Hypothesis," essentially summarizing an FBI report from earlier this year indicating that the bureau had "moderate confidence" to believe the COVID-19 originated from a Chinese government lab.
By March, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who previously claimed that there was strong evidence supporting the theory that COVID-19 originated at a Wuhan lab, dismissed claims made by the CIA that they lacked sufficient information to determine whether the virus had a natural origin or was a result of a lab leak, calling such claims "utter nonsense."
Peter Daszak, the President of EcoHealth Alliance, collaborated closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. According to emails released under the North Carolina Public Records Act, he played a central role in redirecting the attention of the media and scientific community away from inquiries regarding the possibility of COVID-19 originating in a laboratory.
The emails shed light on the involvement of Daszak and University of North Carolina virologist Ralph Baric with the laboratory at the center of the pandemic. Baric's experiments with the Wuhan lab involved making viruses more transmissible or harmful using gain-of-function experiments.
In a March 2020 email written by Daszak, it was revealed that discussions involving both Daszak and Baric played a role in dissuading the White House from investigating the possibility of a lab origin of COVID-19.
"Just wanted to let you know what's happening," Daszak wrote Baric. "I don't think this [Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases & 21st Century Health Threats] will be getting into the lab release or bioengineering hypothesis again any time soon — White House seems to be satisfied with the earlier meeting, paper in Nature and general comments within scientific community. National Security staff were in the room with OSTP on the first call."
In May 2020, Daszak sent an email to Baric where he mentioned using talking points to discourage reporters from inquiring about gain-of-function research on coronaviruses.
EcoHealth Alliance has received millions in government funding to discover and study animal viruses.
During Secretary of State Antony Blinken's trip to China this week, it was reported by the Examiner that the trip was not intended to discuss the origins of COVID-19.