Republican lawmakers are determined to sort out the early research of COVID-19 — and "get to the bottom" of what appears to be "something fishy going on," Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., said Monday on Newsmax.
In an interview on Newsmax's "National Report," Lesko, a member of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, said 2020 emails between Dr. Anthony Fauci and then-NIH head Dr. Francis Collins on the origin of COVID remain relevant "because 7 million people died from COVID 19."
"We need to get to the bottom of this," she said. "It's very disturbing that according to testimony in our select subcommittee that 12 different agencies worked with social media, and with the media to cover up the lab theory" of COVID's origin.
"And now we have emails between Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins … trying to tamp down any type of opinion that the COVID-19 came from the lab. And quite frankly, Democrats in the last two years, when the House was under their control, didn't want to talk about this at all," she said.
"Now Republicans have a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and we want to get to the truth — whatever that truth may be," she declared.
According to Lesko, other origin theories at the time didn't involve COVID-19 occurring only in nature.
"There were scientists that believed it was leaked from the lab," she said, adding there were two top U.S. virologists that said it was likely leaked from the lab.
"Then days later, they changed their tune … and subsequently they received $9 million in grant money," she charged.
Lesko said one doctor appearing before the subcommittee include Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins University, who "thinks it's a no brainer that COVID-19 came from the lab."
"He also said that the Chinese doctors were originally arrested and told they could not disclose information. Then the Chinese government wouldn't give us the report and any sequence data from the research that would [show what] they were doing at the Wuhan lab. The Chinese scientists asked NIH to delete the sequences and for whatever reason we did," she continued.
But Lesko charged officials have waffled on funding for COVID research and data from China on the virus.
"There's something fishy going on, and we need to get to the bottom of it," Lesko vowed.
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