© AP/Andrew HarnikRepublicans and Democrats voted unanimously on Friday to require the government to release classified data related to COVID's possible origin in China.
House lawmakers made it clear Friday that it's time for the Biden administration to come clean on what it knows about COVID-19's origin.
Republicans and Democrats voted unanimously — 419-0 — to require the Biden administration's director of national intelligence to declassify all intelligence related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and possible links to the origins of the COVID-19 virus. That release would be required 90 days after the bill is signed into law.
The vote followed new assessments from the Department of Energy and the FBI that a lab leak in China was the most likely source of the pandemic that killed millions of people around the world. After those assessments were revealed, the Senate unanimously passed the GOP bill last week, and the House followed with its own unanimous vote a little more than a week later.
On the House floor, Republicans made it clear they believe the information that's still classified points to the Wuhan lab as the source of COVID.
House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner, R-Ohio, said:
"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.Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., said he believes Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, knew it came from the Wuhan lab and tried to cover it up:
"The House Intelligence Committee, which oversees our intelligence community, is aware of classified information that could help inform the public why COVID-19 as a lab-leak theory is not just a possibility, but approaches the idea that it is likely."
"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."Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said his view of the classified information he's seen is that it's still unclear where COVID came from, and noted that intelligence community agencies are still split on the question. He also dismissed Murphy's theory by saying, "There's not one iota of evidence for any of that."
"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."
"The chairman [Turner] and I have seen all of the classified information on this, and we don't know. We don't know the origins of the COVID pandemic. So whatever is ultimately declassified, I would hope that my colleagues and the American people would approach that information with the humility, the intellectual humility that we need to approach something as serious as a pandemic and how we behave as citizens in a democracy."But Himes said he still believes it's best to declassify all the information held by the government so that people can make up their own minds. He said this step is particularly important given how reluctant China has been to assist the U.S. in its investigation. China publicly has continued to argue COVID may have come from a U.S. lab.
Himes said:
"At every juncture, the PRC [People's Republic of China] government has obfuscated and obstructed legitimate inquiries and investigations into the origins of the disease. China's approach has been deeply irresponsible and dangerous to global public health."Passage of the bill by both the House and Senate sends the bill to President Biden, whose signature on the bill is now irrelevant — it becomes law if he signs it, and if he were to veto it, both chambers have shown they easily have the two-thirds vote necessary to override his veto.
Sen. Braun, who led the bill in the Senate added:
"President Biden now has a simple choice: sign this bipartisan bill and let the American people see the facts about the COVID lab leak to make up our own minds, or keep us in the dark in an attempt to control the narrative."The White House, as of Friday morning, had not released a statement on the bill, a sign Biden was likely to sign it.
His swimming prowess means nothing when the jury decides his fate.
If this is a ruse, I suspect it will be the last thing out of DC that anybody cares about.
If this is used to point fingers at others, then it will backfire gloriously.
A tsunami is forming and it is unstoppable.