Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, told Newsmax on Monday that newly obtained redacted documents from the State Department confirm the Chinese orchestrated a cover-up to conceal the COVID-19 outbreak.
Wenstrup serves as the chair of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and appeared on "Newsline" to discuss recent developments in the panel's investigation.
"They're [the documents] part of this whole investigation and many, many things have come forward that are very critical that the American people need to know about," Wenstrup said. "So, the documents that came from the State Department through FOIA [a Freedom of Information Act request] only came with headings. To make them declassified, they redacted virtually everything in the report. But they left us with the headings and this is important and I'll share those headings with you.
"They said the outbreak could have been contained if Beijing had not covered up. Another heading is [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] lied to obfuscate his role in the cover-up. Also that the PLA, the People's Liberation Army of China, they had contractors build the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the PLA stayed within the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Bioengineering University afterwards. So, it indicates a cover-up, that the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] blocked a thorough investigation.
"We've knows that for some time because they've denied independent researchers from the WHO [World Health Organization] and they denied American researchers to enter into China as part of the WHO investigation.
"It also indicates that their military is involved with this type of research, which is not a surprise, either, as our own State Department has said back in 2005 that China is working on bioweapons. So, none of this is really new, but we're trying to get confirmation on all the things we suspected and gathering more and more intelligence."
Wenstrup also commented on Dr. Peter Daszak, the head of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit, "which was doing gain of function research in Wuhan, China."
"He was doing dangerous gain-of-function research; he didn't adhere to the rules of the [research] grant," Wenstrup said. "When they had a dangerous virus created in their fifth year of research; they didn't report it to NIH [National Institutes of Health]. Dr. Peter Daszak should never get another penny from the U.S. government for any type of research, nor should EcoHealth Alliance. That has been brought out and actually was very much witnessed, and we had bipartisan support in that kind of a confirmation that he should no longer receive funding."
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