By Gary Bai
February 26, 2023 Updated: February 27, 2023
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)
speaks during a Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and
Spending Oversight on Capitol Hill in Washington on Aug. 3, 2022. (Drew
Angerer/Getty Images)
Republican lawmakers responded to a news report saying that the U.S. Energy Department had concluded the lab leak theory was “likely,” saying that the finding supports what many have long suspected.
A Wall Street
Journal article on Feb. 26
reported that a classified intelligence report by the Energy Department said
that the virus likely leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“So the government caught
up to what Real America knew all along,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote in a
Twitter post on Sunday.
The responses came as GOP
lawmakers ramp up investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and allegations of
government-big tech censorship of the debate.
The Energy Department was
previously undecided on the issue but now joins the FBI in corroborating the
lab leak hypothesis, according to the report. Several people who have read the
report said the Department’s judgment was made with “low confidence,” the
Journal reported.
Responding to the report
on Sunday, White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN that the
intelligence community does not have a “definitive answer” on the matter at
this point.
Republican lawmakers have
been vocal about the theory that the virus leaked from the Wuhan laboratory
soon after the onset of the pandemic in 2020. Initially, some health
professionals and legacy media outlets dismissed the theory, labeling the
theory’s proponents as racist and conspiracy theorists.
Fauci
Some lawmakers also
accused Anthony Fauci, former
head of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), of
colluding with big tech companies, such as Facebook and Twitter, and censoring
stories about the lab leak theory via what these companies describe as a
crackdown on “misinformation.”
“Fauci knew this
immediately but dismissed it because of funding for the Wuhan lab,” Sen. Eric
Schmitt (R-Mo.) wrote in another
post. “We know what happened next — when Fauci spoke Big Tech censored. I
exposed this collusion as AG and I’ll work to ensure this type of censorship
never happens again.”
“Americans knew this from
Day One,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) wrote on Twitter on Sunday. “Unfortunately,
Big Tech and Big Government silenced them.”
Republicans and critics
of Fauci have raised concerns about
the NIAID’s funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology via the non-governmental
organization EcoHealth Alliance, including for research described by experts as
gain-of-function. The NIAID issued about 3.4 million in grants to EcoHealth.
Gain-of-function research
makes the virus more deadly by enhancing its pathogenicity, its
ability to cause disease and harm the host, or transmissibility, how easily it spreads.
The NIH has denied that
the grants were for gain-of-function research, while Fauci has defended the
decision to issue the grants to EcoHealth.
“More evidence continues
to mount that COVID came from the Wuhan lab. We’ve uncovered emails showing Dr.
Fauci was warned that the virus looked man-made & came from a lab, but he
may have acted to cover it up. Why? We need answers & accountability,”
wrote the official Twitter account of the House Oversight Republican Committee.
Republicans on the
committee previously disclosed internal
NIH emails that showed Fauci was informed by senior scientists early in the
pandemic that the theory that COVID-19 had a natural origin was “highly
unlikely,” even while Fauci was publicly promoting the natural origin theory.
Additional
Responses
Republican lawmakers such
as Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) took issue with what he described as a lack of
transparency in government investigations related to the origins of COVID-19.
“The American people
deserve the full truth about #covid origins. No more whitewash. I will again
introduce legislation to make the US government’s intelligence reports on covid
open to the people,” Hawley wrote.
Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.)
echoed Hawley’s view.
“The elites and academics
owe everyone who had legitimate questions and concerns about the origins of
COVID an apology,” Buck wrote in a Twitter post. “The American people
deserve to see all the information concerning the Chinese lab leak and the origins
of COVID. This won’t be forgotten.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Tom
Cotton (R-Ark.) says the United States should focus on the further implications
of the report, namely, the need for the U.S. government to act to hold the
Chinese regime accountable for the pandemic.
“Re. China’s lab leak,
being proven right doesn’t matter,” Cotton wrote in a Twitter post. “What
matters is holding the Chinese Communist Party accountable so this doesn’t
happen again.”
The Epoch Times contacted
the National Institutes of Health for comment.
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